Tribeca 2022: David Lynch is The Man Behind the Curtain in "Lynch / Oz"

by Jason Adams

Like many of you I have deeply embedded childhood memories of watching The Wizard of Oz on television as a child. And probably also like many of you the film was presented to me as a generational hand-off, a passing of the cinematic baton. My mom was a lifelong fan, and now twas my turn to become the latest Friend of Dorothy (if she only knew). That yellow brick road stretches in one ear and out the other across eighty entire years of movie-lovers, mother to son to son to daughter and on to every Auntie Em adjacent, with something in there for everybody. I can trace my love of Horror Movies right to it – how many nightmares have those short-jacketed cater-waiter flying monkeys stormed through? Others, probably you, can trace your love of the Movie Musical from sepia-toned Kansas where Judy first regaled us of rainbows...

And gooba gobba gooba gobba, it turns out that the director of Eraserhead and Blue Velvet is one of us, one of us…. not that this should surprise anybody who’s watched a single David Lynch movie in their lives. I could list the litany of red shoes and bubble-people in his films but all you need to have seen is Wild at Heart. That 1990 flick is so explicit in its Oz riffs (see: literally any Diane Ladd scene) that Lynch's obsession slips from charming to ridiculous and then almost all the around way back to charming again. (Almost... I admit to mixed feelings about Wild at Heart)

Anyway this is the obsession that fuels Lynch/Oz, the latest cinematic dissection from director Alexandre O. Philippe. He's made a career out of making full-length docs that feel like blu-ray extras even at their best (and Lynch/Oz is definitely on the better side of the spectrum). There was 78/52, his flick about the shower scene in Psycho (which was in my humble opinion not very good), and there was Leap of Faith, his doc on The Exorcist (which was actually very good, also says me). Those are just two of many such titles – looking through his filmography Phillippe clearly knows the movie-geek gold standards and he guns straight for them. So it only seems inevitable now that David Lynch, living movie god, would eventually slip under his microscope.

And here we have it. And it’s a bit of a rollercoaster? Which I think is pretty inevitable given the format Phillippe went with – he invited several other filmmakers and writers to submit their own personal essays on the subject, ranging from a film critic like Amy Nicholson to directors like John Waters and David Lowery. And these were then divided into individual chapters that make up the movie. Inevitably some of these brains are more insightful than others, and inevitably these people will make some of the same points that the others make in their sections. I can’t say I expected a movie like 1957’s sci-fi befuddlement The Brain from Planet Arous to get multiple shout-outs, but somehow it does!

Still I think this gang ranges more on the insightful (if academic) side than they do on the maudlin or pointlessly meandering, and so the quality of insight on display stays to my eye in the upper range. I’ll admit I’ve heard most of my beloved John Waters’ punch-lines about his own personal lifelong obsessions with the Wicked Witch several times before and so his short interlude ended up feeling the least substantial, but that might just be the case for a Waters-obsessive -- if you've never before heard him do these riffs they are a delight. (And hey Phillippe let me talk about John Waters movies for ninety minutes and I’ll give you a true doc to remember!) The chapter to turn the sound up for and really settle into is the middle one by Jennifer’s Body and The Invitation director Karyn Kusama, which is an absolute master-class – if this doc is a roller-coaster her section is its (twin) peak.

All that said I don’t know that Lynch/Oz really gets very far in elucidating the “why” of David Lynch's fixation on the Victor Fleming film of his youth. But Lynch is ever-mum-on-explanation so maybe that's fine. Phillippe & Co do dig up a few clips of the man himself speaking on the subject, but they’re as endearingly cryptic as ever. But the doc sure does dig around thoroughly in the “how” of how Lynch has shown himself to be such a Toto-too freak over the years. There is genuine power and curiosity in seeing all of the Oz-fueled moments littered across his five and a half decade long career swept up into one place like this. So yes, you’ll want to wander the path from Tin Man to Log Lady yourselves, even if it raises more questions than answers. Given the sources that seems only fitting for both halves of these otherworldly puzzles.