Austin Lynch is ready to step out of his father’s shadow

Unclas­si­fi­able docu-fic­tion hybrid Gray House is the hot tick­et at New York’s Lin­coln Cen­ter this week, where it screens as part of the Art of the Reel fes­ti­val. The event’s web­site gives a clue as to why: ​“Austin Lynch (son of David) and Matthew Booth can­did­ly explore the Amer­i­can work­ing class through a stun­ning­ly pho­tographed weave of ver­ité footage, inter­views, land­scapes, and fic­tion­al elements.”

But while there’s sel­dom such thing as bad pub­lic­i­ty, hav­ing sat down with Lynch in Copen­hagen recent­ly – where his film received its world pre­mière in com­pe­ti­tion at CPH:DOX – it’s hard to imag­ine he’s par­tic­u­lar­ly thrilled by such promi­nence being accord­ed to his famous father’s name.

In per­son Lynch Jr, who some­times goes by ​“Austin Jack Lynch”, some­times sim­ply ​“Austin Jack”, is earnest­ly ami­able, dark-haired and ‑beard­ed, solemn­ly hand­some in a vague­ly Jake Gyl­len­haal-ish way. In broach­ing the sub­ject of illus­tri­ous kin via a fol­low-up email – and being aware that Lynch’s par­ents sep­a­rat­ed around the time he was born (while David was work­ing on Dune) – I decid­ed to men­tion his aunt, Sis­sy Spacek, pro­duc­tion design­er uncle, Jack Fisk, and direc­tor sis­ter, Jennifer.

His response was polite but firm: ​“For the most part, I have to say that I am very hes­i­tant to get into all of these ques­tions regard­ing fam­i­ly con­nec­tions and influ­ences. Please don’t take this the wrong way. It’s just that the film is so far from all of this that it feels besides the point, and, I fear, directs atten­tion away from what’s impor­tant. It’s also, very sim­ply, not how I would like to con­tex­tu­alise the work.”

Fair enough. And while it’s tempt­ing to iden­ti­fy ​“Lynchi­an” flour­ish­es in Gray House’s moody visu­als, the film – offi­cial­ly direct­ed by Lynch but pre­sent­ed as ​“a film by” Lynch and acclaimed Cana­di­an pho­tog­ra­ph­er Matthew Booth – is very much its own beast. A five-part med­i­ta­tion on soli­tude and iso­la­tion book­end­ed by pow­er­ful sec­tions ​“star­ring” French actors Denis Lavant (Holy Motors) and Aurore Clé­ment (Apoc­a­lypse Now),

This dis­tinc­tion was recog­nised by the CPH:DOX jury, who gave Gray House a spe­cial men­tion ​“for its aston­ish­ing use of cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage to cre­ate a pro­found sense of human iso­la­tion.” The cita­tion is a small but cru­cial step in 34-year-old Lynch’s steady emer­gence from his dad’s long shad­ow (his pre­vi­ous cred­its include mak­ing of doc­u­men­taries on Ter­rence Malick’s The New World and Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.)

Hav­ing appeared in small roles in both Twin Peaks (as ​‘lit­tle boy’ in a 1990 episode) and Inland Empire (as a dri­ver), Austin had greater involve­ment on David Lynch’s Inter­view Project – an expe­ri­ence which stood him in good stead when it came to Gray House’s two rel­a­tive­ly straight­for­ward doc­u­men­tary seg­ments. These take the view­er into an oil camp in North Dako­ta (where we hear from blue-col­lar male work­ers) and a prison in Ore­gon (female pris­on­ers). The straight-to-cam­era dia­logue is accom­pa­nied through­out by an eerie, low-key soundtrack.

This slight­ly unset­tling use of score isn’t the only off­beat aspect of Gray House, which posi­tions the inter­view sec­tions as parts two and four. Parts one, three and five are exam­ples of slow-cin­e­ma fic­tion set in Texas (where Lavant plays a tac­i­turn river­boat fish­er­man), Vir­ginia (an allur­ing­ly lazy inter­lude fea­tur­ing artist Dian­na Molzan) and Cal­i­for­nia (where we observe Clément’s char­ac­ter alone in her opu­lent, desert-side residence.)

Giv­en Booth’s back­ground in pho­tog­ra­phy, and Lynch’s in paint­ing, was Gray House always intend­ed to be a film, or could it work in an instal­la­tion-type set­ting? ​“I think we’ve been resis­tant to that all along,” says Lynch, ​“because it sep­a­rates it from being an immer­sive cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence. It was cer­tain­ly made for the cin­e­ma screen; our think­ing was always about how you would expe­ri­ence it in that envi­ron­ment, seen from start to fin­ish, in a dark room, with good sound and good visu­als. Every­thing we did was with the idea of it being viewed in that space, and it’s impor­tant that it should be seen as a whole work.”

“We both have these con­nec­tions to the art world,” notes Booth, ​“and I can imag­ine an art audi­ence hav­ing a pos­si­bly dif­fer­ent reac­tion to it than the film com­mu­ni­ty. In a gallery they can arrive in the mid­dle, decide if they want to keep watch­ing, or move on and see some­thing else, rather than com­ing at the start and being a ​‘cap­tive’ of the film.”

Despite the vague descrip­tion of the film offered by CPH:DOX, which is like­ly to leave audi­ences unpre­pared for the unusu­al demands of the film, Lynch says that he ful­ly embraces ambi­gu­i­ty. ​“It’s so impor­tant that the audi­ence can enter the world of the film, because it’s our hope that it will offer an immer­sive expe­ri­ence. Film has a rhythm – many times you go in and see a film you’re not expect­ing and you don’t seep into its rhythm, espe­cial­ly works that have an unusu­al struc­ture, or aren’t con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tives. So, how do you cre­ate a film that has its own inter­nal rhythms and struc­ture, and then just expect peo­ple to dip into it, com­ing from their nor­mal lives, and day-to-day activ­i­ties, to enter the cin­e­ma and become immersed?”

This aspect of Gray House makes the open­ing seg­ment, which runs more than 10 min­utes and fea­tures no dia­logue, par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­cial in terms of allow­ing the view­er to depres­surise into a new kind of cin­e­mat­ic zone. ​“That sequence was always intend­ed as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the view­er to slow down and enter the world of the film,” Lynch explains.

And once such an adjust­ment is made, what kind of reward do the film­mak­ers hope the film’s audi­ence will receive? ​“It’s about look­ing deep­er,” says Lynch, ​“through the crack into the egg, to explore mat­ters rather than enforce par­tic­u­lar bina­ries or con­trasts. It’s not about com­par­i­son per se, it’s about com­po­si­tion – about mak­ing con­nec­tions, open­ing it up.”

A cru­cial ele­ment in mak­ing such con­nec­tions is the sound of the film. This is where Alan Splet, David Lynch’s leg­endary audio col­lab­o­ra­tor on Eraser­head, The Ele­phant Man and Dune, comes into play. Yet in analysing the sound­scape of Gray House, Booth brings up Alvin Luci­er, the octo­ge­nar­i­an doyen of Amer­i­can exper­i­men­tal music whose com­po­si­tions are notable in the Ore­gon sec­tion: ​“he uses sine wave oscil­la­tors, equip­ment like that, work­ing a lot of the time in the very high fre­quen­cies… It felt appro­pri­ate, the way he uses struc­ture and variation.”

In terms of col­lab­o­ra­tors in front of the cam­era, Lynch becomes par­tic­u­lar­ly ani­mat­ed when dis­cussing the involve­ment of Denis Lavant, who like Clé­ment was cast ​“because of who he is on and off screen. It’s about Denis as this ener­gy, this per­son, this iden­ti­ty. Every­thing he says sounds like the most beau­ti­ful thing you’ve ever heard. One thing he said when I first met him was that every role he plays is like anoth­er lay­er he puts on, and he draws from all of his past roles in each new per­for­mance… I think that’s deeply con­nect­ed to the way we’re working.”