Lynch/Oz | Little White Lies

Lynch/​Oz

30 Nov 2022

Words by Marina Ashioti

Directed by Alexandre O Philippe

Close-up of a person's face looking up, framed by broken glass.
Close-up of a person's face looking up, framed by broken glass.
4

Anticipation.

Down the proverbial rabbit hole we go…

4

Enjoyment.

Varied, compelling and evocative explorations of Lynch’s craft and though processes.

3

In Retrospect.

Ultimately less than the sum of its parts.

Alexan­dre O Philippe traces the con­nec­tion between David Lynch and Vic­tor Flem­ing’s The Wiz­ard of Oz.

The spec­tre of Vic­tor Fleming’s 1939 The Wiz­ard of Oz, in all its tech­ni­colour glo­ry, seems to cease­less­ly haunt the col­lec­tive Amer­i­can psy­che. Dis­tilled into a pair of sequined red pumps, this stag­ger­ing­ly per­ma­nent cul­tur­al touch­stone has become pub­lic real estate”, and like a recur­ring hal­lu­ci­na­tion, has left an indeli­ble mark on David Lynch’s films, warp­ing the porous veil between real­i­ty and imagination.

Alexan­dre O. Philippe’s Lynch/​Oz sees a cohort of six dis­tinct and illu­mi­nat­ing essays (each writ­ten and voiced by film crit­ic Amy Nichol­son, camp auteur John Waters, direc­tor duo Justin Ben­son and Aaron Moor­head, and film­mak­ers Karyn Kusama, Rod­ney Asch­er and David Low­ery) guid­ing us through the yel­low brick road as they exam­ine the how Oz’s influ­ence and cul­tur­al ver­nac­u­lar is thor­ough­ly embed­ded into the very core of Lynch’s cin­e­mat­ic oeuvre.

The video essay for­mat reigns supreme as the most pop­u­lar form of online film crit­i­cism, large­ly due to the insight that can be gleaned from a the­sis-dri­ven approach that’s sup­ple­ment­ed by mov­ing image and enhanced with sound. As well as being a whol­ly acces­si­ble, demo­c­ra­t­ic and DIY pur­suit, this rel­a­tive­ly young form of analy­sis has carved a new and excit­ing space between crit­i­cism and dig­i­tal media-mak­ing, and has become an increas­ing­ly valu­able part of our dig­i­tal ecosystem.

By trans­pos­ing the video essay for­mat to a fea­ture-length affair, Philippe attempts a union of the­o­ry (crit­i­cism) and prac­tice (doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing), and so the very ontol­ogy of Lynch/​Oz becomes a sub­ject of fas­ci­na­tion in its own right. The ques­tion that inevitably hangs over the film, how­ev­er, is: does this inher­ent­ly episod­ic endeav­our ben­e­fit from the fea­ture-length anthol­o­gy approach?

Using omi­nous gusts of wind, dis­so­cia­tive fugues and a woman named Judy as entry points, each per­spec­tive adds a dif­fer­ent dimen­sion to the work of a film­mak­er whose aver­sion to attach mean­ing to his work is famous­ly unwa­ver­ing. Such pro­longed encoun­ters with Lynch’s fil­mog­ra­phy seen through the lens of his biggest influ­ence — trea­tis­es that go beyond the mag­i­cal real­ism of Wild At Heart, which is so explic­it­ly fil­tered through Oz iconog­ra­phy — bring about an extend­ed and affec­tive­ly charged engage­ment with the styl­is­tic and cul­tur­al com­plex­i­ties of both Lynch’s oeu­vre, as well as the mag­ic of Oz.

Karyn Kusama’s sec­tion per­fect­ly strad­dles the line between per­son­able and insight­ful. She recalls attend­ing a NYFF screen­ing of Mul­hol­land Dri­ve. As he is wont to do, Lynch spoke about the film quite ellip­ti­cal­ly, and was then asked by an audi­ence mem­ber to talk about his rela­tion­ship to The Wiz­ard of Oz. His response: There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about The Wiz­ard of Oz”.

There’s no short­age of eru­dite and per­cep­tive analy­ses here, yet some sec­tions can eas­i­ly be dis­missed as off­hand. The film begins to lose shape as com­par­isons to Oz are inevitably drawn fur­ther and wider in rela­tion to cin­e­ma at large, with some con­trib­u­tors stay­ing less on top­ic and focus­ing more on their own work, lead­ing to broad­er dis­cus­sions on sto­ry­telling and the breadth of cin­e­mat­ic influence.

Oz is a foun­da­tion­al ingre­di­ent in Lynch’s dis­tinct recipe of Amer­i­can sur­re­al­ism and dream­like log­ic, which fur­ther cements the former’s endur­ing cul­tur­al rel­e­vance – the myr­i­ad of red shoes, allu­sions to Judy, the Good Witch of the North and Wicked Witch of the East are hard to miss. Yet the film’s dis­tinct­ly episod­ic struc­ture leads to inevitable rep­e­ti­tions and sim­i­lar sequences of com­par­i­son that tread all too sim­i­lar ground, turn­ing what starts off as a com­pelling watch to a stuffy view­ing experience.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.

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