Cultural impact of David Lynch
In a career spanning more than 50 years, he received numerous accolades, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 2006 and an Honorary Academy Award in 2019.The adjective Lynchian came into use to describe works or situations reminiscent of his art,[1] with the Oxford English Dictionary noting his penchant for "juxtaposing surreal or sinister elements with mundane, everyday environments, and for using compelling visual images to emphasize a dreamlike quality of mystery or menace".[3]: 62 He expressed his admiration for Federico Fellini,[3]: 62 Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman, Werner Herzog, Alfred Hitchcock,[4] Roman Polanski, Jacques Tati,[3]: 62 Stanley Kubrick, and Billy Wilder.He said that Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950) was one of his favorite pictures,[3]: 71 as were Kubrick's Lolita (1962), Fellini's 8½ (1963), Tati's Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953), Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), and Herzog's Stroszek (1977).Le Blanc and Odell write, "his films are so packed with motifs, recurrent characters, images, compositions and techniques that you could view his entire output as one large jigsaw puzzle of ideas".[7]: 8 One of the key themes they note is the usage of dreams and dreamlike imagery and structure, something they relate to the "surrealist ethos" of relying "on the subconscious to provide visual drive"."[3]: 110 Another theme is the dark underbelly of violent criminal activity in a society, such as Frank Booth's gang in Blue Velvet and the cocaine smugglers in Twin Peaks.[9] Some have suggested that Lynch's love for Hitchcock's Vertigo, which employs a split lead character (Judy Barton/Madeleine Elster, both portrayed by Kim Novak) may have influenced this aspect of his work.[13] He frequently worked with composer Angelo Badalamenti, film editor Mary Sweeney, casting director Johanna Ray, and actors Harry Dean Stanton, Jack Nance, Kyle MacLachlan, Naomi Watts, Isabella Rossellini, Grace Zabriskie, and Laura Dern.He received three nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director for his work on the biographical drama The Elephant Man (1980), the neo-noir Blue Velvet (1986), and his surrealist thriller Mulholland Drive (2000).[16][17][18] In 2007, a panel of critics convened by The Guardian announced that "after all the discussion, no one could fault the conclusion that David Lynch is the most important film-maker of the current era",[19] and AllMovie called him "the Renaissance man of modern American filmmaking".The Oxford English Dictionary further defines Lynchian artwork as "juxtaposing surreal or sinister elements with mundane, everyday environments, and for using compelling visual images to emphasize a dreamlike quality of mystery or menace."[23] David Foster Wallace wrote, "An academic definition of Lynchian might be that the term 'refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter'" but that "it's ultimately definable only ostensively—i.e., we know it when we see it.[39][40] The score of Twin Peaks, helmed by Angelo Badalamenti, Julee Cruise, and David Lynch, was a notable influence for many genres of music, specifically dream pop.[41][42] The show's legacy of honoring dream pop and indie rock compositions is observed in the third season, with its inclusion of performances from contemporaries such as Sharon Van Etten, Nine Inch Nails, and The Veils.[63][64] Others who paid tribute to Lynch include Mel Brooks, Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Ben Stiller, James Gunn, Judd Apatow, Pedro Pascal, Questlove, and Patton Oswalt.