Although it is just plain fun to rank a director's movies, it may also help me think about the director's oeuvre of work as a whole. Comparisons can help me to discover elements of film that I am drawn to, what the director finds value in revealing through their movies and possibly how the director has grown artistically.
Lynch often takes his stories to dark places where terrible evil lurks. Although there are plenty of literally dark scenes and scenes at night when terror seeps into the world, the greatest evils he often shows are in characters who are sadistic, unpredictable, and incredibly threatening. He also often includes scenes that reveal powerful evil people and organizations that are pulling some…
Although it is just plain fun to rank a director's movies, it may also help me think about the director's oeuvre of work as a whole. Comparisons can help me to discover elements of film that I am drawn to, what the director finds value in revealing through their movies and possibly how the director has grown artistically.
Lynch often takes his stories to dark places where terrible evil lurks. Although there are plenty of literally dark scenes and scenes at night when terror seeps into the world, the greatest evils he often shows are in characters who are sadistic, unpredictable, and incredibly threatening. He also often includes scenes that reveal powerful evil people and organizations that are pulling some strings that affect the protagonists, but who the protagonists never meet.
This terrible evil Lynch depicts is so strong and part of the natural workings of people and the world that his stories are not about vanquishing these evils, but about exposing the evil that exist in his relatable protagonists and other parts of Americana we like to think of as innocent and pure. His characters often experience some kind of loss of innocence or perhaps there was no innocence to be lost to begin with behind the sheen of normalcy and goodness people show others in public. The pretense of a standard normalcy is further questioned by Lynch's frequent use of characters with mental illnesses.
Overall, Lynch captures how little we can understand about the powerful forces around us and why so much seems to be wrong with the world. Lynch also often portrays dreams and surreal imagery to explore these unknowable mysteries that surround his characters. Both characters and viewers of his movies can experience being swept up and pulled along unexplainable machinations with these elements at play.
Other directors I have ranked:
JJ Abrams | PT Anderson | Wes Anderson | Judd Apatow | Darren Aronofsky | Ari Aster | Sean Baker | Bong Joon-ho | Jane Campion | Charlie Chaplin | Damien Chazelle | Coen Brothers | Sofia Coppola | Cameron Crowe | Andrew Dominik | Robert Eggers | David Fincher | Alex Garland | Greta Gerwig | Todd Haynes | Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu | Jim Jarmusch | Rian Johnson | Spike Jonze | Satoshi Kon | Stanley Kubrick | Sergio Leone | Richard Linklater | George Lucas | Martin McDonagh | Steve McQueen | Sam Mendes | Nancy Meyers | Hayao Miyazaki | Jeff Nichols | Christopher Nolan | Alexander Payne | Sarah Polley | Lynn Ramsay | Céline Sciamma | Ben Stiller | Quentin Tarantino | Andrei Tarkovsky | Taika Waititi | Edgar Wright | Chloé Zhao
