Enjoy the ride...

Rating: 10/10 (6 December 2001)

For those trying to intellectualize "what it all means," you're looking in the wrong place for answers. Lynch is a poet, his films are poetry, poetry is about feelings and emotion; find the answers there. The truth of the story does not lie in your being able to puzzle it all out. The truth will be found in your reactions to it. Emily Dickinson wrote: There's a certain slant of light/On winter afternoons/That oppresses, like the weight/Of cathedral tunes. Heavenly hurt it gives us/We can find no scar/But internal difference/Where the meanings are. Why does that light oppress us? It makes no objective sense, and yet it does disturb us. Lynch's films are like that slant of light: contemplation of why we find the scenes disturbing, or comical, or heartbreaking is of far more importance than nailing down "what it all means." Just be glad that there is still a film maker out there who is actually willing to engage your emotions -- your GENUINE emotions -- and not just push all the buttons you've been trained to respond to by the marketing machines that studios have become. Good news, everybody! David Lynch is convinced that you still have a soul, one that can evaluate, accept, or reject input according to your own free will. Don't expect simple answers to all life's mysteries. Sometimes you can study and puzzle it out all you want, and after all that work, the best you will be able to come up with is a hushed "Silencio" There's nothing wrong with that.