It was in 1986 that I saw Blue Velvet. The occasion stood as the last moment of transcendence I had felt at the movies - until The Piano. What I mean by that is a kind of passionate involvement with both the story and the making ofa film, so that I was simultaneously moved by theenactment on screen and by discovering that anew director had made the medium alive and dangerous again. I was the more captivated in that Ihad not much liked David Lynch's earlier work.

My passion is the more mysterious now becauseLynch's later work seemed horribly disappointingand jaded. Come on, let's not beat around the bush: for the most Lynch has been producing crap for the last decade or so. Thus, for the moment, at least, BlueVelvet represents the precarious difficulty in making—or seeing (in the sense of recognizing)—great films. Had I blundered into comprehension,or had Lynch drifted into clarity? Did I need agreat movie experience in 1986 as much as Lynch,or more? Having made BlueVelvet, did he need toturn his back on the challenging prospect of fusingart and box office? I ask that because the career of David Lynch seems so intertwined with his foxysense of himself. At least, it does if one assumesthat Lynch understood what he was doing in BlueVelvet. In conversation, he makes every effort tobe nonchalant or dismissive of that burden. Whynot? It would be as hard to advance on BlueVelvet as it must have been to work after Citizen Kane.

Lynch was the son of a research scientist withthe U.S. Department of Agriculture: the familytraveled a good deal and that fostered Lynch's loveof middle America. By high school, however, theywere in Alexandria, Virginia, so Lynch took artclasses at Washington's Corcoran School of Art.He then studied painting at the Boston Museumof Fine Arts and at the Pennsylvania Academy ofFine Arts in Philadelphia in the late sixties. Heeven won a three-year scholarship to Europe,which he quit after fifteen days.

He made a one-minute animated film for a contest while in Philadelphia, and that led him to theAmerican Film Institute, where he made TheGrandmother and began Eraserhead. He continues to do some work as a painter and photographer, as can be witnessed on his very hands-on website, www.davidlynch.com, where you can buy a signed unlimited Lynch piece for under $500 while for a limited edition piece there is no price and you have to e-mail for details which is gallery speak for s##tloads of cash!

He has also, since BlueVelvet , had a TV partnership with Mark Frost for the Twin Peaks venture and for theFox show American Chronicles. In 1992, anotherseries, On the Air, had a limited network run; andin 1993 Lynch was involved on Hotel Room, aseries for HBO. In addition, he has made sometelevision commercials, notably a series for CalvinKlein's Obsession.

It remains natural, I think, to wonder what Lynch wants. Eraserhead was not just a studentfilm, but as private as any solitary art, like writingor painting. It seemed to indicate someone whosaw his future in experimental cinema. Yet TheElephant Man and Dune were attempts at mainstream movies, no matter how personal or obscurethey ended up. The Elephant Man was a prestigious stage play; it had Mel Brooks as a father figure, as well as a solid cast and properly focusedpathos. John Hurt's hero was exactly that, whereasnothing in Eraserhead acknowledges the functionof heroism. Dune was a de Laurentiis sci-fi epic,taken from Frank Herbert. It cost, and lost, a lotof money. It is often brilliant, but frequently ponderous and unintelligible. Some observers marveled that Dino had let it happen.

But then the Italian producer let Lynch make Blue Velvet, which kept surrealism, hallucination, and "experiment" in perfect balance with Americana, a simple compelling storyline and the furious gravitational dorce of a voyeurist setup. I believe BlueVelvet is also an allegory on sexual awakening, about innocence and peril, family life and adulthood, such as no American film has achieved. The movie works: at the art-houuse level, it was a big hit. The performances are extraordinary: Dennis Hopper was savage yet lucid; Kyle McLachlan and Laura Dern were like fairytale princes and princesses; Dean Stockwell was uncanny; Isabelle Rossellini seemed at last like a naked, forlorn actress. (She and Lynch for years, and they acted together in Zelly and Me [88, Tina Rathbone].)

Was Twin Peaks a cynical move, or as "artistic" as Blue Velvet? Was Lynch seeking to cash in to bring Magritte to the masses? Was he saturating the mass audience, or rebelling against the celebration of Blue Velvet? I have a hunch he is not quite sure himself. There were beautiful passages to be found in Twin Peaks (notably those directed by Lynch), but the whote thing seemed a dead end reaching as far as the longest northwestern view. The subsequent movie—Fire Walk With Me—is the worst thing Lynch has done—and I trust, the least necessary or sincere.

What will happen to Lynch? Where will he go? Such questions may have more say about the institution of the movies and the nature of its audience. But whatever happens, Blue Velvet will grow larger over the years, along with films like Vertigo, The Night of the Hunter, and Citizen Kane. There is a genius in Lynch that may have been lucky to get its one moment.

For the most part, the above was written in 1994, when there was still Lost Highway to come. That film has its devout fans, but I am not one of them. Indeed, I felt the director was still striving for the natural air of dream—and Lynch seems pretentious when he is straining. Equally, while touched by The Straight Story, I was suspicious of its straight-faced dedication to simple, honest feelings. It's not a film I want to see again—whereas Blue Velvet I review regularly. But Mulholland Dr. I want to see all the time. This seemed to me, emphatically, a second masterpiece, and the first film in which Lynch's style was so sweet, so serene, that one went with the drive or the dream of the movie without ever feeling those old panicky questions—Where are we going? What is it about? It's about itself and the the dual process of dreaming and driving—it's also one of the greatest films ever made about the cultural devastation caused by Hollywood.

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