CinemaDavid Lynch’s response to audiences who believe his films are meaningless

David Lynch He passed away this Thursday, the 16th, at the age of 78, his family informed through a Facebook post. The cause of death was not revealed, but the artist stated, last year, that he was diagnosed with pulmonary emphysema, caused by smoking.

The unconventional narratives of the director’s films earned him a name for his way of working: Lynchianism, or Lynchian cinema. Many fans, however, were confused by some of its titles, such as Empire of Dreams (2006) and Twin Peaks.

During an event that allowed the public to ask the filmmaker questions, a member of the audience asked him what he thinks about those who say his films are meaningless. Lynchthen said:

I like a story that has something concrete, structured, but that also contains abstractions. Life is full of abstractions, and the way we make sense of it is through intuition. People have gotten used to the film that explains itself 100% on its own and they kind of turn off that beautiful intuition thing when they’re watching a film that has some abstractions. Other people, on the other hand, love abstractions, which give space to dream. Abstractions, for me, are things that cinema can say, and it’s so beautiful to think about these images and sounds flowing together in time, in a sequence, to make something that can only be said in cinema. It’s not the words. It’s not just the music. It’s a bunch of things that come together to form something that didn’t exist before. That’s what I love most about it. To answer your question a little more: it depends on people, that they find their own interpretations. It doesn’t really matter what I think. Even though every frame of the film is the same, no two views are identical. It is the spectator, the image, the sound, who make a circle like this. So you just feel it. It is this intuition, emotion and thought together that make sense for you.