Vimeo-er Alex Kalogeropoulos’s series, “CINEMASTERS,” is described as focusing “on film’s most prominent and influential auteurs, past and present. Their achievements in directing simply cannot be outmatched and their influence on the art of cinema will forever be existent.” It is in no way surprising, then, that his sophomore episode is devoted to none other than David Lynch.
A comprehensive effort, Kalogeropoulos’s supercut includes every Lynch feature (with the exception of 2002’s “Rabbits”—one some might classify as such), though he purposefully omits the director’s shorts and television output. Lynch fans will effortlessly spot the man’s cinematic feats, such as “Eraserhead,” “The Elephant Man,” “Blue Velvet,” and “Mulholland Drive.” And (no less important) no David Lynch supercut without “Dune,” “Wild at Heart,” “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me,” “Lost Highway,” or “Inland Empire.”
Among Lynch’s cinematography (and the movies featured in Kalogeropoulos’s supercut), only “The Straight Story” stands out as the most grounded. It bears the unique distinction of being the only feature Lynch directed that he did not also write. According to Lynch, it is also his most experimental film. It exists in a recognizable world, a realistic seeming plane that naturally lends itself to surreal situations, even if those situations are more common-seeming or familiar than their compatriots in the director’s other features. And it is a wonderful and touching film.
Kalogeropoulos’s video is extremely well edited, traversing themes and tones effortlessly over the course of its 244-second run. Most importantly, though, for any Lynch tribute, is that it’s damn trippy and unsettling, for as Kalogeropoulos rightly points out, the filmmaker is “synonymous with the absolute bizarre.” (And though Kalogeropoulos warns that some of the sound might be off due to multi-layered rendering, it all plays pretty darn smoothly.) Enjoy the 4-minute video below.