Quote:
Originally Posted by Eliza Hodgkins 1812
Man, The Elephant Man is probably my all time favorite film. To each his and her own.
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Didn't mean to trash
The Elephant Man - it's a fine movie. I just not-so-randomly picked the first three Lynch films to compare to Twin Peaks.
Eraserhead, while his breakthrough debut, looks like a film that was made in bits and pieces (which it was), and then his next two films,
The Elephant Man and
Dune, were basically movies for hire. I think that the next period of his work -
Blue Velvet and
Wild At Heart - are transcendent, specifically because he was able to find a balance between box office aspirations and "Lynchian" filmmaking. While I enjoy
Lost Highway and
Mulholland Drive, I do so as a Lynch fan, who understands the vocabulary of his work. I think that
Twin Peaks and
On The Air are closer in style and objective to
Blue Velvet and
Wild At Heart, though crafted for broadcast TV rather than the big screen. And that's why they get the most repeat viewing in my DVD player. While I will always defend
FWWM, I do so in the context of it being a big-screen Twin Peaks movie. I'm not sure that it would stand on its own as a work of art - too much of the symbolism depends on one's familiarity with Twin Peaks.