David Lynch is a man of fantasy who loves to play with the unexplainable. He makes his peculiar presence known in every one of his films with his wondrous unique style. Viewers are often left questioning the true meaning of Lynch’s work, something he’ll never tell. Much of his inspiration and references all lead back down one yellow brick road. With the help of six filmmakers, documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe investigates the marvelous fantasy land in Lynch’s brain and how The Wizard of Oz shaped his artistry in Lynch/Oz.

Similarly to the Wizard, Lynch fears pulling back the curtain. He lives with the belief that having to explain his films would lose their magic and the distinct meaning it has to each individual viewer. The truth could be disappointing and there's nothing worse than your reality turning out to be inferior. Fans who’ve seen Lynch’s 1990 drama Wild At Heart know it to be his most blantant homage to The Wizard of Oz, but what other motifs bleed into his work? Delusions, doppelgangers, omnius gusts of wind, and old hollywood editing techniques seem to always find their way into a Lynch story. Leaving much to be determined, Philippe breaks the documentary in six chapter for narrators Amy Nicholson (Talk Easy), John Waters (Pink Flamingos), Rodney Ascher (Room 237), Justin Benson (The Endless), Aaron Moorhead (The Endless), and Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body) to analyze their thoughts. 

The third and fourth segments by Waters and Kusama are the best of the film. Waters and Lynch have this shared connection over their adornment of The Wizard of Oz. It inspired them to adventure through dream and nightmare. In a way they both use their films to corrupt the ideals of the American Dream of the 1950s and 1960’s. Waters is likewise able to help viewers have a better understanding of who Lynch is as artisit. He is the puppet master playing with his actors like dolls. Then in 2001, Kusama experienced a break in Lynch’s armor after a screening of Mulholland Drive at the New York Film Festival. A member of the audience asked, “Can you talk about your relationship to The Wizard of Oz?” Disarmed by the question Lynch simply put it, “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about The Wizard of Oz.” That moment, etched into her brain, changed Kusama as a filmmaker and her understanding of David Lynch. Her viewpoint of Mulholland Drive is one of the best, most profound examinations I’ve heard of the film to date. Kusama is intmentally aware of slight theatrical gestures that can create such a grand impact. 

Rather than a documentary film, Lynch/Oz reads more like a film class seminar or an extended video essay. A great deal of the film is too broad of an analysis. The narrator's ideas overlap one another, in the end reiterating the same points, which hinders the film from reaching deeper meaning. Numerous films brought up that, in my opinion, have no relation to The Wizard of Oz. In some way I can see the comparison between Dorothy and Lolita, having to live in different worlds, but it’s too vast of a comparison. Any dynamic character has a multitude of layers written into them. Additionally The Wizard of Oz was not the first film to depict the hero’s journey and comparing every film that follows that structure is moronic. Meandering rhetoric like this steers focus away from the purpose of the film: how the fantastic world of Oz got baked into Lynch’s subconscious. 

David Lynch is a blunt oddity. Much like his ALS ice bucket challenge, where he plays ‘Over the Rainbow’ on the trumpet, he subverts expectations by getting coffee poured over himself. With every public interaction, Lynch cements himself a wildy strange man, not meant to be understood. I don’t believe his films are meant to be widely comprehensible either. It’s quite beautiful to see the power filmmaking has on an artist, especially an auteur like Lynch. Lynch/Oz shines in the way it showcases how a briliant filmmaker’s childhood fantasies become incorporated into their adult work, but slumps by laying bare to questions that aren’t meant to be answered. Next time you watch a Lynch film, sit in the uncomftorbility of that moment, determine your own meaning, and let the bewilderment live on.

Acting and Casting - 1 | Visual Effects and Editing - 2 | Story and Message - 2 | Entertainment Value - 1 | Music Score and Soundtrack - 1| Reviewer's Preference -1 | What does this mean?