In their book ‘Freud/Lynch: Behind the Curtain,’ editors Jamie Ruers and Stefan Marianski examine the shared spirit between the two great men
“I totally get it,” my then-partner uttered, victoriously, as soon as the lights came back on in Amsterdam’s Kriterion movie theater, where we had just watched David Lynch’s 2001 thriller “Mulholland Drive.” “Basically, it’s a movie about a mentally ill actress, the blonde one, probably schizophrenic. We were watching one long psychotic episode, which went on till she woke up at the end and shot herself in the head,” he declared, rose from his seat with a kind of proud hand gesture, and headed straight to the adjacent bar for a glass of jenever.
In his long career as one of America’s greatest filmmakers, Lynch has encountered endless requests, queries and attempts at analyzing the meaning of his enigmatic, multilayered work. One can only hope most theories presented to him were slightly more nuanced and less reductive than the one I was offered.
But as every avid Lynch fan knows, the auteur behind masterpieces such as “Eraserhead,” “The Elephant Man,” “Blue Velvet” and the “Twin Peaks” universe (with Mark Frost) is renowned for his reluctance to explain or entertain possible interpretations.
Jamie Ruers and Stefan Marianski are senior employees at the Freud Museum in London. When they decided to compile and edit a series of essays exploring the common ground between the theories of Sigmund Freud, the Austrian Jewish father of psychoanalysis, and Lynch’s work, they made a conscious decision: not to force connections and theorizations, but rather to focus on the shared spirit of both men.
“A spirit of radical openness to the new and the unexpected, of questioning rather than answering, of opening things up rather than closing them down, and above all of the dialogue,” as they wrote in the introduction to their engrossing book “Freud/Lynch: Behind the Curtain” (published by Phoenix Publishing House).
You’ve got these two men who are both extremely fascinated by dreams, by fantasy, by the undiscoverable aspects of our minds and our psyches.
[Lynch] is also very much inclined toward transcendental meditation, which comes into conflict with psychoanalytic understandings of his work. When you start to analyze his work, there is certainly a resistance to Freud there.
The book was born out of a conference the two organized in London on the topic in 2018, which garnered attention and positive reactions. But why Lynch and Freud? Beside being big fans of Lynch (“Stefan introduced me to Lynch,” says Jamie), the two editors say the 77-year-old filmmaker’s movies are replete with Freudian motifs and preoccupations (from dreams, consciousness and unconsciousness to sexual depravity) and that his creative process is reminiscent of Freud’s method of free association.
“You’ve got these two men who are both extremely fascinated by dreams, by fantasy, by the undiscoverable aspects of our minds and our psyches, and both of whom attempt to map these areas as well, so it felt like a marriage made in a fantastical heaven,” Ruers says. “Or in the red room,” jokes Marianski, referring to a key location in “Twin Peaks.”
The book doesn’t discuss this, but another possible connection could also be the Jewish experience. The great Jewish director Mel Brooks once said in an interview: “I know the ‘Elephant Man’ wasn’t Jewish, but to me, the story had all the aspects of antisemitism and [Joseph] Merrick had all the traits of the classic wandering Jew.”
Freud and Lynch, however, also differ in many ways. “Lynch – like a lot of artists – has a great resistance to having an analytic interpretation of his work,” notes Ruers. “He is also very much inclined toward transcendental meditation, which comes I think into conflict with psychoanalytic understandings of his work. And when you start to analyze his work, there is certainly a resistance to Freud there.”
Ruers’ excellent chapter is on the (mainly) female Lynchian hysteric (and its connection to an important traumatic childhood event the director experienced).
Marianski adds: “On the one hand, Freud and Lynch do seem to be in some sense engaged in a kind of a shared project, an investigation into the lineaments of human creativity. But then on the other, Lynch really doesn’t want to give away any meanings of his work; he really values the singularity of the experience. And you really see that with the Lynch fans, who are generally speaking organized into two, loving, camps: people will either tell you they are just in it for the ride, they just want to have the emotional and aesthetic experience of his works; and then some really want to take it apart and analyze it.
“We were aware of those sensitivities,” Marianski continues. “One thing that’s very shared is the idea of a singular encounter. In psychoanalysis, there is an enormous interest in what is contingent and what is singular, and in Lynch’s films he is very interested in these things too. They are both really interested in the unexpected and the things that can’t be readily integrated in our conception of the universe, things that sort of disrupt and interrupt. And for both, when something unexpected happens – be it in a creative process or in an analytic dialogue – they go with it, they want to see where it goes.”
The fascination with Lynch’s work has brought many to compare it with other works of art, theories or disciplines. One example is Swiss filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe’s highly entertaining documentary “Lynch/Oz” (screened as part of last year’s Jerusalem Film Festival), which entertains the idea that Lynch has been heavily influenced by Victor Fleming’s 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz.”
“Freud/Lynch: Behind the Curtain” opens, fittingly, with a text by Chris Rodley, an independent filmmaker and editor of the books “Cronenberg on Cronenberg” and “Lynch on Lynch.” He reflects on his own experience interviewing and meeting Lynch over the years, the director’s vague answers to his questions and the limits of language.
Other essays in the must-read book for fans of both men include Carol Owens’ attempt at defining “Lynchism”; Olga Cox Cameron on the logic of dreams in “Mulholland Drive”; Ruers’ excellent chapter on the (mainly) female Lynchian hysteric (and its connection to an important traumatic childhood event the director experienced); and Marianski’s complex essay, which takes the line that opens and closes 1997’s “Lost Highway,” and suggests a Lacan-style topological examination of the film. Regardless of his feelings toward analysis of his work, Lynch requested copies of the book to be added to his library, the two editors reveal.
If there is one issue fans love to bring up, it is the curtains in Lynch’s films. But Ruers and Marianski stress that the secondary title of their book, “Behind the Curtain,” is not meant to reveal what is hidden behind the famous and mysterious Lynchian motif.
Quite the opposite. “We are not trying to have the final say,” says Marianski. “We sort of say that the curtain creates a space for mystery and there are various ways that it can be explored, creatively or psychoanalytically.”