David Lynch, the visionary of America’s subconscious

Lynch was a singular auteur whose films found poetry in the ugly underbelly of American life.

January 16, 2025 at 7:43 p.m. EST Today at 7:43 p.m. EST

 

Guest column by Ty Burr

If you met him in person, David Lynch came across as a Midwestern pastor, all gee-whiz and aw-shucks. He was one of the few people who seemed wholly incapable of irony and, hearing him talk, you’d think the man must have enjoyed a pretty darn nice Montana childhood.

Which made it all the more unsettling that watching his movies and TV shows was like peeling the top layer off a Norman Rockwell painting to find one of Francis Bacon’s writhing, inhuman faces. Lynch, whose family announced his death on Thursday at age 78 (no details given), was a unique figure in this country’s cultural history: a purebred, corn-fed all-American surrealist and a man who insisted that below our manicured lawns and behind our tidy housefronts lay incomprehensible urges and unholy evil. In his work, the sunny American Dream and its nightmare subconscious were conjoined and inseparable, each unimaginable without the other.