If I had to pick the number one thing that makes David Lynch stand out among directors of his generation, other than his impressive head of hair, it’s that he came to movies as a painter and a sculptor as opposed to a film school brat. It’s one of the most important and illuminating things to remember about his work. You almost can’t emphasize it enough. While Scorsese and Spielberg were watching ten films a day, David Lynch was drawing and mixing colors and studying the decay of a dead mouse to learn about texture. Think about that and Lost Highway might start to make a little more sense.
That’s also the Lynch that you get in this low-key, downright placid documentary. He’s a man who spends his days with turpentine and countless paint splotches, wires and plaster, cigarettes and thoughts that he refuses to share beyond what he offers up through his art. We see Lynch working in his studio, getting his hands dirty like a mechanic rebuilding an engine, while he tells the story of his formative years via detached narration on top. There are no talking heads. No career history lessons. No critics or cohorts or collaborators. The only people you see on screen in the present day are Lynch and his toddler daughter Lula. It spends very little time on his films. His early shorts and Eraserhead come up toward the end, but they’re treated as just more art projects. Paintings that just happen to move.