Many find the work of director David Lynch difficult to explain, categorize, and contextualize—so much so that his name has been turned into an adjective to describe his flavor of cinema: "lynchian". But video essayist Lewis Bond of Channel Criswell attempts to shine what light he can on Lynch's filmic philosophy, offering an answer to the question, "What does David Lynch mean to cinema?"
Even if you study David Lynch for years—his work, his philosophy, his cinematic approach—there's no real way to classify his brand of filmmaking. It's often relegated to being called "weird", "odd", or worse yet, "experimental". Lynch's films, in my opinion, are not experimental; they're reproductions of his own unique world created with a medium that may not grant him the freedom that he requires.
Maybe that lack of freedom plays into the fact that all of his movies give off this strange feeling that I call the "Sunday afternoon" feeling, where everything feels a little off, a little different—lynchian. In a David Lynch film, things within the diegesis are familiar and yet completely alien at the same time. You feel like you are trying to be persuaded (poorly) into a sense of security. You want some kind of respite from Lynch's uncanny nightmare, but he won't let you have it, because in Lynch's world, there are no homes and there is no escape.
Source: Channel Criswell
