Review of the film ‘Lynch/Oz’ (2022)

This is a documentary about the David Lynch filmography and its relation with the 1939 classic ‘The wizard of Oz’.

A L. Frank Baum’ novel for children from 1900, ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ is adapted to cinema in 1939 as ‘The Wizard of Oz’ under the direction of Victor Fleming, becoming one of the first films screened in colour. The continued appreciation for the film throughout the years makes it probably the most influential classic in the United States.

David Lynch is a prolific director and writer known for the surreal atmosphere of his stories. Originally a cinema creator, he starts his career by releasing seven short films and then four feature films, a perfect beginning for a long filmmaking career. But then he begins to alternate cinema with TV, video and commercials, in search for more artistic freedom – so in the following years his only releases for the big screen are four feature films and two adapted TV creations, ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me’ and ‘Mulholland Dr.’. Running through David Lynch’s filmography in 2022, and noticing that he doesn’t direct a feature film since 2006, prompts the realization that Lynch is at present just a Video & TV director.

Alexandre O. Philippe’s documentary explores the classic ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and the filmography from David Lynch including his feature films and some of his TV episodes, and then the connections between them. In order to achieve this, Philippe enlists film directors Rodney Ascher, Justin Benson, Karyn Kusama, Aaron Moorhead and John Waters.

Now in order for this article to be more than a summary and to actually review the documentary, an evaluation of the contents is to follow – and that task requires knowledge of both ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and the Lynch filmography. So, before evaluating the documentary, it is called for to expose the grounds of that evaluation: I have seen ‘The Wizard of Oz’, all of Lynch’s feature films except ‘Lost highway’, some of his short films, the adapted TV movie ‘Mulholland Dr.’, and some episodes from ‘Twin Peaks’ and ‘On the air’.

Philippe’s introduction to both ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and Lynch’s filmography is good. But after the introduction, the documentary turns into a search of whatever possible connections could exist no matter how flimsy. Of course some connections exist, and in the case of ‘Wild at heart’ in particular they are explicit and insistent, but for the most part the documentary is wasted revolving about pointless details.

To elaborate more on that, computer programmers distinguish between back-end and front-end, back-end being the computing done for actual information processing and front-end being the computing done to present the results to humans. David Lynch is without doubt a front-end director: his talent is focused on the image and sound presenting the story, not in the story actually making sense. Lynch’s filmography is deliberately full of enigmatic details, but while some of them actually are meaningful and relevant, most of them are meaningless or irrelevant, for intriguing the spectator is an end in itself for Lynch. The followers of ‘Twink Peaks’ are still wondering to this day about that message received from deep space about the owls.

So for the most part the documentary consists of digressions about the possible meanings for details, digressions that become more and more ridiculous. For instance, as the protagonists of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ spend the central act of the film searching for the Wizard, any film with protagonists searching for someone is ‘The Wizard of Oz’ - the examples provided are just laughable. Particularly shameful is the contribution of John Waters who, with the pretext of being an admirer of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ himself, delivers a contribution centred on his own filmography that makes the documentary momentarily about himself.

All in all, a long, boring digression that revolves around minutia. 2 out of 5.

Title:	Lynch/Oz
Genre:	Documentary
Year:	2022
Nationality:	United States
Colour:	Colour
Director:	Alexandre O. Philippe
Writer:	Alexandre O. Philippe
Cast:	Rodney Ascher, Justin Benson, Karyn Kusama, Aaron Moorhead, Amy Nicholson, John Waters
Producer:	Kerry Deignan Roy
Co-producer:	David Lawrence, Robert Muratore
Executive producer:	Anna Godas, Oli Harbottle
Cinematographer:	Robert Muratore
Film editor:	David Lawrence
Music:	Aaron Lawrence
Running time:	108 minutes
Language:	English