God, Mystery, and David Lynch

Greetings, folks!

Luba and Moth

David Lynch passed away two weeks ago, leaving behind an irreplaceable void. The owls are no longer what they seem, the coffee doesn’t taste quite as damn fine, and somewhere, a red room stands empty, its curtains swaying in silence.

From @LostinFilm post on X

He was one of the few filmmakers who truly understood the deep, unknowable mysteries of existence. His work didn’t just hint at the strange; it reveled in it, embraced it, made it an essential part of the human experience. The horror in his films wasn’t just about monsters or violence, but about something more profound—the idea that reality itself is unstable, that we only ever perceive fragments of a much larger and more complex whole. His passing feels like the departure of someone who had a direct line to the inexpressible, a person who accepted that some questions have no answers.

“Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole,” was Lynch’s favorite expression.

Still waiting for Laura Palmer to exit that door

Growing up in the Soviet Union, I was raised in a world without God. Not just in the sense that atheism was the official doctrine, but in the deeper way that faith was considered a backward notion, unfit for the modern era. The state provided the answers. History had a trajectory. Science would solve all mysteries. There was no need for God because we were told that, in time, everything would be explained.

Hudson Yards, NYC.

And yet, as I get older, I find myself drawn more and more to the unsolvable, to the questions that refuse to be answered. Søren Kierkegaard wrote that faith is a leap into the absurd, that true belief is not about certainty but about embracing the unknown. And it was Ludwig Wittgenstein, who suggested that the most important things in life—ethics, aesthetics, the meaning of existence—lie beyond the limits of what can be clearly expressed in language. Even the Soviet Union, with all its certainty, collapsed into a chaos that no one fully predicted.

The Richardson Highway, Alaska

Lynch seemed to understand that reality is like a veil, one that occasionally lifts to reveal something vast and incomprehensible beneath. He gave us unsettling glimpses into that abyss, not to frighten us, but to remind us that we live surrounded by mysteries far greater than ourselves. In a way, I feel closer to his vision now than I ever did before. The older I get, the more I realize that life isn’t a puzzle to solve but a mystery that reveals itself moment by moment. And maybe that's enough.

Have a Happy Valentine’s Day. Brooklyn, NY

In the film Sleeper, Diane Keaton’s character asks the character played by Woody Allen, “Would you like to perform sex with me?”

“Perform sex? I don’t think I’m up to a performance, but I can rehearse with you if you like.”

I was reminded of that exchange when a friend who recently watched Eraserhead told me I should write a comparative analysis of that David Lynch classic and Substance, the new film featuring Demi Moore. I don’t think I’m up to a comparative analysis, buddy, but I can write a few paragraphs offering my thoughts on the two films, if you like.

I hate using tired clichés when referring to Eraserhead, like “it’s a cult classic,” “it’s incredibly influential,” or “If I ever saw a masterpiece, this is it.”

But Eraserhead is a cult classic, a masterpiece that has influenced two generations of filmmakers. It explores the fear of parenthood and the anxieties of the human condition with an intensity that feels almost primal, like a waking nightmare you can’t escape. It doesn’t just depict fear; it traps you inside it, forcing you to marinate in its disgusting beauty and inescapable dread.

Unlike most films that merely comment on existential horror, Eraserhead makes you live it, submerging you in its eerie, industrial wasteland where every sound and shadow carries an unspoken menace. The film’s striking visuals and haunting sound design create a singular emotional experience, burning itself into my mind like acid. It’s a significant work not just in the realm of experimental cinema, but in cinema, period.

Substance, on the other hand, desperately wants to be Eraserhead—but there’s only one Lynch, alas. No matter how hard it tries to unsettle us, disgust us, or make us think, it ends up as nothing more than a shallow, on-the-nose, one-note tract about the sad state of aging in a male-dominated, beauty-obsessed society. It’s a great theme and could have made for a great movie—if the filmmaker had been more interested in exploring characters rather than fixating on shocking us or arousing us by hammering the same beats over and over again. The beginning is promising, but after 18 minutes, the story goes off the rails. And it’s about an hour too long. I’ll stop here, lest I spoil the plot for the uninitiated.

Finally, a Lync-inspired Spotify playlist. Some songs from his films, some compositions he loved (like Shostakovich’s Symphony #15), but mostly the songs that remind me of his vision of the world.

Thanks for reading and being a subscriber.
’Til next time.

ak