MIFF 2022 Film Review - Lynch/Oz

Image courtesy of the Melbourne International Film Festival.

How do you examine the work of an artist like David Lynch? Lynch is notoriously tight-lipped and when questioned on the “meanings” of his work- you can even find compilations on YouTube of him dishing out blunt NO’s in regards to any request for an explanation of his work.

In the case of Lynch/OZ director, Alexandre O. Philippe presents a simple answer; you take the single crumb of information David Lynch has given you, hold on for dear life, and barrel head first down the yellow brick road.

While the documentary appears at a glance to be an extended video essay for die-hard David Lynch fans - and don’t worry Lyncheads it very much is - it ends up being so much more. 

Lynch/Oz is first and foremost a love letter to cinema. While Lynch himself only appears via archival footage, several surrogates for him including acclaimed director John Waters drop in to wax poetic about: the act of filmmaking, the struggle of finding your voice, and arguing the best character for Lynch to be compared to - whether Dorothy, the Wizard, or both simultaneously - while never straying too far from the film’s primary thesis. There’s also a brief foray exploring Oz as the perfect text to accompany Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

The influence of The Wizard of Oz on David Lynch is undeniable, hether it be subtly through the fish out of water, or Dorothy out of Kansas;the worlds he is so fond of presenting, or more overtly in the case of his almost fetishistic love for red shoes. Lynch/Oz doesn't simply point it all out for you and send you on your merry way. Instead, the filmmakers ask you to imagine a young David Lynch, a Midwestern boy of no more than four (probably already with amazing hair), entering Oz for the first time, and then they try to piece together all that Lynch has refused to tell us over the years.

While Lynch may often be seen as a corruptor of the ‘American fairytale’, Lynch/OZ possets that he’s also its biggest fan. This is a film for anyone that has ever wanted to look behind the curtain, and find out how the wizard’s magic machine might work. 

Lynch/Oz is screening as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, running in cinemas August 4-21 and online August 11-28. For tickets and more info, click here.