"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" is one of the many memorable lines in 1939's The Wizard of Oz. It has now become a saying for whenever one suspects that there is chicanery going on, that there is something rather plain behind a grand image. Could that expression, however, apply to one of the most avant-garde filmmakers around? Lynch/Oz explores the connection between the quintessential children's fantasy and the filmography of one David Lynch. Could The Wizard of Oz be the inspiration for Mulholland Drive? Lynch/Oz makes that case, along with how The Wizard of Oz finds itself occurring and recurring amidst tales of murder, lost souls and psychopathic supernatural monsters.
Director Alexandre O. Philippe divides Lynch/Oz into six chapters with seven filmmakers in voiceover sharing their views on Lynch the man and the artist, The Wizard of Oz, the connections they see between the two and how both Lynch and Oz have influenced their own works. In order of presentation, the chapters and interviewees are Wind (Amy Nicholson), Membranes (Rodney Ascher), Kindred (John Waters), Multitudes (Karyn Kusama), Judy (Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead) and Dig (David Lowery). After a brief and appropriately creepy presentation by "the lounge wizard" (Sid Pink), Lynch/Oz allows each of the filmmakers their say.
Wind speculates that in Lynch's films, we see a continuous theme of people going, willingly or not, into eccentric worlds. As with The Wizard of Oz, another film that has our lead character wanting to escape their world only to yearn to return may have touched on Lynch's cinematic world. That other film also became a beloved annual television event: It's a Wonderful Life. Membranes offers that Back to the Future too was like The Wizard of Oz; it too is another tale of a young person finding a world that had doppelgangers to his real world. While Back to the Future is not a David Lynch film, Mulholland Drive is, and there we have a twisted world of doppelgangers, a world where the central character travels to a different world, navigating dreams versus reality.
Kindred suggests that like the films of its interviewee John Waters, David Lynch finds the 1950's far from the halcyon world that that decade's films or memories made it out to be. The 1950's hid darkness beneath its outwardly pleasant visions. That evil lurking behind picket fences emerges in the portrayal of seemingly benevolent figures like Leland Palmer from Twin Peaks. That can be a mirror reflection of the Wizard himself, outwardly dangerous but in reality, a front. Multitudes offers that Mulholland Drive is almost a companion piece and even an inverse of Oz, the repeated themes of lip-syncing in front of curtains being a semi-conscious callout to the Wizard himself. We also hear from Kusama who quotes Lynch when he is asked about The Wizard of Oz after a Mulholland Drive screening. "There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about The Wizard of Oz," Kusama quotes Lynch as saying.
Judy has our only dual interviewees make the case that David Lynch is in their words, a "populist surrealist", one who shows the American myth versus the American dream. This reveals itself in how in many Lynch films, the women are brutalized and beaten up emotionally and sometimes physically. They see a parallel to how the film industry devoured Judy Garland. There is also a strong use of "Judy" in Twin Peaks: The Return, that keeps emerging. Dig is mostly on David Lowery's own interest in Oz, but he makes the case that despite the surreal, almost despairing Lynchian worlds of Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, he still finds hope within the dark worlds he paints, of people who can return to the safety of their own Kansas.
Lynch/Oz can be best described as a filmed essay, where the various interviewees offer less a concrete case for their ideas and more a rumination on how one film has had such a powerful hold over a renowned filmmaker. Some of the observations are not unique. Lowery suggests that Lynch has similar imagery running through his films, then Philippe presents a montage of other filmmakers who use the same imagery or hit on the same themes.
Sometimes too, we hear different filmmakers speculate on a similar point. Both Waters and Benson & Moorhead think Lynch has a secret disdain for the 1950's conformity and outwardly peaceful veneer. How Benson & Moorhead tie the MAGA movement, such as it is, to something like Wild at Heart or other Lynch films, to my mind, is more of them trying to fit something that Lynch may not even care about.
As a side note, it is amusing to hear Waters' rather bitchy take on Glinda the Good Witch of the North. He remarks that she "dressed like she had gone insane getting ready for the prom".
Lynch/Oz makes much use of split screens to show us how The Wizard of Oz is referenced subtlety or overtly in films like Mulholland Drive or Eraserhead. To be fair, I have yet to see Wild at Heart, but judging from the clips Lynch/Oz shows, Wild at Heart looks like the most overt callout to the Victor Fleming film. The use of curtains, the red shoes, people falling into strange worlds and suffering great troubles to escape back into their original reality. These are fascinating ideas that Lynch/Oz presents us.
The film does cover a lot of ground, making its case on how The Wizard of Oz, this one particular film, resonated so much with young David Lynch that he finds himself by design or by accident repeatedly referencing it or what he drew from it. Even something as notorious as his adaptation of Dune can be vaguely Wizard of Oz like, everything from the sepia-like tones of Arrakis to the hero traversing a strange world to defeat a great evil.
Perhaps that is stretching, which is always a risk when speculating on a topic like whether David Lynch specifically revisits The Wizard of Oz in his films and television projects. It should be noted that outside a few archival interviews, David Lynch himself does not make his case for The Wizard of Oz being the film he draws so much from. Given his mercurial nature and refusal to give definitive interpretations on his films, we may never fully know if Lynch/Oz captures his mindset or is mere speculation. Still, it is hard to not think that Lynch/Oz is on the right track when we see David Lynch himself play Over the Rainbow on the trumpet (not very well in my opinion).
One may even think that Lynch/Oz is less about what David Lynch himself drew from The Wizard of Oz than on how others see a connection between the two. Many may even think that all this may be a case of reading more into things than intended. I do not know if Wizard of Oz director Victor Fleming or producer Mervyn LeRoy intended or imagined that The Wizard of Oz had some kind of great symbolism behind it. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. That quote, attributed to Sigmund Freud, may not have been uttered by the Austrian psychiatrist, but it might apply to how so many may be putting The Wizard of Oz into this bizarre cinematic universe. Maybe even David Lynch himself may have read more into The Wizard of Oz than The Wizard of Oz intended.
Lynch/Oz is a fascinating exploration connecting the Lynchian worldview with that of little Dorothy Gale from Kansas. Even I can see connections that were curious not remarked on by any of the interviewees. In Mulholland Drive, the restaurant is named Winkies, just like the Wicked Witch of the West's imperial guard. There is also a great deal of green in the restaurant, almost emerald color. You can find a connection between the filmography of David Lynch and The Wizard of Oz. You could miss it. It won't take away from either. Lynch/Oz makes its case well, but it is up to you if you accept it or want to throw water at its ideas.
The Wizard of Oz Retrospective: An Introduction
VeggieTales: The Wonderful Wizard of Ha's
The Wizard of Oz Retrospective: The Conclusions
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