David Lynch

David Lynch: The Man from Another Place by Dennis Lim, 179 pages

For four decades, David Lynch has been making movies - and television programs, and music, and paintings - that have disturbed, intrigued, and frustrated audiences.  Wisely, Dennis Lim does not tackle any of those mysteries head on, understanding that one of the points of Lynch's "problem" films, those which seem designed to inspire interpretive quests for the hermeneutical key which will unlock all secrets, is that there is no such key, no secret formula which will resolve all mysteries into systematic knowledge.  Instead, recognizing that, as Lim describes it, Lynch's films are always personal but rarely biographical, Lim explores Lynch's work through his life and creative process.  Like those films, the result is fascinating but also unsatisfying, although in this case the dissatisfaction is probably not deliberate.