Director David Lynch’s Fascination with Sin and Redemption

In the 2016 documentary David Lynch: The Art Life, the iconic director and artist shares a formative childhood memory. As Lynch describes it, he was playing with his brother in their Spokane, Wash., neighborhood one evening when suddenly, out of the darkness, he noticed a naked woman, her mouth bloodied, staggering across the street toward them.

Lynch describes his younger brother crying as the pair of them watched the woman approach, then sit down on a curb and sob. “I wanted to do something for her, but I was little,” he tells the interviewer. “I didn’t know what to do.”

The themes in Lynch’s anecdote — the shocking intrusion on the mundane, innocence disrupted by something disturbing — echo through his filmography, from the overwhelmed father of a mutant baby in Eraserhead to Naomi Watts’ in-over-her-head Hollywood ingenue in Mulholland Drive. That image of a naked, abused woman wandering down a suburban street appears in Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvet, when Kyle MacLachlan’s Jeffrey and Laura Dern’s Sandy find tormented singer Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) beaten and stripped outside Jeffrey’s house.

Lynch, who died this month days before his 79th birthday, was fascinated by the coexistence of light and dark in the world, the effects of our sinful impulses on others, and what can happen when we pursue what’s right. His art was equally influenced by surreal and grotesque images like the paintings of British expressionist artist Francis Bacon, and the wholesome mid-century Americana he grew up with. As he puts it in the book Lynch on Lynch:

My childhood was elegant homes, tree-lined streets, the milkman, building backyard forts, droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees. Middle America as it’'s supposed to be. But on the cherry tree there’'s this pitch oozing out – some black, some yellow, and millions of red ants crawling all over it. I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath.

These qualities made Lynch a uniquely thoughtful chronicler of sin, suffering, forgiveness, and redemption. He had immense empathy for his characters and the systems they were stuck in. He cared for the everyday people thrown into dangerous or tragic situations and the monsters who created those situations, often blurring the line between the two. Lynch’s movies frequently contain disturbing imagery, but they are always contrasted with moments illustrating how righteousness persists (or tries to) in horrible circumstances.

Take, for instance, the opening scene of the aforementioned Blue Velvet: After a montage of blue skies and white picket fences establish the town of Lumberton as a pleasant, upstanding community, we see a man watering his lawn, then collapsing, seemingly from a stroke. The camera pans down into the grass, which is crowded with bugs and grubs crawling over each other. Lumberton seems like a place where nothing bad happens, but below the surface, like those red ants, there’s as much corruption as anywhere else.

The sick man’s son, Jeffrey (MacLachlan), comes home from college to take care of him, but quickly becomes involved in a dangerous mystery. This starts when he finds an amputated ear in a field near his house. Shortly after, he and his neighbor Sandy (Dern) encounter Rossellini’s Dorothy. Dorothy’s husband — the owner of the ear — and her son are being held hostage by violent criminal Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper). Frank, who’s keeping Dorothy’s family alive in return for sexual favors from her, has his fingers in pies all over town, including in the police department. All of this has been happening under Jeffrey and Sandy’s noses, but even though they live a few blocks from Dorothy’s apartment, they never knew.

Lynch’s 1999 film The Straight Story is less salacious than Blue Velvet, but its themes of hidden pain and the need for love fit right in alongside it. The Straight Story is based on the true tale of 73-year-old Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth), who drove his riding lawnmower across Iowa to visit his ailing brother. Along the way, Alvin meets people who are suffering from everyday problems — family estrangement, PTSD, loss — and shares stories of his own that help us understand how he’s become who he is.

As with Blue Velvet, The Straight Story opens with a montage of a small town, this one depicting wheat fields, a main street, and finally settling on Alvin’s house. After a few moments, we hear Alvin fall in his kitchen as his neighbor sunbathes in her yard, unaware of the unfolding emergency. Like Blue Velvet, this is an inciting incident; Alvin’s fall reminds him that he’s nearing the end of his life. When he hears his estranged brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton) is sick, Alvin decides to visit him before it’s too late.

On his journey, Alvin meets other people who suffer from their own everyday troubles, and he helps them find the same sort of healing he’s seeking. Unlike Lynch’s experience as a child, or Jeffrey’s meddling in matters beyond his understanding, Alvin is able to help the suffering people he meets on his slow-moving road trip because he has the benefit of experience. He knows most conflicts can be solved if we’re honest with each other, confess our sin, ask for forgiveness, and do the work of reconciliation. Doing that requires empathy. It requires that we understand the capacity we all carry for sin and righteousness — the ability to feel and express love for others, and humility in the knowledge that sometimes we ourselves cause hurt.

Halfway through Blue Velvet, a frustrated Jeffrey asks Sandy, “Why are there people like Frank? Why is there so much trouble in this world?” Sandy responds by telling him about a dream she had. In her dream, the world is dark until thousands of robins fly in, bringing a “blinding light of love.” Sandy tells Jeffrey, “It seemed like that love would be the only thing that would make any difference. And it did. So I guess it means there is trouble until the robins come.”

Sandy’s symbolically describing what New Testament scholar N.T. Wright calls a “now and not yet situation,” an acknowledgment that while the world is improving, our work is far from complete. In a Christian context, we know that completion will come with Jesus’ return, bringing a new Heaven and new earth. In other words, there is trouble until the robins come.

That sentiment may well be the defining aspect of Lynch’s career. He showed us repeatedly that the world could be full of darkness as well as wonder. Sometimes that darkness is violent and terrifying, the kind that stuns us and changes us forever. Sometimes it’s the kind we see our friends and neighbors struggle with every day.

Despite that suffering, Lynch also believed goodness and love would eventually triumph. One of the final images in Blue Velvet is of a robin with a beetle in its beak, the film’s symbol of love overcoming its symbol of evil. Lynch knew the robins aren’t here yet, and we know the kingdom of God hasn’t yet come to make all things new. But just as we know the kingdom is on its way, Lynch never doubted that the robins were coming.