The greatest devil trick David Lynch ever pulled was convincing the world that his movies makes sense.
They make perfect emotional sense.
Such a claim suggests that those who find worth in his films are either also a fraud, or are gullible idiots. You seem to try and claim otherwise later in your post, but it sure seems you take people enjoying movies you don't pretty personally.
his followers barely have anything to say in his defense
There are endless reams of good discussion regarding the films of David Lynch. He's probably one of the most written about filmmakers of the last forty years
except crap like "his films are trying to become mirror or dreams",
They say much more than this, but even if they didn't, so? Why is making a film that is a mirror of a dream the work of a fraud. There are many artists who try to do this. Most fail. Lynch doesn't.
his films are supposed to be experienced like a piece of music (no one ever points out that a narrative-reliant format like film is completely different from music)
Lots of film operates outside of narrative conventions. Film isn't beholden to follow your narrow expectations of it as simply a vessel for story telling. It can be extremely tiring to see people keep trying to handcuff what is a limitless medium to ****ing stories. And my aggravation here isn't even acknowledging the fact that David Lynch's films are clearly strongly narrative based. Like, all of them.
go read someone's subjective explanation online
What's wrong with this? Since you seem unwilling to try find an explanation of your own, this is probably the only other option for you, isn't it? Unless, you don't actually care to understand what people get out of his films. On one hand, you are resolutely refusing to admit Lynch can be discussed with any merit, and then on the other, you're annoyed when people dare to discuss their interpretations of his work. Seems like a bit of a bad faith argument you're constructing here.
Even a genius writer like James Joyce was held to task by the literary establishment when he came out with the incomprehensible "Finnegans Wake"
Just because Finnegan's Wake is also incomprehensible to me, doesn't mean I have to stumble towards the fallacy that it must then be incomprehensible to everybody. I've found discussion about it illuminating, even though its never helped my own journey through it. I'm happy other people like it. It doesn't make me feel in the slightest bit bothered it goes over my head, because not everything needs to be for me.
There has to be some kind of reference, a structure, a starting and end point, a coherent vision to work with when critiquing a medium like film
First of all, no there doesn't. Second of all, how does Eraserhead, Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Elephant Man, Straight Story, Blue Velvet or Inland Empire lack these things? While Inland Empire is probably the most difficult to pull apart and understand what is going on, the others all have pretty basic story structures. The peculiar way Lynch dresses his windows though seems to be throwing you off how simple these narratives really are.
my issue is with their zealous cries of "one of the best films ever" that drown out any kind of criticism or questions that should logically be welcomed with regard to this film's artistic legitimacy
People can criticize the films of Lynch all they want. Nobody drowned me out when I wasn't a fan of his films at a younger age and criticized them all the time and no one is drowning you out now. You said your piece, and your criticism seems to amount to 'everyone who likes him is wrong'. Why? Because you don't approve of his approach to making films and therefore everyone is a giant dupe. Sounds like there is only one zealot here in this discussion.
Like all sincere (con) artists, Lynch has refused to provide his own interpretation or explanation for Inland Empire and Blue a Velvet, in an effort to preserve the mystery and enigma surrounding his supposed nightmare
The nerve of him wanting to have his audience find their own way through his films. How dare he have faith on the autonomy of personal experience. Personally, I'm thankful for artists like him (and there are many many many artists like him) who don't waste my time telling me what to think. He's more than competent enough as an artist to let his work stand on its own.
you can rest assured someone in the world out there will come up with an explanation to make sense of these completely random, disconnected events, provided I have been hyped up by the media to the degree that my reputation is untouchable in the field of art I'm employed in.
You seem to be under the impression that his reputation arrived in some kind of vaccuum, completely separate from what he has accomplished, and how people have responded to his work. He didn't just randomly scrawl a bunch of unrelated moments in a movie forum post to achieve recognition. He actually has a product that he laborously worked at and got on screen. And some people happened to like it, for whatever their reasons. You also seem to be under the impression there isn't a very vocal group of criticsout there who have hated a good portion of his films throughout his entire career. There have constantly been naysayers to what he's been doing all these years. Your complaints are nothing new. In fact they are very very old.
No matter what Lynch now claims about the project, what we saw was originally conceived as a TV pilot.
Now were are loading our critical gun with complete irrelevancies. Who cares what it was conceived as? This isn't proof that it was 'a film he got out of nothing'. He adjusted what he was going to do with this project considering the venue it would now be shown. Artists, believe it or not, are adaptable. They can create on the fly. For example, the entirity of Twin Peaks: The Return, is a continuation of a story he conceived for television thirty years ago, filtered through his frustration at creating that very show. It rails against the limits of television, it's killing of mystery and how his vision was taken out of his hands. The way he concludes this story could not have happened before he had his frustration with his experience of producing the original Just because The Return's story was retrofitted to respond to these things, doesn't mean it was 'got out of nothing'. He adapted the story he was telling, to include these experiences. A completely valid approach for an artist still angry at being shut out of the creative process thirty years earlier. And, sidenote, a brilliant
narrative decision.
so many questions whose answers one can only conjecture without ever reaching a consensus
What is the implicit value of consensus? Does people agreeing on things somehow make it legit? There are some films out there that have been woefully misinterpreted for years, and that misinterpretation had a general consensus that was bandied back and forth as some kind of gospel. Considering consensus can sometimes be dead wrong, does this make it something worth striving for as some kind of objective measure of worth?
I intend to attack and question its artistic greatness till my last breath
I'm sure (hope) you have better ways to spend your time. It's probably more productive to try and appreciate what others see in things you don't like, even if you are not likely to ever enjoy them yourself. Either that, or just stop thinking about it. There is no bigger waste of time than trying to convince other people why they shouldn't like something they like. What kind of party pooper **** is this anyways? Who do you think your saving, beyond the cognitive dissonance you feel when people champion those weird, no-consensus David Lynch films. Isn't it enough to just explain why YOU don't like something. It should be, because let me assure you that you are biting off more than you can chew in trying to dictate why NOBODY should.
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