David Lynch is annoyed at how the way people watch feature films has evolved. An apostle of aestheticism, the American director rejects the idea of watching a movie on a smartphone. The man behind Elephant Man (1980) and Mulholland Drive (2001) regrets that fewer people are going to the movies.
The successful director granted an interview to Cahiers du Cinéma. Through this interview, the 77-year-old American expressed his reservations about the benefits of streaming platforms like Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+. “Feature films are in a bad place, series have taken their place. Coronavirus has put a stop to going to the theater. Films used to be made for the big screen, for good speakers. You could sit down and actually have the experience of stepping into a whole new world. Now that’s all in the damn history books. It’s distressing.” says the winner of the 2002 César for Best Foreign Film.
The man who directed the Twin Peaks series deplores the drop in movie theater attendance. According to him, the Covid crisis, but especially the emergence of VOD platforms, are the main reasons behind this phenomenon. Particularly attentive to the aestheticism of his works, David Lynch does not approve of watching films on a smartphone: “Now, many projects are seen on phones and tablets. People think they’ve seen a movie, but if they’ve watched it on a phone, they haven’t seen anything. It’s sad […] Why ruin an experience like that?”
While watching a movie on a smartphone is heresy for David Lynch, he admits that television offers wider access to feature films. “That said, I grew up watching classics on a fairly small television. That’s where I fell in love with Raging Bull, Citizen Kane… I was 12 or 13 years old, and I didn’t care about the image ratio or the quality of the light. I just needed a good picture and sound. “, admits the Montana-born director.
David Lynch’s fans have been longing for a new feature film since 2006’s Inland Empire. While there’s currently no news about a future project from the director, we can be sure that it won’t be produced by a VOD platform…
