OK, so I know some people really hate David Lynch movies because they're weird and don't make any sense. Which is a fair point, but one to which I say: there is logical, plot sense and then there is emotional sense, and while they may be short on the former, Lynch's movies tend to have a whole lot of the latter.
Let's take the dinner eating scene, with that awful chicken, as a case in point. You want to know what that scene is "about?" You know when you go over to a friend's house for dinner (multiply times a million if this is a person you're dating,) and you're nervous to begin with and then the food is, not bad exactly, but just kind of weird and markedly different from the food you eat at your house and it makes you feel even more awkward, having to push around those awful little nugget potatoes and pretend it's exactly what you want to eat and oh my God why are they that color orange? And then you go to get some mustard or something and then the mother says oh no that's not how we use the mustard in this house and then you're all jumpy and upset and have to pretend like your instinct is not to do something else with the mustard? And why is there something special you're supposed to do with the mustard anyway? That's really fucking weird, isn't it?
That's what that scene is about. And I defy you to say you have not had that exact experience at some point in your life. And that kind of shit, that kind of drop-dead emotional, accuracy, that pointillism of neuroses, is why I love David Lynch.
Talking about hyperemotional accuracy, it's a very Lynchian thing to tap into our feelings about life by going over the top. That's why I think this movie says more, better about being young and poor in an American city than any social realist documentary could ever hope to.
He also manages to say so much about our yearning for human connection, however bizarre the circumstances. That final scene of Jack Nance embracing the lady in the radiator is so touching and real, because you can feel the crazy intensity of the longing.
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