What it’s about: The filmmaker David Lynch recounts the story of his life, from early childhood in the late ’40s and early ’50s through the filming of Eraserhead in the mid ’70s. His narrations are broken up into discrete anecdotes, detailing memories from growing up in Idaho and Washington, moving to Virginia as an adolescent, discovering a love of painting as a teenager, rejecting art school, living in Boston and Philadelphia, and eventually receiving an AFI grant and being accepted into the Center for Advanced Film Studies. As these stories unspool, we see intercut live footage of the narration, contemporary footage of him in his studio, a wide variety of his cinematic and visual artwork, and archival photographs and home-movies of his younger world.

Reflections: David Lynch was a fascinating character of a filmmaker–his works are known most for being compellingly inscrutable and his name has become an adjective (“Lynchian”) for a certain kind of dreamlike, uncanny atmosphere. He also seemed to be a gentle soul, reportedly cultivating a warm and collaborative atmosphere for those who worked with him and coming off authentically encouraging in his surprisingly prolific social media presence. And it’s fascinating to listen to someone who often preferred to let his work speak for itself explain some of his understanding and artistic motivation. There is some pleasure to be had in connecting some of the childhood memories he recounts to moments he would recreate–he details an encounter with an apparently abused woman that is almost exactly like a scene in Blue Velvet–but the real pleasure of the film is coming to appreciate the worldview that is summed up by the titular phrase.

Lynch was a painter first and a filmmaker second and the visual aspect of the film is built around showcasing his work, with the present and archival footage feeling more like context than content. Here again, the filmmakers make connections between the stories he tells and the surreal scenes he depicts with a textured, mixed-media approach. But what’s exciting about that is the way in which art becomes a vehicle for processing the world, a way of seeing and thinking and being present. And having that obliquely laid out by this odd, kind of gnomish guy with a uniquely nasal voice and a wry, iconoclastic sense of humor is compelling and inspiring.

There are a handful of documentaries I turn to when I’m in a creative rut–Todd Haynes’s The Velvet Underground, or Wild Combinations: A Portrait of Arthur Russell. There is a fundamental stimulation in listening to artists I respect engage with their process. That’s what I come to this movie for, and it delivers on that level. There is a kind of insular, isolated quality to it, and it is rather light on biographical facts in a way that I could see being unsatisfying for some. But also, that’s who David Lynch was, and if you’re inclined to watch a documentary about him in the first place, you can probably appreciate that.