'Film can't just be a long line of bliss. There's something we all like about the human struggle!'
David Lynch
B: 1946 / N: American

To source ideas and images for his films, David Lynch plunges into the pool of his subconscious via transcendental meditation. What makes his work so exceptional - and idiosyncratic - is a willingness to share the fruits of these interior deep dives and make sure they are largely unadorned and uncensored. It is the life of the mind writ large, and it has meant that, as a modern behemoth of cinematic creativity, Lynch has been able to perch in that liminal space between traditional romantic genre cinema and full-bore experimentation that sometimes borders on the abstract. One moment that remains emblematic of his project is the breathtaking opening sequence to 1986's Blue Velvet, in which a hauntingly manicured vision of provincial America is punctured with scenes of a man suffering a stroke while spraying his lawn, followed by a delve into the grass, where we experience the sub-aural thrum of an ants' nest. We run the gamut between ethereal beauty and nauseating dread in record time. In the mellow pageant of American life, Lynch sees beauty and horror not so much as opposite sides of the same coin, but as a singular entity that can permeate everyone and everything simultaneously. His formidable 1977 debut Eraserhead looked at birthing and parenthood through a surreally baroque lens, while later works, such as Wild at Heart (1990) and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), danced on the precipice where raging, intense love tips over into splenetic violence.