(Credits: Alamy)
Fri 15 August 2025 5:00, UK
Within the current media landscape, it can often feel as though we are being bombarded with films that are designed to numb our minds instead of stimulate them.
With an onslaught of live-action remakes and superhero spinoffs, it can often seem like the future of cinema is in a precarious state. Most audience members go to the cinema to be appeased, viewing visual storytelling as one long distraction instead of an art form that can challenge and inspire us. With rapidly declining attention spans and a plummeting respect for the medium as a whole, it comes as no surprise that the framework of entertainment as a whole has completely shifted.
People no longer look for the same range of emotional experiences that we used to seek through the cinema, with people being outraged by anything that pushes against the norm and goes against the mainstream standard. We are most certainly living in a time where many filmmakers who flourished in the past would struggle to get by, with Simon Pegg discussing this shift in cinema and the one film that defies this.
David Lynch might have seemed like an easy-going guy in real life, but as a director, he was fearlessly forging a new path that directly went against the flow. Whether it be the trailblazing power of Twin Peaks or the transformative impact of the surrealist style he pioneered through films like Mulholland Drive and Eraserhead, the director challenged our perception of entertainment by making films that were designed to make us feel uncomfortable.
But for Simon Pegg, there is one film that best encapsulates this trait, with the actor describing his love for Blue Velvet and saying, “I showed this to my daughter the other day and she hated it. But she hated it for exactly the reasons that David Lynch wanted you to hate it. This really, really unnerving exploration of Middle America, the seedy underworld that exists just under the surface”.
Everything about Lynch’s work operates in this realm that is almost invisible to the naked eye, requiring you to look beneath the surface and find an element that is only discoverable through the individual perspective of the person watching. He expanded on this quality, saying, “What I love about Lynch is that he just leaves so much to you. He throws stuff out there, which is kind of indecipherable, but it’s your job to decipher it, it’s your job to apply your interpretations to what he’s saying. And they’re always there.
“I was delighted that Tilly hated it because she talked about it nonstop that night and then the next day. And I said, ‘Sometimes entertainment is an overrated function of art. Sometimes being made uncomfortable is the point. Sometimes being repulsed by something is the point’. And I think David Lynch knew that better than most”.
Sometimes, it isn’t helpful to be comforted by what you watch. It is beneficial for everybody to watch films that go a bit deeper and expand our minds, pushing the idea that art is sometimes most impactful when it gets under your skin, disturbs your patterns of thought, and makes you see the world through a darker lens.
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