Co-directed by Jon Nguyen and Rick Barnes in 2016, David Lynch: The Art Life is not the traditional biographical piece you might expect it to, rather it is a series of conversations with the storied artist and filmmaker about how and why he creates what he creates. It's a fairly philosophical look at his creative process, but also an interesting examination of how he came to be what he is, his penchant for surrealism and his love of cigarettes.

Don't expect to watch this movie and find out what the ending of Twin Peaks: The Return was all about or anything like that. In fact, this piece doesn't really go into any of his feature film work after Eraserhead. Instead, in Lynch's own words, we learn about his upbringing and his family life (which was, maybe surprisingly, the textbook definition or normal and wholesome) and how he came to become the creative force he's now regarded as. He recounts some incidents from his childhood that likely left some scars and shaped his views on things in strange ways, but recounting them here would be a disservice to those who haven't seen the film. For the most part those, his younger days seem to have been quite happy, almost idyllic. In this piece we see him relaxing at his home in the Hollywood hills and we see him paint. As this happens, we learn how his formative years as a kid and then a young man tend to, as he puts it, ‘color' pretty much everything he's worked on ever since.

As Lynch offers up heady thoughts on the importance of art and creativity, we're treated to archival film clips showcasing not just some of his home life experiences but some of his earlier art projects as well. There are plenty of archival photograph used from this same period here as well. Everything that comes at us from this picture is presented straight from Lynch's mouth. There's no filter or twisting of words, just the man speaking very matter-of-factly about his thoughts on art. He's quite genial here, very friendly and occasionally humorous. Lynch has never been short on charm, as he runs his fingers through his shock white hair, cigarette permanently glued to his lip and smoke constantly emanating from his mouth and nostrils like one of the industrial machines that seems to fascinate him so much. We get inside his head a bit, maybe more so here than in any other piece that's made been made about him over the years (he famously doesn't do audio commentary tracks or like to explain his work at all), and it's quite fascinating. It's also interesting to see him work on some particularly dark pieces while chatting away to the camera in the most nonchalant manner you could imagine.

The movie is nicely shot. There are some very striking compositions here. Lynch is framed in a reasonably straight forward way most of the time, but then the camera will pull back and use some great wide angle shots from time to time that add an interesting emphasis to what he says. We also get some nice looks at various pieces that he's worked on over the years, and the camerawork does a great job of letting us soak in a lot of the details inherent in that work. Technical merits are strong. The documentary is polished, but not to the point that it loses authenticity or sincerity, and the pacing is quirk, but not at the expense of content.

Video:

David Lynch: The Art Life is presented by The Criterion Collection on a 50GB Blu-ray framed at 1.78.1 widescreen and presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. Shot digitally the image here is very clean, obviously there's no print damage to note nor is there any actual grain. Color reproduction looks spot on and black levels are nice and solid. There are no noticeable problems with any compression artifacts nor is there any obvious edge enhancement to complain about. Detail is typically really strong here too, you can occasionally make out some of the lines from the brush strokes in the paintings that are shown off. The archival clips and photos used have the expected amount of wear and tear visible, but that never once feels like a detriment to the feature.