Art and Madness

This book is a guide to the world of cinematic unconsciousness, hidden, secret, frightening. The starting point of the investigation is David Lynch's film "Inland Empire" — a rich intertext that never fully reveals its secrets. In the quest to decipher, understand, and organize the chaotic and veiled messages from the director, the author of the book inevitably integrates the film into a broader artistic context and discovers both explicit and hidden parallels with the imagery of other creators from the 20th and 21st centuries: Franz Kafka, Francis Bacon, Lars von Trier, Lewis Carroll, Salvador Dalí, Edward Hopper, Alfred Hitchcock, etc. David Lynch is a unique director who needs no introduction. At the same time, what do we know about the machinery of forming and functioning his films? What are all these strange, absurd, and disturbing images woven from? In the sacred territories of which works of cinema, painting, literature do Lynch's films grow and live? All this and much more enters the problematic field of this book, which lifts the veil on the art, passion, and madness of the creator. Dmitry Pozdnyakov is a researcher of the history and theory of cinema and visual art, and a cultural scientist.