David Lynch: Doubles & Fractured Identity

In a David Lynch film, identity can begin to shift before a character changes their name or face. The unease often comes through performance: a repeated line carries a different meaning, another person seems to know too much, or a voice no longer appears to belong to the body we are watching.

For the third session of our David Lynch month, Sammy Holden will use the Mystery Man sequence from Lost Highway to examine how Lynch unsettles our understanding of Fred. We will look at the scene’s isolated eyelines, the party sound falling away and the calm delivery of an impossible conversation.

Working in small groups, we will create one character in three versions: the person they present to others, the fear they keep private and the version projected onto them by somebody else. Each group will then write a short exchange in which those identities begin to overlap.

Nobody…