Lynch/Oz (Alexandre O. Phillippe, 2022, USA)

Lynch/Oz is a 2022 documentary by Swiss documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe, which centers on the relationship between David Lynch’s films and Victor Fleming’s 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. The investigation stems from an interview with Lynch in which he stated that not a day goes by that he does not think of The Wizard of Oz. Philippe has become the documentarian of the decade as it pertains to documentaries about classic horror films and genre films, and Lynch/Oz fits well into his ouevre. As with many of his films, Philippe breaks the film into multiple segments, all centered around particular interviewees. In this case, the interviewees are critic Amy Nicholson, and filmmakers John Waters, Rodney Ascher, Karyn Kusama, David Lowery, and Justin Benson/Aaron Moorhead.

Anyone casually familiar with Lynch’s work will know that Lynch often references The Wizard of Oz, most explicitly in 1990’s Wild at Heart. Casual fans may be surprised to realize how deep the influence in Lynch’s filmmaking goes. With the interviewees, sometimes the relationship between these two elements is not always so articulated, and the interviews more resemble a sounding board about various influences. As with most of Philippe’s films, Lynch/Oz incorporates hundreds of clips, many of which are from films unrelated to Lynch or The Wizard of Oz.

The odd thing about the film is that much of the discussion seems far more devoted to The Wizard of Oz than to David Lynch, and one wonders if the film would have been better served just as an examination of that film and its cultural influence, with Lynch just being one part of its cultural influence. The interviewees often seem more excited to talk about Wizard, and talk about it more at length, than talking about Lynch’s films. That being said, the film’s examination is still interesting and worth watching.

7/10