November 20 - 24, 2024 at the 4 Star

“What do you fear most in the world?”

“The possibility that love is not enough.”

This brief exchange between characters in Twin Peaks feels like the ultimate expression of Lynch’s career. His films frequently depict warped, alien versions of reality. American cities, neighborhoods, and streets paint the soul of worlds that feel irrevocably broken, if they were ever anything whole in the first place. In many of Lynch’s films, we see the battle between light and dark, love and fear, and the way this plays out in moments of both extreme tenderness and deep revulsion. In some of these movies, good triumphs over evil and the power of human resilience allows these characters to return home; changed but still in tact.

This month, the 4-Star will be playing four movies by the master where these characters can’t go back home.

In Love Is Not Enough: 4 Nightmares by David Lynch, we screen four of Lynch’s darkest, bleakest stories. The reoccurring theme threading these films together are bonds between lovers, family members, and friends that are simply incapable of repairing the cursed trajectory of a horrifying universe. Relationships shatter, people die, and time gets warped forever. These films do not offer an escape from the terror of the outside world, but perhaps they allow us some catharsis in it. To find comfort and beauty in the void by staring into it directly. These are nightmares, but they are also funny, exciting, and poignant. They are also some of the most endlessly rewatchable movies ever created.

Love will probably never be enough, but maybe it doesn’t have to.