Between Precision and Ambiguity: On Finding Your Film Style

The other day, my friend asked me a deceptively simple question: “How do you find your style?”

I paused. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because the question deserved reflection. Style isn’t something you declare—it’s something you discover, often in hindsight.

Then he followed up: “Would you say your style is more David Lynch or Christopher Nolan?”

I smiled. I’ve always admired Nolan’s work—his philosophical layering, nonlinear structures, and obsession with time and identity. In many ways, we speak a similar cinematic language — “Don’t try to understand but feel it.”

But Lynch? I didn’t know him well until someone once asked, “Are you copying David Lynch’s work?” That question lingered. So I dove into his films.

What I found wasn’t just influence—it was kinship. Lynch embraces confusion, contradiction, and the surreal. He doesn’t explain life; he lets it remain mysterious. And I realized: we share the belief that life is very, very confusing—and so films should be allowed to be, too.

I told my friend: “My style lives somewhere between Nolan’s precision and Lynch’s ambiguity.”

“Isn’t that a conflict?” he asked.

“Maybe that is the conflict—but it’s also the richness. One builds scaffolds of logic; the other dissolves them into a dream. I walk the fault line.”

More importantly, I didn’t chase style. I chased the questions that wouldn’t leave me alone.

And if you ask, “How did you do it?” like my friend did, I don’t have an answer or formula.

To explain, I like to share this freewrite I wrote in 2020:

With ancient dragon points to the west, I ride a unicorn with a monkey head to receive a golden crown too big to fall on my neck. So bulky and weighty that people laugh at me with their narrow, envious eyes.  I cry countless nights as thousands of ants crawl under my skin, I ... 

Shall I abandon my crown? 

I cut my wrist three big times to live an everyday life until you find me, and I rise.  I put on the crown now in my size, which shines so bright on people ready to open their eyes.   

If you can hear me ... 

PICK UP YOUR CROWN..  — bear2write

There’s a moment in every life when the mask cracks. Not because it’s broken, but because it was never yours to wear.

I was born with talent. That’s not arrogance—it’s a truth etched into my bones before I knew what it meant. But I learned early that difference makes people uncomfortable. Even my own family—love in their eyes, fear in their hearts—told me to follow the norm.

So I did. I folded myself into the everyday. I played the part. And for a while, it worked—until the joy curdled into isolation. Until the silence around my gift became unbearable.

And then, I rose. That’s when I found my style. That’s when I was reborn—crown in place, light unhidden.

We each have our own crown—strange, heavy, or bright—and decide when to wear it. This is simply where my road has taken me so far. Yours will wind differently, and it should.

#DirectorsJourney #DirectorLife #FaultLineFilmmaking #FindingYourStyle #FilmmakerPhilosophy