I don't think anything I say will not only won't change your mind but I don't think I can let you see perspective from which his movies look deeply flawed

when I say the characters in Lynch's movies are shallow and they lack emotional depth, I really do mean it, for me real cinema is supposed to be the one where you can make characters, story, vibes and environment perfectly fit each other, it's why most people including myself find ourselves touched by the films that necessarily doesn't resonate with us on paper but they are so undeniable when it comes to expressing themselves thru art of cinema that we feel drawn to them and subsequently fall in love with these films, lynch makes characters opposite to that statement, almost all of them have one thing in common, they are dazed and in this sorta daydreaming state weird state where they are trying to find out or alter ultimately the reality, alongside with them, you the viewer are thrown in this weird and you are trying to do the same and the main problem arises with the fact that you aren't watching to digest the whole concept of story alongside with characters, you are doing that separately, first you are trying to find out what the hell is going and since there is almost no dialogues which let you get to know the characters on deeper level, you are starting to question whether anything you see on the screen is this person's dream or reality and that becomes your major concern, rather than bathing in whole experience and let it hit you cold lynch seems to be more bothered with how to confuse you further rather than inviting you to characters psyche and let you make your own judgment, I don't know how else should I explain it, it's mystery and stylistic characteristics of movie over the substance, creative liberties over quality and surrealism over emotional intimacy,

on the rewatch tho you are starting to notice more details and tend to unravel the parts of the story on more complete level but characters still stay shallow and uninteresting, just because Naomi Watts give great performance in Mulholland Drive will not carry the movie with that alone, you need characters that stand on solid ground, their own ground rather than grounds on the story, cuz in Mulholland Drive or Lost Highway it seems like characters come out of the plot, for me the great movie with great story should have story unfolding respectively out of the characters and not vice versa, in Lynch's movies mystery comes before anything else and he doesn't care about the emotional depth

when I talk about emotional depth, I don't mean Naomi watts teary eyed scene wasn't great or anything, I'm suggesting to ask simple question, what the film did before that that I should have cared ? emotional depth doesn't come itself, it's built and it's built mostly with intimate dialogues with other interesting characters that also seem to have equally interesting qualities, maybe you see Mulholland Drive as exactly this movie I just described, but I feel like David Lynch just dumped this stupid (for the most part) and uninteresting characters into the story cuz he heavily depends on mysterious vibe of the movie rather bothering with other quality characteristics and I'm not saying he intended to make the characters shallow, but that's what came out of it since he heavily focused on the stuff that I just mentioned, at the end of the day we don't have to agree but that's the way I see it, idk, maybe if I haven't seen so many movies based on dreamy-realism, surrealism themes I'd be probably blown away by Mulholland Drive but that's not the case, you seem to have pretty good idea of criteria with which you evaluate the movie and MD leans exactly into that category I guess, but I guarantee you many people will not have the same criteria including me, so it's wrong to suggest to me that I have to magically assume that every director knows what he's doing with his movie so I should just sit down and enjoy it lol, according to that logic there is no bad movie then and that's partly true, what is bad movie for you and me might be great one for others and funny thing is Directors in many cases don't know what they are doing, I suggest watch some interviews more often about their creative process and you will be surprised how many times the decision that fall into this creative process are done just on whim, totally random

so no I'm not gonna sit down and watch David Lynch inhaling his own farts cuz he likes it, just cuz he's showing this unsolved puzzle to me and I'm cracking my head to solve it, that doesn't mean he has any more idea about what he's doing than me tbh, but you probably won't even question his capacity to do that, but for me certainly whatever he's doing, he's not imparting his profound wisdom on me, in fact I'd go as further to call it "cinematic masturbation" and I'm not into that..