THE SHORT FILMS OF DAVID LYNCH
In this time of impeccable home theatre and sterile (yet filthy) multiplexes, some of the fetishistic ephemera of film love is greatly diminished, particularly the psychic feel of moving light projected upon a screen. I had a chance to get back in touch with this fix at Relative Theory Records when they screened the short films of David Lynch. Not only is it a thrill to see something like this projected (I deeply envy my friends with projectors), but it was enhanced by the fact that this is not something often shown outside of the dens of home collectors. David Lynch’s textural visual style is particularly enhanced when projected (not for nothing was “Eraserhead,” his 1977 feature debut, considered the last real midnight movie phenomenon), and the screen tonight was a wrinkled white sheet, adding bonus texture. Not just the visual but also the aural texture was embroidered by the fact that this occurred on top of a nightclub, adding the rumble of Black (blech) Eyed Peas bass lines to the Lynch shorts. While Lynch is sometimes upheld as the stereotype of art school filmmaking (and this is not inaccurate), seeing his introductions gives a fuller picture of his persona. The Eagle Scout speaks in a cultivated plainspoken, nasal style that almost seems a reaction against the stereotype of artistic snobbery. He is so simple and explanatory that it is easy to miss the slight stylization of these aspects that shape his peculiar deadpan humor. While his work provides prime examples of the mainstream-inaccessible tone that made the National Endowment for the Arts so controversial for a time, his work ultimately feels shaped by Americana more than detached from it. His critiques and subversions are felt, not disaffected parodies. Within artistic communities and within individual artists, there is a fuzzy divide between instinctive, intuitive lines of work and expression versus intellectualized affectations of the same. Lynch’s process is the former. Lynch’s first foray into moving image is thus based on the most natural instinct imaginable: he wanted to see his paintings move. This impulse led to 1966’s “Six Men Getting Sick,” an installation that is more an art object (though it does move and progress in a way a single image cannot convey) than any of his later works collected on the DVD. The screen was a square, three dimensional sculpture by Lynch featuring facial casts of the titular men. Projected upon this special canvas is a 60 second loop depicting, through pleasing, hand-painted colors, staggered animation, mixed media and flashes, the figures’ stomachs being agitated and getting sick. Lynch’s gift for painting with sound was already developing in the simple, effective (and irritating before too long) grating noise repetition that accompanies the loop. Lynch’s insomnia in this period is unsurprising, reflective of his creative patterns and evolving brand of surrealism, or more specifically dream horror. His early films confirm that he is, as much as anything (though certainly not limited to), a horror director. His horror, however, is uncannier and more psychologically disconcerting than, say, the commercially conceived grindhouse fare of the 60s and 70s. 1968’s “The Alphabet” establishes this side of Lynch in a work based on his speculation of a nightmare suffered by a niece of his wife at the time, during which the terrified girl repeated the alphabet in her sleep. Primarily animated, with bloody images of his wife as the dreaming girl, this short journey through letters and trauma is as startling and inexplicable as a nightmare should be. “The Grandmother” is the most accomplished piece on the disc, in its way a more distilled, jarring and affecting work than Eraserhead. Lynch achieves his finest combination of painted animation, live footage animation, and actual footage. Backgrounds (when not outside, all shot in one black room) are black, and other colors are drained (with a cold bluish pall about them), with splashes of vivid color in red lips, orange urine, and disgusting fluorescent food (Lynch recalls fellow mediumfucker Jan Svenkmeyer in his inspired ability to make food viscerally repulsive), casting doubt upon the visual novelty of Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s 2005 “Sin City.” Biological events are animated with the tubular motif present from his previous works. Characters are birthed from earth and tree (though not always without amniotic guck). Parents are monstrous and animalistic, barking like dogs, moving like vicious animals or despicable humans, drinking and preening and beating and smothering. What’s a boy to do but pour soil on his bed and plant a tree that pops out a loving grandmother? “The Grandmother,” in addition to being Lynch’s most developed and resonant short work, is one of his greatest sound achievements. Before he began utilizing actual dialogue, Lynch layers textural and musical sound effects to convey the mood and events of his story. Despite the mixed media, non-verbal soundscape and fantastic story, “The Grandmother” requires a heroic aversion to the semi-abstract not to follow. After the complete experience of “The Grandmother,” an early masterwork, anything might inevitably feel like filler, but it is unfortunate that 1974’s “The Amputee” serves as an illustration of just how boring experimental shorts can be. Altruistically, one would like to wish that such films could be regularly shown outside of film festivals and classrooms. After seeing a handpicked smattering of these shorts at different times in different states of sobriety, I was eager to see the whole collection projected on a screen dead sober (caffeinated at that). Having now done so, I’m not sure I can completely recommend it. It sets in that these, for one thing, are each meant to be viewed independently, and the impact is somewhat diluted by watching six of them back to back. It also points out the setbacks of experimental film, that is that it is experimental, the outcome is unknown, and rather than a fully developed experience like “The Grandmother,” experimental films are more often an obscure pastiche of theoretical technique and bizarre scenario (or lack thereof) compiled to determine the impact rather than actively conducting said impact. This is why most experimental film that does surface comes from artists who later telescope into features such as Lynch, Peter Greenaway, or Luis Bunuel. It enables one to view the alienating effects of short experiments through the retroactive influence of their later, more accessible work. “The Amputee” proves to be little more than a boring experiment, likely devoid of any fascination outside of its place in the Lynch continuum. There is only one shot. Catherine E. Coulson is Woman With Ampuation To The Legs. Lynch himself is Unable and Scared Nurse. She sits, smokes, and writes a letter as we here her voiceover deliver vague references utterly uninteresting to anybody besides the hypothetical intended recipient. Meanwhile, he shows up, starts undressing and cleaning one of her amputations, causing blood to spill as she continues writing and narrating, accompanied by the sounds of the pouring fluid. Reading that last sentence must be more entertaining than the surprisingly dull enactment of it. The whole thing is done twice with different types of videotape. “Persona” this is not, but it is a hastily concocted scene made for the purpose of comparing the image quality (as opposed to an organically conceived artistic effort). In the interests of full disclosure, you can dismiss my disparaging remarks on “The Amputee” on the grounds that I did not watch the whole thing. I was part of the 40 percent of the crowd (two of us) who decided that we could skip watching the same dull scene a second time and smoke a cigarette. By the time I had returned, enriched but decidedly exhausted by a large dose of early experimental Lynch shorts, I was thankfully relieved by “The Cowboy and the Frenchman.” After all that art, it was nice to see a goofy television show with Harry Dean Stanton as a near-deaf cowboy who has a Frenchman wander onto his ranch, eventually leading to a heartwarming cross-caricultural exchange. Here is the most lighthearted expression of the Lynch humor aesthetic. Where Jim Jarmusch occasionally mistakes long pauses, repetitions, and semi-sequiturs alone as distinctive humor, Lynch perfects the style by crafting a logic and rhythm out of the elements, lampooning the broad elements of both cowboy and Frenchman mythos in American junk culture. The DVD collection of his short films is completed with Lynch’s contribution to the 1996 collection “Lumière and Company,” in which the hundredth anniversary of cinema was celebrated by offering 40 directors worldwide the opportunity to shoot one minute of film on the original hand cranked camera of the Lumière brothers. After such a full 96 minutes, what to say about this last minute? It’s creepy, with dead bodies and cops and a possibly dead naked woman in a big tube full of water. It’s good, as is the whole thing, particularly “The Grandmother,” which is more than good, it’s excellent. -George Booker to add to this article, send to: admin@opencityforums.org |