The Films of David Lynch: Early Shorts

Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) (1966) 
Absurd Encounter with Fear (1967)
Fictitious Anacin Commercial (1967)
The Alphabet (1968)
The Grandmother (1970)
The Amputee (1974)

David Lynch was, as you probably guessed, weird right from the start of his directing career. In the years before he made Eraserhead, he directed some very strange short films – as art projects, school projects, etc. – or seemingly just to amuse himself. If you enjoy the works of David Lynch, than these first six shorts are a must-see – not because any of them are truly great (they are not) – but because they certainly do show the roots of Lynch’s career – his dark sense of humor, and his penchant for weirdness.

The first short he ever made was Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) in 1966 – and it was designed to be a “moving painting” – and in doing that, Lynch has succeeded. The film runs about 4 minutes, and is precisely what the title says it is – a moving painting of six men (or figures) who literally vomit, and then the whole process starts again and runs six times. The moving painting is, in a word, weird. The film starts with the six floating heads – and then gradually their internal organs appear, fill with some sort of red liquid, which rises through the bodies and then is vomited out the mouth. On the soundtrack, is the sound of a siren. That’s it, that’s all there is. The film is strange to say the least, and yes it is repetitive by design. It’s also rather haunting and disgusting, again by design. It’s not really a film – but it feels like precisely what it was – a student art project. On that level, it’s interesting, and shows us the fucked up stuff going on in a young David Lynch’s mind. It’s probably of no interest to anyone note a Lynch fan – but to those of us who are, it’s great.

The next film I saw was from the following year - the appropriately titled Absurd Encounter with Fear (1967). It runs all of two minutes – and has a man slowly approach a woman in a field sitting alone in a field. The man stands over the woman – undoes his fly and then starts taking out a series of unexpected items before collapsing. Oh, and the man’s skin is blue. Lynch’s use of horror-film type music here precludes his later films, and he builds a palpable sense of fear and dread throughout the 2 minutes. The whole thing is an experiment to be sure – something a young artist makes to see if he can – and by itself, it’s pretty meaningless. But it’s certainly interesting to see.

Perhaps the biggest oddity of these six shorts was made that same year – entitled Fictitious Anacin Commercial (1967) – and it precisely what the title implies (Lynch’s titles tended to be very literal at this time). For those who don’t know, Anacin is like Aspirin – a headache reliever. The short, 1 minute, film has a man with a pounding headache – another man holding up a box of Anacin, which apparently the first man takes, and he goes from in pain to frolicking in a matter of seconds. It is, in short, precisely like real headache pill commercials – that haven’t much changed in the nearly 50 years since Lynch made the film. The odd part of the film is twofold – the first being that the man with the headache doesn’t just do the typical “touch the side of my head to show I have a headache” thing – but actually writhes around on the ground as if he’s dying. The second is that the man holding the Anacin box doesn’t look like the type of guy you would expect in a commercial like this – he’s older, he has a bushy beard – and Lynch flashes to him so many times holding that Anacin package that it becomes comical. Why did Lynch make this? I have no clue. It’s amusing though.

As strange and somewhat interesting as those first three films are, The Alphabet (1968) is really Lynch’s first real short that is a must-see for fans. A mixture of live action and animation, The Alphabet is a surreal, disturbing film about a young girl’s maturation into a woman. Lynch says the movie was inspired by his wife, whose niece was having a bad dream, and repeating the alphabet song in her sleep. Lynch turns that into the nightmare we see in the film – as the young girl, while sleeping, hears the alphabet song – we see her strange, animated dream – which grows more sexual and disturbing, before the great finale – in which she spews blood. The film is about the terrifying, and bloody, transition to womanhood – and is the first time Lynch seems to working at full capacity. This film was what really put Lynch on the map - and allowed him to make his follow-up film.

Made in 1970, The Grandmother was Lynch’s longest film up to that point by a large margin. Running 33 minutes, The Grandmother, like The Alphabet, tells a terrifying story of a child’s nightmare existence. The young boy in the film is alternately ignored and abused by his uncaring parents. He plants a seed, and from that grows a kindly grandmother – the only person who actually cares about him. Lynch uses no dialogue in the film – the parents speak in animal sounds, which makes them creepier. The birthing sequence of the Grandmother is visceral, bloody and disturbing. Lynch, again, mixes live action with animation to create a terrifying view of childhood – one in which his main character is forced to confront the horrors of what he sees, and move onto in adulthood with no parental love. If someone told me the little boy in The Grandmother grew up to me the main character in Eraserhead – I would believe them.

The final film Lynch made before completing Eraserhead was The Amputee – and unlike The Alphabet and The Grandmother, it’s more of an experiment than anything else. Lynch had already started shooting Eraserhead, but ran out of money. Frederick Elms was at the AFI, and was tasked with testing two different types of black and white video – and Lynch asked if he could shoot something on both for the test. The result is two versions of the same 4 minute short – where a young woman who has had both legs amputated writes a long, meandering, melodramatic letter to someone, while her nurse (Lynch himself – although he may be playing a woman) cleaning up one of the amputated stumps. Things go horribly wrong, and the stump becomes a bloody mess, and the nurse tries to clean it up, while the woman keeps on writing her letter as if nothing has happened. The whole thing is rather amusing, but after both The Alphabet and The Grandmother, kind of a letdown – watching them twice (one on each video type) doesn’t help.
 

Overall, these six early shorts are worth watching for Lynch films – in particular The Alphabet and The Grandmother, which are the two that really show why Lynch built up his reputation before finally completing Eraserhead. The rest are curiosity pieces at best – but if you like Lynch, you know you’re curious.

The Films of David Lynch: Introduction

There are few directors who are more distinctive or unique as David Lynch. Between 1977 and 2006, Lynch directed 10 films – after a brilliant debut with Eraserhead (1977), he struggled a little bit finding his voice in the studio machine with projects like The Elephant Man (1980) – which was a hit, and an Oscar favorite, but not one of Lynch’s best – and the disastrous Dune (1984) – a huge flop, that could have killed his career. Instead he rebounded with his masterpiece Blue Velvet (1986), won the Palme D’or at Cannes with Wild at Heart (1990), and then created one of the most iconic TV series in history in Twin Peaks – and although it ended badly, after just two seasons, it is so well remembered that they are resurrecting it over two decades later. From there, Lynch kept going his own way – his standalone Twin Peaks film, Fire Walk With Me (1992) was seemingly designed to piss off every fan of Twin Peaks (an odd strategy), Lost Highway (1997) was deliberately opaque in ways I have always found frustrating (which is why I look forward to seeing it again – about 15 years after seeing it the last time). His most daring move way well have to make a movie with no surrealism at all – playing it straight as it were, just to prove he could, and doing it brilliantly with The Straight Story (1999). When ABC rejected his pilot episode for a new TV series, he turned it into what I consider to be one of the 10 greatest films ever made – Mulholland Dr. (2001). And then he decided Mulholland Dr. was too normal and mainstream, so he made Inland Empire (2006) – all by himself.

Lynch is unique in that he has relatively few films on his resume as a director – and yet it known to everyone. He has a reputation for being weird – and he does has a strange comic personality, that has lent itself nicely to guest roles on TV shows like The Cleveland Show and Louie among others. While Lynch has pretty much said he is done making movies – he isn’t done directing by any stretch of the imagination. While he only has 10 features, IMDB lists more than 40 directing credits – for shorts, TV series episode, etc. – and Wikipedia adds a few shorts not listed in the IMDB list, as well as several music videos.

This series is going to look back at all of it - a few exceptions aside – like the TV series’ American Chronicles or Hotel Room, which I cannot find, probably a short or two and most likely the Duran Duran concert film, of which I just cannot be bothered (sorry) – or at least as much as I can find. I have been a long-time fan of Lynch’s – but must admit although I have seen all of his features (several times) and the entire run of Twin Peaks (which I will cover – briefly – in one post), I haven’t much delved into his shorts, videos and curiosities yet. From what I have seen, well, let’s just said it makes his features look normal.

As has become a tradition when I do this director retrospectives, here is how I would rank Lynch’s 10 features now, before revisiting. Let’s see if it will change.

10. Dune (1984)

9. The Elephant Man (1980)
8. Lost Highway (1997)
7. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
6. Wild at Heart (1990)
5. The Straight Story (1999)
4. Eraserhead (1977)
3. Inland Empire (2006)
2. Blue Velvet (1986)
1. Mulholland Dr. (2001)

Movie Review: The Look of Silence

The Look of Silence
Directed by: Joshua Oppenheimer.

What Adi wants more than anything is for the people who killed his older brother Ramli to admit what they did was wrong, and show some sort of remorse. How can he, and his family, forgive people who don’t think they did anything wrong? And how can Indonesia move forward as a country, if they fail to deal with their past? Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence is a companion piece to his brilliant documentary, The Act of Killing (2012). In that film, Oppenheimer tracked down many of the men responsible for killing 1 million “Communists” in 1965 – when the military overtook the government, and had so-called gangsters murder their enemies – under the guise that they were all communists, who were working against the state. Oppenheimer didn’t have to look too hard to find these men – everyone knows who they are, and they show no remorse for what they did. Just the contrary really – they are still regarded as national heroes, and many still wield immense power in the country. Oppenheimer gave these men cameras, and asked them to recreate the killings in any way they saw fit – resulting in some stunning sequences in the form of Hollywood genre films. The protagonist in that film, Anwar Congo, seems to at least start to realize what he did all those years ago – something the rest of the men don’t want to acknowledge.

The Look of Silence is a different film. It follows Adi, an optometrist, as he interviews many of those involved in the murder of his brother Ramli – and thousands of others – back in 1965. Adi himself wasn’t alive then – he was born two years later – but the death of the brother he never knew still haunts him – and haunts his two parents. His mother still cries about the loss of her son. His father, old, blind, nearly deaf and senile doesn’t much talk about it at all. Oppenheimer returns to an image – again and again – in the movie of Adi simply watching the footage Oppenheimer previously shot with the men who murdered his brother. They laugh and joke about it, take photos (ironically flashing the “peace sign”) at the site where they castrated his brother before killing him. They show no remorse – and for the most part, take no responsibility. There was always someone above them that they say were giving orders – someone else responsible. Adi watches these videos in concentrated silence. He doesn’t look away.

What he gets when he interviews the various men who killed his brother are denials and threats. Many don’t want to talk about it at all – especially once they realize who Adi is, and why he’s there. They want to know why he’s stirring up the past. One accuses him of communist activity himself – a veiled threat on his life. Their family members are all smiles, until Adi tells them about his brother. Then, they too, start making excuses. He’s old now – senile. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. Whatever he did, it has nothing to do with us. Etc. Many get angry at Adi – want to know why he’s asking them about politics. They tell him he is asking deeper questions than “Joshua” ever did. Oppenheimer is smart enough in this movie to keep silent – even when his name is spoken directly to the camera. He lets Adi take the lead – his questions, and his presence makes the men uncomfortable. They may even start to feel a little guilty. Not that they would ever admit it.

The Act of Killing was one of the best documentaries of recent years – but it wasn’t without its detractors – those who thought he shouldn’t be giving a camera to mass murderers, which could use them as a way to excuse their actions. It was a complaint I never shared – I don`t know how anyone could watch the movie, and think it was excusing the men. Oppenheimer just gave them enough rope to hang themselves with. What that film never really did however was address the victims. That is what The Look of Silence does – but in an interesting way. There are a few scenes with one of the other survivors of the infamous Snake River massacre – and the scenes with Adi's parents, who witnessed their son being taken from them. But it stays on Adi throughout – someone who wasn’t there, because he wasn’t even alive. He is, in a way, trying to take back his country`s history. There is a chilling scene in Adi’s son`s history class, where the teacher praises the men who killed those like Ramli – and uses it as a warning to the students not to go against the government. Adi later asks his son what the teacher taught him – and asks if he mentioned the victims, or the reality of what happened. The son has no idea.

The fact that Adi is an optometrist, who is often given eye exams to the men, works on a thematic level as well. He is trying to get them to see clearly – not just into what’s in front of their face, but also into the country’s, and their own, past. Indonesia needs to deal honestly with what happened, in order for the country to heal and move forward. It’s something few seem willing to do. Oppenheimer’s two documentaries – both of them are brilliant are a start. The Act of Killing has more of an exciting, formal hook to it. The Look of Silence digs deeper even than that film did, and hits even harder. It’s every bit the film the first one was – and then some. That’s saying something.

Movie Review: Alleluia

Alleluia
Directed by: Fabrice Du Welz.
Written by: Fabrice Du Welz & Romain Protat & Vincent Tavier.
Starring: Lola Dueñas (Gloria), Laurent Lucas (Michel), Édith Le Merdy (Marguerite), Anne-Marie Loop (Gabriella), Stéphane Bissot (Madeleine), David Murgia (Père Luis), Héléna Noguerra (Solange), Renaud Rutten (Le réceptionniste), Philippe Résimont (Fritkot man).

There have been four films based on the infamous Lonely Hearts murderers – Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck – of the 1940s. The most well-known is probably Leonard Kastle's The Honeymoon Killers (1969) – one of those rare films by a filmmaker who only made one film to become a sort of classic. One of the best reviewed was 1996ès Deep Crimson (unseen by me) from Mexico. And then there was the more typical, would-be noir Lonely Hearts with John Travolta, Jared Leto and Salma Hayek. Fabrice Du Welz's Alleluia makes you forget those previous versions fairly early on. This is a violent, disturbing almost non-stop assault on the senses that is brutal, bloody, surreal and downright tough to watch. It is a demented love story that shows that sometimes nothing is more dangerous than love.

The movie stars Lola Duenas as Gloria – a single mother, who works in the hospital morgue. Her friend encourages her to try online dating, and she reluctantly agrees – meeting Michel (Laurent Lucas) and having a pleasant lunch – that turns into more when he comes home with her. He asks for some money – a loan, he assures her – which she provides, and then he disappears. But Gloria tracks her – not for retribution, but because she has fallen head over heels in love with him. She quickly realizes what he does for a living – seduces women and then milks them for money – and says she doesn’t care. She will even help.

The movie is split into four parts – one for each of Michel’s marks, including Gloria. Once she gets together with Michel, Gloria abandons everything – her job, her daughter – and sets off with him. It doesn’t take him long to attract another, slighter older rich woman – Marguerite – who he marries, and passes on Gloria as his sister (even though Marguerite wonders why she has a Spanish accent, and Michel doesn’t). But Gloria cannot control her rage when Michel has sex with these other women. Surprisingly, it isn’t Michel who is the violent one, but its Gloria. Yet he continues to try and succeeds – to get other women – and Gloria continues to fly out of control.

As the film moves along, it gets more frantic, more surreal, bloodier and more disturbing. The film has a weird scene where Gloria sings a song, right before she starts cutting up one of the dead bodies. Du Welz uses close-ups, making the pair look monstrous and unreal. They are both unrepentant sociopaths, addicted to doing what they are doing, and addicted to each other. Du Welz makes interesting use of The African Queen in the movie – a great, old school Hollywood love story – to show the difference between Bogart and Hepburn, and these two.

The two lead performances are excellent – especially the one by Duenas, who goes completely unhinged, yet manages to make it all believable. The movie never truly explains why they do what they do – why Gloria is so enthralled with Michel, and vice versa – but it portrays their obsessive relationship well – right up to its disturbing, yet subtle climax. Alleluia is not an easy film to watch or to like – but the further away I get from it, the more I admire it. It goes for broke – and mainly succeeds.

Movie Review: Minions

Minions
Directed by: Kyle Balda & Pierre Coffin.
Written by: Brian Lynch.
Starring: Sandra Bullock (Scarlett Overkill), Jon Hamm (Herb Overkill), Michael Keaton (Walter Nelson), Allison Janney (Madge Nelson), Steve Coogan (Professor Flux / Tower Guard), Jennifer Saunders (The Queen), Geoffrey Rush (Narrator), Pierre Coffin (The Minions).

I have a daughter who is just about 4 years old – and she could not wait to see Minions. Yeah, she wanted to see Inside Out too a few weeks ago, but I was definitely more excited about that film than she was. But every time Minions came on TV in a commercial, she would get excited. While I take my daughter to pretty much all the animated children’s fare that comes out, I am also well aware that most of it is aimed at children older than she is – there is very little aimed directed at her. Minions, however, is. It may well be her favorite movie she’s ever seen in a theater (well, except Frozen – but I’m not sure she even remembers we took her to see that one). Minions is the perfect movie for a 4 year old.

Now whether that means Minions is perfect for anyone else is open for debate. Because the movie revolves around three of those little, yellow, pill shaped creatures who do not speak English, there isn’t much in the way of character development, dialogue or even plot going in during the runtime of Minions. The filmmakers here don’t follow the lead of something like Wall-E – Pixar’s masterpiece, which had very little dialogue for its first half. That film trusted children with things like visual storytelling, which Minions doesn’t. It adds a narrator – Geoffrey Rush – and even if the Minions aren’t saying anything we can understand, they rarely shut up. The main human characters -   super villain Scarlett Overkill (Sandra Bullock) and her husband Herb (Jon Hamm), who the Minions want to work for, can barely get a word in edgewise. Bullock, a gifted comedic performer, isn’t really given anything to do. Hamm fares better, because the filmmakers at least let him be goofy.

The movie is mainly set in the 1960s – or in the movies terms 40 odd years BG (Before Gru), and is basically one 1960s related joke after another, with a soundtrack full of the biggest hits from the era – something, I suppose, designed to evoke nostalgia in any grandparents who happen to be taking their kids to the movie. Some of these jokes are clever, but for the most part, they are thuddingly obvious – and it seems like a missed opportunity to have Hamm in the cast, and not make some Mad Men jokes.

The Despicable Me franchise is one of diminishing returns – the legitimately charming original film remains a lot of fun, but the sequel, and even more so in Minions, is busy and hyper active from the start – and in many ways headache inducing. What started as a clever idea, has gotten old quickly. Audiences don’t seem to mind though – in fact, they are showing up more and more in each passing movie – the original made $251 million, the sequel $368 million, and this one ranked in $115 in its opening weekend. Clearly, 4 year olds are driving many purchasing decisions.

And in the end, I’m not sure I mind that. My daughter had an absolute blast at Minions – and while I didn’t have nearly as much fun, who cares? The movie isn’t for me – it’s for her. The film plays to its target audience – and the member of that audience in my family absolutely loved it. The closer you are to her age, the more you’ll probably enjoy Minions.

Movie Review: Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter
Directed by: David Zellner.
Written by: David Zellner and Nathan Zellner.
Starring: Rinko Kikuchi (Kumiko), Nobuyuki Katsube (Sakagami), Shirley Venard (Older Woman), David Zellner (Policeman), Nathan Zellner (Robert), Kanako Higashi (Michi).

The Coen Brothers Fargo (1996), is one of the best films ever made – and more than any of the brothers other films, represents the portrait of what they call “Minnesota nice” – which runs through a lot of their work. Minnesota nice refers to the gap between how the people in Minnesota appear on the surface, and what they are underneath – which is just as greedy, selfish and violent as anyone else, even if it’s wrapped up in a lot of funny sounding “aw, shucks” and “Oh, gees”. Pretty much everyone in Fargo appears like a nice guy – and yet they’re almost all shits as well.

From another pair of filmmaking brothers – the Zellners – now comes Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, which quite literally starts with the exact same shot as the Coens’ Fargo does – as the first shot of the movie is on a TV, playing an old VHS copy of Fargo, freeze framed on the opening title card announcing that “This is a True Story” – something the Coens’ eventually admitted they made up, because they thought it would sound better. Unlike Fargo however, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter really is based (however loosely) on a True Story – that of  a lonely Japanese woman, who believes that opening title card in Fargo, and comes to America in the dead of winter in search of all that money Steve Buscemi buried next to a fence, alongside a highway in the Coens’ movie. It doesn’t go well for her.

Before Kumiko (Rinko Kikuchi) even gets to America however, the Zellners’ spend a lot of time with her in Japan – where her life isn’t going well anyway. She has got a dead end job, for a boss who is too lazy to fire her, although he does wonder why, at 29, she’s still working there. All the other women either get married and leave, or else advance in their careers – and Kumiko has no desire to do either. There are a series of phone calls with her mother – who is constantly wondering why she hasn’t gotten either a promotion or else engaged. A chance encounter with an old friend at least hints that at one point Kumiko may not have been this anti-social. A scene with her bunny – named Bunzo – is so sad, awkward and hilarious all at once, that the Coens’ themselves would have be proud of it.

From there, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter moves to the Minnesota/North Dakota of the Coen brothers movie – and has Kumiko meet up with a series of eccentric characters, who, on the surface at least, would fit in well in a Coen movie. But whereas the Coens like to expose their hypocrisy – the greed beneath the surface, the Zellners take a more genuine approach. The people she meets – many of whom are nice enough to stop by the side of the road and pick up a lonely, cold stranger – may be a little bit weird – but they are genuinely nice, and do try and help Kumiko. An old woman gives her a place to stay, instead of having to be outside in the cold, a cop tries to convince her that Fargo is just a movie, buys her a meal, and takes her to get a coat – and doesn’t expect anything in return. If Kumiko’s trip ends with inevitable tragedy, that isn’t because of these people who are unfeeling or unkind – but because Kumiko herself is too far gone to be saved.

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is an odd movie to say the least. It moves at a slow pace, and if you don’t get on its weird wavelength, it’s likely going to feel much longer than its 105 minute runtime. Kikuchi delivers yet another brilliant, largely silent performance (she did the same thing in both Babel and The Brothers Bloom – once in drama, once in comedy) – here delivering a portrait of mental illness too far gone, too committed to her beliefs, and unwilling to hear he truth, to be saved. The film is also wonderfully shot – one of those rare movies that makes the cold palpable (something Fargo did as well).
 

Yet as odd as the films gets – and its gets really, really odd in the final minutes – it never loses it connection with its title character – who really does make the movie. She is an odd character to build a movie around, which is perhaps why it works so well. The film is ultimately about a woman who dooms herself – and yet we never lose sympathy for her. That’s a hard trick to pull off, but this movie does it.

Movie Review: What Happened, Miss Simone?

What Happened, Miss Simone?
Directed by: Liz Garbus.

When I watch a movie like What Happened, Miss Simone?, I often wonder just who the documentary is made for. The film does a good enough job of covering the life of the famed singer Nina Simone – who had a tumultuous life and career, and is widely regarded as one of the best singers and performers of her generation. This documentary is at its best when it does nothing but sit back and let Miss Simone take centre stage, and belt out her songs – doing something I have often argued more music docs should do, and actually allow full songs to play out so the audience can see just what it is that makes these musicians so special in the first place that they need an entire documentary made about them. But while the film does do a good job of hitting the big moments of Nina Simone’s life and career, it never really digs into either one that deeply – meaning that those most likely to watch a documentary about Nina Simone – her fans – will likely walk away not having learned all that much. For a Nina Simone layman like myself – the documentary works – and for fans, there is still all the great concert footage, but I cannot help but wonder if the film will end up truly satisfying anyone.

 Nina Simone did have an interesting, eventful life though. A brilliant pianist, whose talent could not overcome the fact that she was black in a racist country, she started playing in bars in the mid-1950s, and had to sing at the same time, or risk losing her job. Her talent was large and immediate, and over the years she had quite a few hits. Throughout the 1960s, she became involved in the Civil Rights movement – going so far to align herself with the Black Panthers, and others who thought violence was necessary if African Americans were to achieve equality – that no one was going to give it. This hurt her career for years afterwards. She also had an abusive marriage – one that ended, but also saw Simone physically abusing her own daughter (an interview subject in the movie).

The film follows a fairly standard issue musical biopic formula – the rise and fall and rise again one that has worked so well in Ray and Walk the Line, among other. If nothing else, it would seem like the life of Nina Simone would fit snugly alongside of those films – and perhaps Nina, starring Zoe Saldana as the singer, will do so when it comes out next year.

As a documentary, I didn’t find What Happened, Miss Simone all that enlightening. By trying to cover Simone’s entire life, so much is simply grazed over – and not given as much attention as it required to be truly great. But even if that could be frustrating at times, there is still that concert footage, which is brilliant – and enough here to make you want to learn more about Nina Simone. On that level, I guess, the film is a success.