"The Grandmother", at thirty-three minutes, was the longest short movie David Lynch had yet made, after "Six Men Being Sick" and "The Alphabet", which both only went for a few minutes. Like "The Alphabet", it combines animation with live action, and there are some interesting touches that seem to bridge the gap between the two, e.g. Some of the footage is deliberately jerky as though the actors are moving in stop-motion.
The movie also has a plot, which couldn't be said for either of the director's previous movies: a boy chronically wets his bed, which isn't surprising considering the traumatic situation he is forced to live in, with abusive parents. For some reason the urine stain on his white sheet is too orange to be healthy urine and looks like a map of Japan. Is this another attempt to make live action look like animation? Anyway, his brutish father often grabs him and rubs his face in the stain.
He finds seeds, plants them, and grows himself a grandmother. The seen where the grandmother is "born" out of what looks like compost is kind of gross.
I'm not sure how the story ends. I don't know if it really does. Perhaps I just didn't understand it, or wasn't paying attention.
When you watch a director's early movies you look for threads that connect them with their more famous work. "The Alphabet" showed Lynch's talent for conveying joy in experimentation, as does "The Grandmother", I suppose. But what I found more impressive than that was that it showcases his ability to make the truly bizarre and surreal emotionally affecting. That's one of his true gifts.
The movie also has a plot, which couldn't be said for either of the director's previous movies: a boy chronically wets his bed, which isn't surprising considering the traumatic situation he is forced to live in, with abusive parents. For some reason the urine stain on his white sheet is too orange to be healthy urine and looks like a map of Japan. Is this another attempt to make live action look like animation? Anyway, his brutish father often grabs him and rubs his face in the stain.
He finds seeds, plants them, and grows himself a grandmother. The seen where the grandmother is "born" out of what looks like compost is kind of gross.
I'm not sure how the story ends. I don't know if it really does. Perhaps I just didn't understand it, or wasn't paying attention.
When you watch a director's early movies you look for threads that connect them with their more famous work. "The Alphabet" showed Lynch's talent for conveying joy in experimentation, as does "The Grandmother", I suppose. But what I found more impressive than that was that it showcases his ability to make the truly bizarre and surreal emotionally affecting. That's one of his true gifts.