The Short Films of David Lynch: A Review? continued
The Concubine pulls her hand out from inside her panties. She's holding what appears to be a severed ear. She looks at it quizzically. 'See what you're doing,' she says. 'You're referencing various films from Lynch's oeuvre. But you're only doing it to look clever when you're not clever at all, because you don't have any idea at all what any of this is about.' And I nod my head in agreement, because that seems the better part of wisdom, given that The Concubine is an aspect of my psyche and arguing with her would be a step on the road to madness, but all the same she is completely wrong. I do know what I am doing. I just don't know why. I'm not sure that Lynch knows why either, or that any creative person does. Why do we breathe? We just do, and when we stop we're dead, and that seems like as good an explanation for the creative impulse as any other. The desire to not be dead.
Is creativity, like ejaculation, an orgasmic and convulsive activity, something over which we have no control, the involuntary flexing of an intellectual or aesthetic muscle? Is this what Lynch is getting at in the scenes of vomiting and bed wetting that punctuate these short films? The chain of evidence stretches out into The Amputee. A woman with two stumps for legs is working on a letter, the words on the page part of a monotone voiceover. The letter is mundane, an account of events that don't matter at all except to the writer, and possibly the recipient, for whom they may be of vital importance, or maybe not. Meanwhile a pony tailed nurse changes the dressing on one stump, only the leg starts to pour with blood, and all the nurse's efforts to staunch the flow are useless, until he runs away, presumably to get help, while the woman is so wrapped up in her own concerns that all of this passes her by. It's played out to a soundtrack of liquid gurgling and background noises of machinery. There are two versions of the film, one that lasts four minutes and another at five, but they seem identical, except in the shorter version the flow of blood is heavier, almost gushing from the wound, and I wonder if Lynch has found some method of collapsing time, so that the same events may be stretched or foreshortened at his whim. Something else that occurs to me, is how do we know that what the woman says in her voiceover is an accurate transcription of the content of the letter she is working on? For all we know she could be an unreliable narrator and the letter could contain something else entirely, perhaps even the text of this review, which I believe I am making up as I go along, but could actually be subliminally suggested to my subconscious mind by Lynch's film. Everything here hinges on our trust in the director, but does Lynch deserve such an unconditional adherence? The woman trusts him, but in the role of nurse it is his carelessness that causes her wounds to open and the blood to spurt.
I wait for the phone to ring so that I can put this question of trust to Lynch himself, but nothing happens. It's as if he knows that I now want to talk to him and so is avoiding me.
And then, just when I have the start of a theory about where these short films are coming from, with the next one he throws it all out of the window. The Cowboy and The Frenchman is a comedy, not even a black comedy, but a satire on cultural stereotypes in which everything is pitched over the top and then some. Slim, the ranch foreman, is deaf, so everybody has to shout at him. He sends two drovers off to lasso the varmint that is coming down the hill. Said varmint turns out to be a Frenchman - the cowboys realise this when, after having removed wine, snails, a model of the Eiffel Tower and sundry other cultural artefacts from his case, they discover a plate of French fries. This is the cause for great rejoicing, as they are joined by first an Indian, and then a group of buckskin and denim clad cowgirls. Cue dancing and partying around the campfire, the strains of Offenbach mingling with Country and Western music in a détente that is agreeably cordial. 'What the heck?' bellows foreman Slim. 'What the heck?' echoes the viewer.
I watch this in a state of almost stunned disbelief, oblivious to everything else, even the blow job that The Concubine is administering by way of re-establishing her reality. All of the short films so far have been disturbing, minatory, but this… This is unacceptable. It alarms not through its content, but simply by the act of existing. It's a context thing. Duchamp made a pissoir into art simply by placing it in an art gallery. Lynch has made the singularly innocuous events and candy cane images of The Cowboy and The Frenchman assume an aspect of menace by placing them on this DVD. When all else is disturbing, it is comedy that best strikes the note of terror, simply by virtue of being different.
The phone rings. I pick up, and hear not the voice of David Lynch but that of The Concubine. She is speaking into my penis, which has been transformed into a mobile phone. No, rather let me say that she is speaking into a mobile phone which, under the hallucinatory influence of Lynch, I had previously thought was my penis, and that she was giving me a blow job. 'Nothing is certain,' says The Concubine, mirroring my own thoughts, and of course given the nature of her existence that is the only option available to her. But why is she phoning me when she is sitting there on the couch next to me? Because it is the only way to attract my attention.
David Lynch is talking about the circumstances that gave rise to the final film, titled simply Lumière. Cinema celebrated its centenary in 1995. To mark the event, Lynch and other directors from around the world were invited to make a short film using the Lumiere brothers' original camera. What follows is 55 seconds (Lynch says 55 minutes and is corrected by someone off camera) shot on grainy black and white stock, successive images of policemen approaching a female body; a woman seated on a couch with an apprehensive look on her face; a naked (and hirsute) woman in a bell jar surrounded by strange, subhuman creatures wearing overalls; a family receiving a policeman, presumably with news of the death of a loved one. And heard over it all there is the rasp of the camera, a handheld device that has to be cranked by the filmmaker. But what does any of it mean? Obviously it's an accident (or murder), and the family of the victim being informed, but what about the woman in the bell jar and her captors, if that's what they are? Do they represent doctors trying to save the woman's life? Or is Lynch alluding to some hellish afterlife, or hinting at an alien abduction and experimentation?
The phone rings. I pick up and say 'Silencio!' before he can speak. 'This is not about you. It's about me.' The Concubine laughs and says, 'Except when it's about you.' And I'm about to reply that you are me, only instead I put the phone down and go over to the computer, power it up and begin to type an article or review (I'm not sure which, as yet) titled The Short Films of David Lynch: A Review?
The Concubine stands behind me, leans in so that her breasts are pressing against my back and arms draped over my shoulders. As I type she reads aloud the words on the screen, and at some point her narration moves ahead of my typing so that she is dictating what I write, but that is okay as she is a part of me, the projection of my own sexuality, and where Lynch is concerned sexuality is always in the mix somewhere.
When I'm done she says that I haven't said what they're about.
I want to tell her that it is not necessary for The Short Films of David Lynch to be about anything. I want to tell her that they're about the consciousness of David Lynch rubbing up against the reality of the world, and that they're also about Lynch's aesthetic sensibility rubbing up against that of the viewer, and so different for each, no one meaning that can be cast in stone. I want to tell her that surrealism is not about anything, but simply exists, and all one can do is record its effects. I want to tell her that when the critic is denied all his usual tools of plot analysis and character rendition, that when he is as hopelessly adrift as everybody else only with an albatross called expertise round his neck, all that remains to him is to attempt to fool the reader with sleight of hand tricks, to entertain as best he can and hope no-one notices that he really doesn't have a clue.
I tell her none of these things, because she knows them before I can articulate them.
Instead I pick up the DVD case and study the notes on the back cover, do the math. Then I tell her The Short Films of David Lynch is about 75 minutes.
It's an old joke, but we both laugh, and so would David Lynch if he was there.
FIN