Dynamic: 01

This is the third David Lynch DVD that I have reviewed in recent weeks after Dumbland and LYNCH (one) with Scanbox Entertainment obviously spotting a niche market for all things Lynchian, no matter how strange and obscure.  Lynch is the master of abstraction, fitting it into all but his most mainstream films (such as The Straight Story).
 
David Lynch has his own subscription-based website where fans can see him give weather reports in Los Angeles, talk to him on the message boards and see short projects.  This DVD gathers six short films and projects that originally debuted on his website and presents them here, each with an introduction by Lynch and some questions from the site at the end.
 

Lynch being Lynch, none of these relate to one another and are about as abstract as you can get.  The first piece, The Darkened Room, begins in Tokyo with Etsuko Shikata telling you about bananas before moving to footage of a distraught woman in a dark and foreboding apartment.  The second, Boat, is narrated by Lynch's wife Emily Sofle and features Lynch in his boat going so fast that it becomes night.  This is followed by the longest of the segments, appropriately called Lamp and documents the director adapting a lamp by putting dyed Fix-It-All (a plaster substance) up the stem.  Up next is Up Yonder - Neighbor Boy where Lynch and his son Austin Jack sit and speak in distorted voices whilst dressed as hillbillie.  The final two, Industrial Soundscape and Bug Crawls, hark back to Eraserhead with heavy industrial noise and strange animation to create a thoroughly oppressive atmosphere that can be difficult to sit through.
 
The rest of the disc features pieces of time-lapse photography in and around Lynch's studio and then the Q&A sessions that have been edited together.
 
I possibly made a mistake by watching this all in one go as I felt like someone had taken an egg whisk to my brain by the end!  This is definitely something to watch in instalments, either going for the animated featurettes, Lamp or the first two, just not all at once.  Even with my mind in an increasingly muddled and disturbed state, I found these fascinating with the possible exception of Lamp that was only interesting as it showed another side to David Lynch, a man who likes interior decorating when he's not dreaming up weird and wonderful movies.
 


I really liked The Darkened Room, a genuinely conceptual piece that is similar to Inland Empire in the jarring images and disturbing imagery.  The Boat is equally odd but the narration is fantastic and it almost makes sense!  Lamp starts off interesting but is too long and the music becomes annoying after a while; a sure case where less would be more.  Up Yonder is vaguely comedic and takes some getting used to as the language and distorted delivery are hard to take in at first.  The two animated pieces are fascinating with Industrial Soundscape like a long Nine Inch Nails video, with Bug Crawls more 'user friendly' - neither would be out of place showing in the Tate Modern on a loop, more as conceptual modern art than anything else. 
 
Fans of Lynch's work will probably get a kick out of seeing these and will make up their own minds as to which are the best and will watch the most.  Even if you are a subscriber to DavidLynch.com and have already seen these, owning them on DVD to watch on a bigger screen is something worth considering and probably an essential purchase.
 
I can't comment about the disc itself as I was only provided with a DVD-R with everything written as one track and chapter breaks every 10 minutes.  I imagine the retail version will have a menu so you can choose what you want to watch.  The content is for ardent fans of David Lynch only though casual fans may find the Q&A portion interesting