Director Report Card: David Lynch (2007)

14. Dynamic:01: The Best of DavidLynch.com

In 2001, David Lynch launched his own website. DavidLynch.com was an early example of a filmmaker self-distributing over the internet, which dovetailed with Lynch's newfound fascination with digital video. Accessible only to paying members, a model Lynch was also an early pioneer of, this website would soon become a way for the director to release a number of strange new projects. Deranged animations, surreal on-going series, exclusive DVDs and CDs, and countless short films of varying styles would soon be made available to loyal Lynch fans. In 2007, a DVD collection of several of the shorts that debuted on the site would be released. Initially available only to subscribers, the disc would eventually receive a wider release. As with “The Short Films of David Lynch,” IMDb lists “Dynamic:01: The Best of DavidLynch.com” as a feature, which is why I am reviewing the collection here.

The presentation begins with “Darkened Room.” Beginning as a series of correspondence with Etsuko Shikata – a Japanese friend of Lynch's – about life in Tokyo, the film soon veers towards something much more sinister. A woman in a nightgown sits in a dark room littered with strange objects. She cries and seems distressed. Soon, another woman enters and begins to say some very mean-spirited and cryptic things to her. Suggesting Lynch's friendship with Eli Roth was rubbing off on him, the short also stars Jordan Ladd as the imprisoned woman and Cerina Vincent as her apparent captor. (One can't help but notice Ladd is also the daughter of a former Lynch collaborator.) Both give fittingly emotional performances.

Like many of the projects to emerge out of DavidLynch.com, “Darkened Room” seems to be something Lynch threw together quickly in his intuitive, dream-logic driven fashion. The early scenes of Etsuko talking about her apartment and bananas doesn't seem to connect to the later sequences. Even the style of shooting is different, as the beginning is in a handheld documentary style and the second half is more traditionally filmic, with proper lighting and deliberate visual tableus. (Like a ventriloquist dummy, laying sprawled on the floor.). If you find this sort of experimental tinkering frustrating, be prepared to get a whole lot more irritated as we go through this DVD.

Yet, taken as a simple mood piece, “Darkened Room” is properly eerie. Through a typically rumbling sound design and a moody visual presentation, Lynch manages to make the image of a woman sitting in a room unnerving. The dialogue is, unsurprisingly, vague but threatening enough to make an impression. A single shot of a strange man hiding behind a door, a classically Lynchian image, even suggests a more direct mood of horror. “Darkened Room” obviously connects with the themes of imprisoned women seen in “Inland Empire.” (A hole torn in silk is glimpsed in both.) The interaction seems, to me anyway, to suggest this is a story of a woman held captive by her own feelings of guilt and shame over some past event. It's an effective, if oblique, ten minutes.

Next we are presented with “Boat.” As with “The Short Films of David Lynch,” these shorts are accompanied by short interviews with Lynch, where he discusses the backstory of the films. (Though never their meaning.) “Boat” began as a simple home movie of Lynch taking his boat out for a ride before the director mutated it into something else. Footage of Lynch preparing his boat and riding it out onto a lake is paired with narration from Emily Stolfe, the director's then-girlfriend.

Lynch describes “Boat” only as a “journey into night.” There's not much in the way of a narrative, as Stofle describes a dream over water-splashed image of Lynch boating. Yet there is something engrossing about this brief excursion, even with the washed-out visual palette. The idea of a boat outrunning the dark, paired with shots of speeding water and rumbling motors, is an interesting one. There's something poetic to the conclusion, even coming off as sweetly romantic, as Lynch and the unseen Stofle seem to outrun whatever feeling is pursuing them. Stofle's whispered words are interesting to listen to. “Boat” operates most like music, a collection of sounds and images coming together to successfully create a particular feeling of loneliness, unease, and eventual catharsis.

The third short in the collection is even less of a traditional movie than the proceeding two. In addition to everything else, David Lynch is an artisan and carpenter. When not doing the other weird shit he does, he creates all sorts of crafts and odd visual art. Most recently, he's been documenting these projects on his Youtube channel. “Lamp” is a predecessor to those most recent videos. It's a thirty minute long documentary depicting Lynch constructing an artistic lamp from wood, plaster, and paint.

“Lamp” is the kind of miscellany that will only appeal to the most hardcore of Lynch fanatics. The short documentary's artistic merit is minimal. The bouncy electronic score quickly becomes repetitive. Really, you can determine how interested you are in watching David Lynch build a lamp just by reading that sentence. If you are a nerd like me and find Lynch's eccentric persona endearing, you'll likely have some fun with “Lamp.” The particular way Lynch enunciates brand names, like Duraskin or FlexFit, is amusing. The most interesting thing about “Lamp” is the digressions, when Lynch starts talking about his coffee break, finding time to reflect, or a wooden sink with an unexpected secondary feature he's created. Because watching Dave paint or rub on plaster only goes so far, especially when spread out over thirty whole minutes.

DavidLynch.com was also home to a number of absurd, sometimes obnoxious comedic endeavors. Such as “Out Yonder,” a three part black-and-white series in which Lynch and his son, Austin, play helium-voiced eccentrics. They wear wool caps, sit outside, and pepper each sentence with the word “bees bein'.” The first of these “Out Yonder” episodes, “Neighbor Boy,” is included in this set. It depicts David and Austin's simpleton characters being interrupted by an unseen and monstrous boy from next door, who disrupts their peace in increasingly weird ways.

“Out Yonder: Neighbor Boy” is the kind of absurd, surreal dumbassery that truly divides Lynch devotes. This level of knowing, obnoxious stupidity can be deeply irritating to many people. “Out Yonder,” with its senseless plot, repetitive dialogue, and ridiculous situation, can indeed test the patience. Yet I found myself chuckling a lot through this nine minutes of pure silliness. The image of an enormous neighbor child that demands milk in a gurgling voice, casting his huge shadow on the wall, is appropriately surreal. The ridiculous dialogue admittedly made me laugh. The increasing pointless weirdness of the events also got me to smile, especially the abrupt conclusion. It's less annoying than “DumbLand,” if nothing else. (And "Neighbor Boy" is definitely the funniest of the three "Out Yonder" episodes, as the other two are more grotesque or go on far too long.)

“Dynamic:01” grows even more experimental with its fifth short, “Industrial Soundscape.” (Those two words could really be used to describe a lot of David Lynch's stuff, couldn't they?) As Lynch explains in the introduction, it is an image of an industrial installation he fall in love with that was about to be demolished. He took a picture of it, took it home, and Photoshopped it into a moving image. He then created a piece of ambient, industrial music to accompany the image. In other words, “Industrial Soundscape” is ten minutes of pistons banging on the ground or a metal shed, while the rumbling environment around it grows louder and more atmospheric.

Taken as a traditional film, “Industrial Soundscape” obviously grows tedious pretty quickly. It's literally a two second loop repeating for ten minutes. Instead, this experiment – which is what Lynch calls it in the introduction – is better observed as mood setting. Imagine this playing in some sort of art exhibit or museum installation, accompanying Lynch's paintings or sculptures. The industrial sounds and atmospheric noise certainly puts you in the right mood to receive whatever surreal visions the director could create.

This interest in Photoshop animation continues with the sixth short in the set, “Bug Crawls.” A black, shed-like structure stands in an vacant, blasted-out field of some sort. Black smoke slowly wafts out of a chimney. A blimp passes overhead in the gray, fogged-out skies. A large, cockroach-like insect of some sort crawls over the building. Lightning occasionally strikes in the background. It's almost-five minutes of crackling sound design, sinister music, surreal images, and spooky atmosphere.

Again, there's only so much to be said about an experiment like “Bug Crawls.” There's no narrative, unless you immediately find yourself invested in the question of whether the big bug can make it over the building. The final image of the short, which is yet more Lynchian industrial noise, certainly feels something like a climax. Yet this does not otherwise act like a traditional movie. The animation is interesting. It generates a certain mood in the viewer, of sparse dread and isolation. Yet, like so much of the stuff that came out of DavidLynch.com, it feels like the director just playing with some new technology. “Bug Crawls” is most interesting for the way it proceeds some of the stranger touches from “Twin Peaks: The Return.”

Lynch's tendency to just fool around with his latest toys is also on display in the final short included in the “Dynamic:01” package. “Intervalometer Experiments” is exactly that, Lynch experimenting with his intervalometer, time-lapse cameras. In other words, it's three stationary shots of every day objects. We see a valley fade into darkness as the sun sets. A shadow of a tree passes over a stone staircase. The trees outside a window in Lynch's dining room blow in the wind, the sun slowly setting around them. All three sequences are accompanied by moody, creepy music.

What more can be said about these experiments? Of the three, “Steps” is definitely my favorite. Honestly, there's a certain level of cinematic dread summoned here, as the sinister shadow intrudes over the mundane image of the step. Obviously, the music plays a great deal in creating this particular feeling. Though it's really almost nothing at all, I'll admit I do feel a little bit of that Lynchian sense of horror in “Steps.” However, I don't get much of anything out of the other two. “Intervalometer Experiments” is one of the few David Lynch films you can watch in fast-forward and miss almost nothing. The regular presentation runs thirteen minutes, which is definitely tiring.

“Dynamic:01: The Best of DavidLynch.com” is definitely a frustrating collection. The experimental nature of many of the shorts means there's not much to sink your teeth into. Everyone but the biggest fans of the director will probably be annoyed, bored, or simply unaffected by most of the shorts here. Like any “best of” collection, whether these shorts are the “best” of anything is debatable. Many of my favorite DavidLynch.com shorts – like Lynch's mystical musings while cooking quinoa or a really creepy shot of a pig monster walking across a stage – are not included here. (Though, thankfully, prankish shorts devoted to ants crawling over a dead mouse or blurry, webcam footage of a coyote wandering into Lynch's living room are excluded.) The DVD is, honestly, most worth buying for a special feature: A collection of short clips of Lynch answering questions from fans. Listening to Dave expound on cappuccino or Roy Orbison is very insightful and, perhaps, more entertaining than any of the proper shorts included here. In short, “Dynamic:01” is really only for the most hardcore of fans. [Grade: C+]