DYNAMIC:01 — The Best Of DavidLynch.com

U.S.A. | 2007 Directed by David Lynch Featuring David Lynch Emily Stofle Jordan Ladd Color, B&W | 120 Minutes | Not Rated Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC) Subversive Cinema

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6     6   10 = Highest Rating   Guest Review by John Gargonourakis

With the release of 2001's Mulholland Dr., David Lynch achieved both critical and financial success with arguably his most high profile movie since Blue Velvet. (It was also the first time since that masterpiece that he was nominated for an Academy Award for directing). Most filmmakers would take advantage of this situation to ensure studio funding for their dream project, but then again Lynch is not exactly like most filmmakers.     While Mulholland Dr. brought Lynch back into the spotlight, the project actually had troubled beginnings. The film was initially a television pilot that was outright rejected by ABC and Lynch was only able to complete it with the help of French financiers. It is through these events that we begin to understand why Lynch decided to go the self-financed, low budget route. Then again, maybe it shouldn't be so surprising for a filmmaker who began his career with the highly personal Eraserhead and whose biggest studio project, the ambitious yet undeniably flawed Dune, was all but disowned by its creator after its release.     DYNAMIC:01 collects seven of Lynch's short films that were previously available to subscribers of his official website. This is the director returning to his roots, working on a nonexistent budget and casting aside conventional narrative. Being that these are entirely self-financed, Lynch has opted to shoot these shorts on the still controversial format of digital video. It must be said that there isn't much here that really compares to his early art film shorts (all of which are collected on the highly recommended Short Films Of David Lynch DVD). The veteran filmmaker is essentially toying with a new format, and not all of these experiments work.     The Darkened Room: A weird extended prologue with a Japanese woman talking some nonsense about bananas serves as a seemingly unrelated introduction to an eerie scene involving two pretty ladies in the titular room. As can be expected with Lynch, strange things are going on, and we are not given much explanation as to why. This is a pure mood piece, one that is superficially related to Mulholland Drive (a blonde and a brunette engaged in an intense emotional relationship) and that seems to serve as evidence that Lynch's distinctly visual style can indeed translate well to digital video.     Boat: A clever concept (a boat that can apparently navigate between dark and light) that doesn't quite work as a short film, at least not in this form. An anonymous woman narrates the piece, Lynch himself pilots the boat, and it concludes with a series of day and nighttime waves shot at high speeds. Some interesting images towards the end, but the problem is that the short feels long even at just over seven minutes, with a buildup that needlessly drags.     Lamp: David Lynch spends half an hour building a lamp... While it's amusing to see Lynch take one of his legendary coffee breaks, this short is very dull and not really worth your time. I can understand the reasoning behind watching Lynch creating a work of art, but why a lamp? The talented director has also dabbled in painting and sculpture, something that arguably would have proved much more interesting. I guess this is Lynch's offbeat humor showing through again, although whether or not this is funny to anyone else aside from him is debatable.     Out Yonder - Neighbor Boy: After a questionable entry, Lynch delivers what I believe to be the masterpiece of this collection. Two elderly Southern men (one of them played by the director) sit around talking about the neighbor boy and his fondness for milk. They speak in weird high-pitched voices and start every sentence with some variation of the words be or bein'. Some computer-generated special effects and sound experiments really enhance the experience. It's about as strange as it sounds, and the humor certainly isn't for all tastes, but this is a real treat for fans of Lynch’s theater of the absurd.     Industrial Soundscape: Aside from being a talented filmmaker, Lynch has also proved to be equally gifted in scoring his films. Although most of the memorable themes and orchestrations are handled by his numerous collaborations with composer Angelo Badalamenti, Lynch's work on a lot of the more subtle atmospheric tracks are arguably just as strong. This ten minute piece is very much in the vein of his work from Eraserhead, and in fact the short utilizes a picture from those sessions that the filmmaker slightly alters over the course of the running time with digital effects. Not really much happens visually, but if you're a fan of Lynch's soundscapes, the result is a darkly hypnotic gem, one that reveals the filmmaker's obsession with industry and machinery.     Bug Crawls: Another somewhat failed experiment, this is a simplistic five minute short in which a small bug crawls over the silhouette of a house, falls and lands on its back. The only real points of interest are the creepy sound effects and the final shot, which shows the door of the house slowly opening to reveal a ominous white light with some unseen mechanical workings buzzing inside.     Intervalometer Experiments: The final short on this collection is a series of time-lapse photography experiments that deal with unpopulated areas and the change of light and shade over the course of time. Some interesting imagery, but little else.     It's very hard to rate such a collection of shorts and even harder to recommend them to anyone. As a diehard fan of Lynch's work over the years, I have to admit that I'm slightly disappointed with some of the content on this collection, with only three of the seven shorts really displaying any real replay value. While most of these shorts are uneventful experiments that show a director testing the waters of a new medium, Darkened Room, Out Yonder and Industrial Soundscapes are all worth the price of admission and have the filmmaker revisiting familiar themes. I suspect that those that are not as enthusiastic about Lynch's work will be even less kind that I am. Fans will want to check out some of this material for the occasional flashes of brilliance but it's not recommended for anyone other than Lynch completists.

Copywrited 2006 by Absurda and distributed by Subversive Cinema, DYNAMIC:01 is a fairly barebones affair. First off, being that all of these shorts are filmed on digital video and that the oldest only dates back about four years, this collection is very consistent visually. One of Lynch's most notable characteristics as a filmmaker has been his eye for arresting imagery, and while this collection sometimes displays the limitations of the digital medium, things look very good for the most part. The audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo and free of any noticeable defects. The main extra is an all-too brief feature where Lynch fields some general questions that members of his website have posed to him — fairly worth seeing, although those interested into the inner workings of this artist are advised to seek out the excellent interview book Lynch On Lynch for a more comprehensive study. The other real extra this collection has to offer is far more engaging... All of the seven shorts are preceded by a brief introduction by their creator. While it may not add up to much in content, the notoriously distant Lynch has often avoided giving any real explanation to some of his more cryptic work. These now familiar introductions (also present on The Short Films Of David Lynch disc) are perhaps the closest to a proper DVD commentary that we will get from the man. 5/03/07

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