Six Men Getting Sick

Lynch explains on the DVD that he was inspired to make a moving painting and that is just what he did. As per usual with Lynch, there is no explanation for what is going on (actually, with this short, there doesn't even seem to be a reason for what's going on) but it is somehow beautiful in its repetition.

Stills for this 60 second film are available on the Web, and the film itself is shown during the Pretty as a Picture documentary.

The images are quite arresting. Lynch himself said of the project "I always sort of wanted to do films. Not so much a movie-movie as a film-painting. I wanted the mood of the painting to be expanded through film, sort of a moving painting. It was really the mood I was after. I wanted a sound with it that would be so strange, so beautiful, like if the Mona Lisa opened her mouth and turned, and there would be a wind, and then she'd turn back and smile. It would be strange."

By the way, Lynch shared the first-place in the second annual Dr. William S. Biddle Cadwalader Memorial Prize. One of the judges on the panel funded Lynch's next film project, and there it is--the start of a career.

I remember Lynch was once quoted as saying that he was initially a painter, but he wanted the paintings to move, just a little bit, & that's what got him into animation.

This short is a good example of that - it portrays six figures on a wall vomiting, complete with visible internal organs, then catching on fire. The visuals are accompanied by a siren. Originally, the 40 second short was screened on a loop at an exhibition, which ran indefinitely. The DVD of Lynch's short films has it repeated 6 times.

No story, no characters - it really is more like a moving painting than a 'short film', more at home in a gallery as an installation than in a darkened cinema. The crude, but striking, animation style is similar to that which Lynch later used in 'The Alphabet' & 'The Grandmother', although they did include plotlines & characters, bizarre though they were.

Well worth a look, if only to see where this great director's career started.

David Lynch has been one of my favourite filmmakers for most of my life now.

Having seen all of his feature-length films, I finally decided to watch some of the shorts, in chronological order.

"Six Men Getting Sick" had to come first, then, because it's the first movie Lynch made. He made it while in college, and when he intended to become a painter, not a filmmaker. In fact, the cost of making the movie caused Lynch to swear off filmmaking forever, but luckily for us he was tempted back to make another film.

There's not a whole lot to say about this movie. It reminded me less of a short film than a video installation, kind of like a (barely) animated painting. We see six abstracted figures in the background, unmoving, presumably from a painting of Lynch's. Overlaid is some basic animation, mostly showing bright fluid travelling up the figures' bodies and coming out their mouths.

A siren sound plays on a loop all the while.

What is it supposed to say, and what is it about? Who knows. Probably few people will be satisfied with it. I do find that it shares a common thread with much else of Lynch's filmography, though, and that is experimentation. Lynch's movies are always inches away from collapsing into an abyss that always feels like it's just barely being kept off-screen. But there's always light in his movies, too. And that light mostly comes from the joy he gets from experimentation, and invites us to share with him.

Okay, the thing is, this isn't a movie you can really rate on a site like this because a few things need to be taken into account:

1) It was a statue. Some of this is meant to be seen in 3D. 2) It's non-narrative. Even for Lynch, there's no real way to approach it, only "experience it". Which in the case of seeing it in real life, would be vastly interesting, but through the medium of the television it's only slightly so. Think about it like seeing a screensaver picture of the Eiffel Tower instead of being there. You can still appreciate it's magnificence, but you still haven't seen it. 3) It was an experiment. An award winning experiment, but still an experiment.

So for that, it's at least interesting. It honestly makes me want to see the actual set up to get a better idea of what all the various forms helped do for each other (animation, projection, sculpture, painting, etc.). But as a filmed medium, it's just something to sit and watch a while, nod your head in acceptance, and move on.

Still, I'd check it out. The idea behind it is inventive enough that maybe it'll open up more ideas for like experiments or further experiments.

--PolarisDiB