The Grandmother

No matter how cynical you make think this film is, it is very realistic in what our world looks like as children. Dysfunctional families are all around us and we experience neglect very often. A child's point of view of course, is always exaggerated. I can relate to some of what is shown in "The Grandmother." Throughout my childhood my grandmother was the only person i could turn to. My parents talk, and their life during my childhood was very blurred to me. And the horrifying things that happen are more horrifying than they really are as a child. Lynch may have imaged this film out of nowhere, but it still speaks. The use of sound, and animation is powerfully effective. This is a must for Lynch fans!

Long-time Lynch collaborator Jack Nance once said that watching The Grandmother was like spending half an hour in the electric chair. Mixing live action (both colour and black & white) with animation, along with a dark & unsettling soundscape created by Alan Splet (still Lynch's sound designer today, three decades later), the film is an intensely disturbing experience.

The Grandmother deals with the story of a boy, abused by his brutal, animal-like parents, who grows himself a kindly grandmother in the attic.

Although it does suffer from a certain 'student film' feeling, this half-hour short is a must-see for all fans of David Lynch, particularly those who admire the stark & surreal world of Eraserhead. One can definitely see the genesis of Lynch's next film within it.

One of the most disturbing things i've ever seen. The actors in this film, David Lynch's third film technically, but his first narrative film, were never in any other movies - one of them, Father, died a few years ago - it is as if they exist only in the frightening nightmare world of this boy's life, which consists of two dog-like parents who only bark at him with unintelligible sounds, and beat him and rub his face in the urine when he wets the bed, like a puppy. The subject of the film (and if i don't tell you this, it'll make so little sense to you, because its never properly explained in the film) is the boy has no love from his parents, and no grandmother to give him respite from them and comfort him, so he grows one in the attic.

It is a horrifying, brilliant film, which creates an imaginative world very successfully - albeit one you desparately want to escape from as soon as possible, but it does this well at least.

The Lynchian oeuvre is almost fully formed here, right from the start. Little dialogue, atmospheric soundtrack of constant sound effects which you find in Eraserhead, Elephant Man, Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr; impressionistic approach to performance and makeup/costume and sets; the quality of estrangement in the direction, and most importantly there is the union of terrible, twisted darkness and optimistic naivety (developed to the full in Blue Velvet and Mulholland Dr).

For Lynch fans, this is a thing to see. Unlike Six Men Getting Sick or The Amputee, this is not just an experiment or an early film of a Director that ruins your impression of them, it stands on its own, irrespective of Lynch's subsequent work (though it also sets the tone for his subsequent narrative work) as a great surrealist/impressionist narrative short.

This is a very odd, and rather disturbing short. If you're not into Lynch then give it a wide birth, even if you are, then approach with caution. The story concerns itself with an unhappy boy who grows a grandmother. Well, that's all I could work out anyway. The rest of the film is filled with bed wetting, barking parents, and bizarre animations. Everything is in disturbingly garish colours (generally deep blue), and there isn't a single line of dialogue. See this if you're a die-hard Lynch fan or if you're a budding experimental film maker. If, however, you found Eraserhead too weird then steer well clear.

This film is a must-see for anyone interested in the world of surreal cinema. Combines fascinating visual metaphor with rich, vivid animation to create a disturbing ambience that draws the viewer in, like a fish caught on a hook. The music (provided by a collective of music engineers known as "Tractor") is like a grey canopy that wraps itself over your mind as you find that time and space and your life outside of a cold, flickering living room seem to fade into this backdrop of radioactive multimedia. Make no mistake about it, Lynch is an artist of the highest calibur, and in this gripping work he uses everything in the film as a medium to transmit his imagination to the outside world.

P.S. - If you like Lynch's style, I suggest looking into the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Luis Bunuel & Jean Cocteau. All of them brilliant artists in their medium.