The Alphabet

Alphabet, The (1968)

*** (out of 4)

David Lynch's second film is a four-minute short of a nightmare with a woman in bed saying the alphabet. This is an extremely weird short but at the same time it's perfectly surreal and just downright strange. The bizarre images of the woman spitting up blood are eerie to say the least. This certainly isn't a film to show you kids to each them to say their ABC's.

Six Men Getting Sick (1966)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

David Lynch's first film is an animated short running four minutes that shows exactly what the title says. The animation is ugly, the soundtrack annoying but these two things are what makes the film work. The film is rather surreal in a weird sort of way but this fits the director just fine.

David Lynch says this film was an attempt at visualizing the "fear of learning." In it, a young girl is tortured by the alphabet in a competely abstract nightmare. Lynch has always been fascinated by the darker side of dreams, the seemingly nonsensical black procession of symbols and fears, and this film simply adds another phobia to the canon.

We are shown images of a head with information going in one side, and this eventually causes the head to erupt into a black mess. Lynch juxtaposes the most innocent of subjects (the alphabet), which usually marks the beginning of our schooling, with disconcerting images of blood and vomit. Disturbing? Yes. Lynch apparently formed the idea after hearing of a girl who was found reciting the alphabet during a nightmare.

On a more profound level, the film examines a fear that perhaps appears for most later in life: the dread of knowledge. There's quite a bit of truth to the oft-repeated line "ignorance is bliss." Gradually, we realize that the more we learn, the less we understand, and therefore, the less control we have over our situations. It's a problem that has vexed people since the conception of "science." We ask questions out of curiosity, find there are no accessible answers, create a religious penumbra that satisfies a great deal with a few simple passages, and then science comes along and we are confronted once again with the inconsistencies of our faith. Thus, we fear that which turns the rock-solid black and whites of our existence to a confused mass of gray.

Also, The Alphabet hints at what linguists and intellectuals and songwriters have known for centuries; words are wholly inadequate to describe even the simplest of human perceptions. And once one has etched that list of letters into one's mind, in a sense, there is no turning back. Life becomes shapes patterned on paper, and conceptions of reality will no longer be formed purely and internally; they are immediately attached to an imperfect language and remained tethered to that which will never truly suffice.

lynch has, with this short, somehow managed to recreate with disturbing accuracy the experience of any childhood nightmare. on watching you are instantly transported back to being 6 years old, wanting desperately to wake up and not being able to. you have to wonder at the fact that lynch has reproduced this experience to such effect that when it is finished you're left with that morning after feeling of relief that the dream is over, yet also that lingering discomfort as the memory gradually fades. to be able to recreate on film with such accuracy, the sub-conscious experience of people everywhere is an impressive achievement. i wish i could do it... disturbing yet brilliant.

This was the first time David Lynch shot live-action footage. It isn't really a narrative film, like The Grandmother, but its more than a filmed moving painting like Six Men Getting Sick. It is mainly animation, truth be told, but it combines live action with it. This is what a child's nightmare looks like inside David Lynch's head - and let me tell you, its quite disturbing, on a par with Grandmother and Eraserhead.

Some of its images, like the girl bleeding from the mouth and reciting the alphabet - i can't get out of my head. I don't know if that's a good thing... Lynch is a very strange man, indeed. And what we get in his films isn't half the story, as members of his website will tell you. There are images there that you wouldn't even know to be wary of, to not think about - images you don't even know to protect yourself from. But as Elephant Man showed us, he is also a master director, who can control himself and a major production to perfection. As Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Mulholland Dr showed us, Lynch's world can also be lots of fun. He's one of my favourite filmmakers because he gives me both fun AND haunting in the same frame - a feat not many can do.

I love this short movie by David Lynch. The movie, on the surface, is about a girl being tortured by the alphabet. A very surreal part in this movie for me was when the thing that melts when hit with the alphabet letters melts and that face says "Please try to remember you're dealing with the human form." I just love that part of this movie. Anyway, if you can find this movie, see it. If you're into surreal movies and abstract art, you'll love this.