"Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken."
-Duke Leto Atreides (played by Jurgen Prochnow) in David Lynch's film Dune (1984)
Mixture of animation and live action derived from a real life incident in which the niece of David Lynch's then wife Peggy was having a nightmare of repeating the alphabet over and over again. Lynch has stated that he was attempting to imagine what the nightmare was like for the little girl.
Much like a nightmare, The Alphabet consists of jarring juxtapositions, refined and stylized into a cohesive visual and sonic four minute 16mm film short.
Chaos is created out of animation of schematic lines, letters, basic shapes, and messy organic clouds juxtaposed with live action footage of a girl in ghostly pale makeup (played by Peggy Lynch) writhing on a bed and vomiting blood from her mouth. There is a precise order to these images, but I find that they shuffle together in my mind and seem to take place more chaotically than they actually do in the film itself. The movie is short and exact-as animation and low budget films in general need to be in order to work-and yet my memory is one of nightmarish chaos.
It's also a film that goes from sounds of children chanting ABC and an adult male voice singing a corny educational song to a bizarre insect/human moaning noise to baby mewling noises to the relative quiet of wind whistling.
As in a dream, mundane proportions of human faces and bodies are scrambled, distorted, mutated as the mind processes the day's inputs . . . or whatever the hell goes on when we dream.
A distorted human figure has their head filled with letters and knowledge 'til their head melts down into flowing blood.
A live action mouth speaks from behind bars, begging, "Please remember you are dealing with the human form."
The climax, I suppose, is the girl vomiting blood all over the bed sheets.
Language, logic, the rigorous drills of a standard education cannot contain the irrationality of existence. Language, words are a kind of prison for the essence of being, forcing the Alphabet down a girl’s throat causes her to vomit blood . . . but this agony is unavoidable. Language is a necessity, and change-transformation-is often painful.
-Duke Leto Atreides (played by Jurgen Prochnow) in David Lynch's film Dune (1984)
Mixture of animation and live action derived from a real life incident in which the niece of David Lynch's then wife Peggy was having a nightmare of repeating the alphabet over and over again. Lynch has stated that he was attempting to imagine what the nightmare was like for the little girl.
Much like a nightmare, The Alphabet consists of jarring juxtapositions, refined and stylized into a cohesive visual and sonic four minute 16mm film short.
Chaos is created out of animation of schematic lines, letters, basic shapes, and messy organic clouds juxtaposed with live action footage of a girl in ghostly pale makeup (played by Peggy Lynch) writhing on a bed and vomiting blood from her mouth. There is a precise order to these images, but I find that they shuffle together in my mind and seem to take place more chaotically than they actually do in the film itself. The movie is short and exact-as animation and low budget films in general need to be in order to work-and yet my memory is one of nightmarish chaos.
It's also a film that goes from sounds of children chanting ABC and an adult male voice singing a corny educational song to a bizarre insect/human moaning noise to baby mewling noises to the relative quiet of wind whistling.
As in a dream, mundane proportions of human faces and bodies are scrambled, distorted, mutated as the mind processes the day's inputs . . . or whatever the hell goes on when we dream.
A distorted human figure has their head filled with letters and knowledge 'til their head melts down into flowing blood.
A live action mouth speaks from behind bars, begging, "Please remember you are dealing with the human form."
The climax, I suppose, is the girl vomiting blood all over the bed sheets.
Language, logic, the rigorous drills of a standard education cannot contain the irrationality of existence. Language, words are a kind of prison for the essence of being, forcing the Alphabet down a girl’s throat causes her to vomit blood . . . but this agony is unavoidable. Language is a necessity, and change-transformation-is often painful.
“Please remember you are dealing with the human form.”
This cryptic line comes across as a warning
or maybe a plea for compassion.
“Please remember you are dealing with the human form.”
because it is delicate, irrational, and resists all forms of imposed rationality
even if that resistance goes unnoticed or even outright suppressed.
Mouth/tongue/teeth-all behind bars. Language painfully sets them free,
but language can also entrap us when we can’t get it to work how we want it to,
but we must continually drill,
'til we have fluency,
the capacity for communication, listening, and understanding,
no matter how frightful the prospect of change,
potential failure,
our desire to remain asleep, safe, divorced from reality.
but we must continually drill,
'til we have fluency,
the capacity for communication, listening, and understanding,
no matter how frightful the prospect of change,
potential failure,
our desire to remain asleep, safe, divorced from reality.
NEXT: 1/8/18: The Lynch Meditations 3: The Grandmother (1970)
My Patreon's here.
SUITMATION FAMILY PACK can be purchased as an Amazon Kindle e-book here.
My Patreon's here.
SUITMATION FAMILY PACK can be purchased as an Amazon Kindle e-book here.
