Best movie ever!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

When setting my DVR for the week and seeing what was playing on TCM Underground, the description for this film, that a boy plants a seed to grow a grandmother, sounded so bizarre I HAD to record it. Watching the film, it's was even stranger than I expected, with a wordless story (the characters do grunt and vocalize), where all the characters in white face paint, filmed on sparsely decorated sets against a black background, and set to an unsettling score made up of what seems to be industrial noises (by a band named Tractor). While watching "The Grandmother," my impression was this seems like a bad version of "Eraserhead," but when the credits rolled I saw that this was in fact written and directed by David Lynch! This short film predates "Eraserhead" and if very amateurish in comparison. I'm a huge David Lynch fan, but "The Grandmother" felt more like a pretentious film major final project than a polished piece of filmmaking, instead brimming with self important, heavy-handed symbolism, amateurish acting, and poor photography. However, even in this primitive state, the visuals are unmistakably Lynchian, filling mundane settings with the surreal, a penchant for the grotesque (the boy stroking the growing grandmother is quite off-putting), and a very precise color palette. You can also sense Lynch's dark humor, although, like many of his earlier films, it's purposefully challenging and hard to watch. So to be sure, this is probably the worst David Lynch film I'd seen (until I watched "The Amputee" right after), but it's still interesting, if at the same time is annoyingly self important.

David Lynch brings us an unsettling vision of a bed-wetting boy, his abusive parents, and the grandmother that he grows from a seed. The film, which toggles between live action and animation (reminiscent of Terry Gilliam), is dark, organic and surreal, especially when the 'grandmother seed' germinates into a spiky, phallic mushroom, growing from a pile of dirt centered on an old-fashioned bed. Reversing normal progression, the grandmother is pulled from the womb, fully dressed, by the child, who then engages in revenge fantasies against his parents following an incredibly unappetizing dinner scene. Best watched at night, in the dark for full effect, "The Grandmother" is a series of strange, and sometimes unpleasant, images strung together by the barest of stories. Not for all tastes but a must for fans of Lynch or of experimental filmmaking in general. My ranking is based on neither really liking nor really disliking the film, but probably not really 'getting it' either. Maybe you will...

The Grandmother in my opinion was a surrealistic look on some childhood experiences. The caring grandmother, the abusive parents, and the realistic look on life. The film in imagery has no real sense in direction, but what is known is that in todays society this movie could relate to some kids living with there grandparents or liking their grandparents better then there abusive parents. Contrast B W, and the overall small shades of red are by far a great start off to this film, and i thought that the eerie, yet happy music " with the grandmother further down into the short" , was a perfect placement and added great emotion to the film. I loved this short even with some mess ups and overall confusion.David Lynch never gets old and his original imaginations overthrow many horror and artistic surrealism films today. From what i could tell you is that this film overall had me on the edge of my seat waiting for the next scene, or some confusing event to just throw itself right in front of me. The actors were plain out abusive, and the short yet sweet scriptwriting was written exactly how i thought it would be. Without doubt David Lynch has brightened my day… Well or brightened it in a horrifying, disruptive kind of way.

Before directing his breakthrough cult classic 'Eraserhead' David Lynch made this thirty-minute art school oddity, sketching on a smaller canvas the same nightmares that would later haunt his feature films. Using a raw, experimental style combining exaggerated live action with naive animation, Lynch flaunts his preoccupation with psychosexual imagery and symbolism, showing all the creative freedom (and many of the pretensions) of an artist discovering his true medium. Yes, the film does have a plot, but it's not really about a boy and his grandmother, any more than 'Eraserhead' was about a man and his baby. Shown on the same program (when I saw it, at the Red Vic Theatre on Haight Street in San Francisco) was the eight-minute animated 'Alphabet', another early Lynch project, and definitely not the sort of pre-school primer taught on Sesame Street. Viewers familiar with his more recent work will know exactly what to expect.