Review of Lumière & Company (1995) by James K — 29 Mar 2012

The title of this film on Facebook movies is misleading -- it is a collection of short films by various directors. Although I have seen all of these short films, this review will focus on only one of them -- my favorite, free of any international bias, and I promise I gave them all an equal chance. "Lumià (C)re" is a 55 second short film by David Lynch, a master surrealist and artist in every sense of the word. You might ask me how I review a film that short. You may scoff at the thought. Scoff away, because Lynch accomplishes more in 55 seconds than a lot of the garbage that is released in theaters every day.

Let it be known that it will be impossible to avoid spoilers. I cannot just say to go watch this on YouTube, although you should right now. So, ahem, SPOILER ALERT.

Are you still with me? I can't believe I'm writing this much either.

As with most of Lynch's later work, "Lumià (C)re" is open for interpretation, and I will present my own. The film is comprised of five different scenes. Watching them all in order will not make much sense the first time. This is alright, because they are not meant to. As a work of the avant-garde, Lynch's film is trying to get us to make associations between the seemingly unrelated things we see on screen -- scenes are juxtaposed for a specific purpose. Once we are able to arrange these scenes in the way we see fit, most of us may form a narrative that is both dismal and shocking.

---START---.

A woman wanders off. Possibly away from a loved one.

She is captured and tortured by sadistic men.

The woman's mother is worried. Her daughter has been gone too long. Something is not right...

The police find the woman's dead body.

The police regrettably inform the woman's family about her grisly death.

---END---.

You can watch this film and think nothing of it. Hate it even. I wrote this much about it, and that has to count for something.