I don't understand the short film 'The Amputee' by David Lynch, at all. I just found that the woman did not seem to care for her legs or that whole cleaning process, and seemed more interested in her relationship problems that she his writing about. If there is a meaning behind this film, I am missing it. An explanation of this would be greatly appreciated.
shareHonestly, I think the point is that she is so caught up in her love life issues that she doesn't even notice that she is bleeding to death. If you notice, she never even seems to react to the nurse or anything that the nurse is doing. Her missing limbs don't seem to phase her at all. Thus, I believe the point is that she is so caught up in the drama of her life that she fails to notice it will soon be over. I must admit, it is a very bizarre little short.
shareHey thanks for the reply, I thought that was sort of the point too, and very bizzare, I agree. Though I didn't notice it was blood, I thought it was water, hehe.
shareDid anyone notice the loud splashing sounds (similar to a person drowning in a bathtub) that the nurse gets distracted by and gets up to investigate?
shareIs the same part played twice. My version is 9:38 i.e. 9 mins, 38 secs- does it comprise 2 scenes of 4 and a half minutes shown one after the other. If yes, is there a difference between them? Why are they repeated (i.e. if they are)?
Do the sentences the girl speaks of any relevance wahtsoever besides the fact that they point to her dismantled love life?
PS: I was thinking in terms of backward talking you know, like that dwarf in 'Twin Peaks'?
The reason that this is done twice is, I believe, that when Lynch was at film school the school received two new cameras, of which they were going to buy a number of one or the other of them. Lynch offered to do a test for both of them, shooting the same footage twice on different cameras. The test was The Amputee, so hence a slightly different look to both versions. I can't tell you which one they thought was better though!
shareit wasn't cameras, it was video stock. they were testing 2 types of video to film on. the two segments are slightly different. i noticed that some of the dialouge was different, but it was just slight.
shareI think they were repeated to give the viewer a chance to concentrate of each aspect of the short: audio and visual. The first time I saw it I was trying to make sense of what she was saying so much so that I didn't even realize she didn't have legs!
shareYou are an excellent Surrealist, sir!
sharethis is my favorite in the collection. on his interview he explains that it was just a test to decide which of two video stocks the company he was working with would choose. it's pretty clear that he was not happy with this use of video and i think he made 'the amputee' deliberately rather disgusting as his small form of protest. i love how the voice-over has only a very slight connection to the images, but they play off each other wonderfully to heighten the feeling of discomfort you get as a viewer. excellent and perfectly lynch. abstractions coming together to form a complete and intense feeling.
shareSomething that I think people are missing is that when you have awful injuries like that, people undressing your wound, cleaning it, and having a lot of slough, blood and other gross *beep* everywhere, becomes a daily occurence ... you get used to it. It's not unusual for her to be unfazed by what he's doing, as she's probably been through it many times before.
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