The Amputee (1974)

User Rating:

5.8/10   

Director:

David Lynch

Writer:

David Lynch (writer)

Genre:

Short | Drama

Plot:

In this plotless 5 minute short, Catherine Coulson plays a legless double-amputee who, throughout the film...

Plot Keywords:

Letter | Wound | Nurse | Double Amputee | David Lynch

Cast

Catherine E. Coulson	...	Woman with amputation to the legs
David Lynch	...	Unable and scared nurse

Runtime:

5 min | 9 min (original version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Quotes:

Woman with amputation to the legs: This isn't what I am telling you. You weren't in the room when Jim said that. And I was. And he really did. He told me that everything was fine between Helen and him. And I knew that even if he didn't say it, that it was true. He knew it then. No one else did...

Movie Connections:

Edited into The Short Films of David Lynch (2002) (V)

meh, but it goes without saying...

Maybe the lesser of the bunch of David Lynch shorts I've seen, the only real interest are in some seconds here and there within the four minute un-broken shot of some nasty, black-death humor that's ingrained into the material. Unfortunately, it's almost a waste to watch the film as it is by admission of Lynch himself a technical 'throaway', something to just get onto film to bite back at the AFI for possibly switching to video. Therefore we get what could be comparable to what Godard did around the same time- tool around with the possibilities of video by just going for something off-putting within the frame. It could've worked maybe as something worth watching more, but it's really a bit too un-pleasant even in its own biting sense-of-what-the-hell way. It's just an amputee who writes a confessional letter (heard in voice-over) as a wacko doctor plugs away at one of her stumps. He also, at the end, just runs away in a hurry, perhaps as to just add that last bit of "whoa" for Lynch to work with. That part is actually a nice bit of surreal whimsy, but the work is just too simplistic and deranged to really give any sense of visual amazement like in the other shot works of Lynch, or to build on the outrageousness like in Eraserhead. Worth a watch, once, then never again unless you have a thing for, well, stumps, and confessional letters written during their upheaval.