Absurda (David Lynch, 2007, USA)

Absurda is a two-minute short that David Lynch directed as part of the To Each His Own Cinema anthology collection, which was an anthology film made for the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival in 2007. The film combines 34 short films, by a wide variety of auteur directors, including Lars von Trier, Takeshi Kitano, Jane Campion, and many others. Lynch's contribution was also shown at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival as an opening film to Wong Kar-wai's film My Blueberry Nights. Lynch would later go on to release the film on his own YouTube channel in 2020.

The film's plot, while condensed into a very short period, contains a lot. The entire film takes place in a theater. A man and woman (offscreen, we only hear their voices) enter a theater expecting to see dancing, but only see a large pair of scissors sticking out of the screen. A woman in a dress and ballet shoes are shown, then a man with a bloody face. The projectionist identifies the man as the one who "did it". The scissors appear in a stabbing motion, and there is chaos as the whole theater is engulfed in smoke. The film closes with the woman talking about her love for dancing. 

Absurda is one of David Lynch's better short films, and contains a lot of ideas within a very short period - one can almost imagine this evolving into a feature. It also successfully replicates the sense of being in a dream without feeling pretentious or overly affected. It is a film that will of course be enjoyed by Lynch completists, but even some people who are not familiar with David Lynch might enjoy this oblique and mysterious film. Worth checking out and not only in the context of the anthology film.

7/10