eddiez61
Yes, everything is jumbled. It's all jumbled because that is how we experience life. It's how we, our minds, experience the sensations and stimuli that constitute thought and memory and perception. It's the phenomenon of awareness, how events effect our consciousness. It's how events are relived again and again in our minds. Our "Present" moment is constantly amused by, confused by, taunted by and terrorized by memories, impressions and feelings of past moments and events. Our "Present" moment is also assaulted, distorted, effected by future events or moments. How so? By thinking about things that have yet to happen, good or bad, we shape our present moment. The awareness of future moments and events brings pleasure, joy, anxiety, dread, terror into our present experience. Apparently it's mostly anxiety, dread and terror because that is how we are "wired" to react to the unknown. What's more unknown then the future? This is how we are experiencing the "Right Now". According to this experience – which is the "Real" way life enters and effects us – linear, chronological time is a poor, inefficient standard by which to relay or recreate that "Real" experience. You know how some movies reorder the sequence of events to make it fun, confusing, shocking to tell their story? That deeply felt "Aha!" moment when we finally get it, when it all sorts out in our minds. That experience is in fact what makes up "Reality", but occurring much, much more frequently. Occurring constantly, incessantly, eternally, like a never ending nuclear explosion in the mind. It's a terrifying, exhilarating jet stream of 'Aha!s" that constitute our experience of "Reality". You must respect the nature of the phenomenon of "awareness" if you are hoping to instill in your audience, not just information or a mood or a feeling, but a profound "Real" experience. Once you "tune in", then everything (suddenly?) falls in line and you find yourself. You find yourself not just "watching" and "considering" and "understanding" what's going on, but above all, experiencing it. It nearly feels as though it's your own original experience. Nearly.David's 'Rabbits" is a device to recreate his experience not just for our eyes, ears and hearts, but for our consciousness. At the moment we are "watching" his "Rabbits", we are also experiencing life in our nonlinear, personal way. Most people just aren't aware of it. The linear, sequential flat time of "traditional" movies actually is at odds with how our minds are processing "Real" life, but we have learned - been conditioned - to translate as best we can this unnaturally occurring movie information. As we have gotten accustomed to this convention of linear movie time, we have been adopting, and accepting, an inferior reality. A "Real" moment is "experienced", not just watched and heard. And a "movie" is only experienced as "Real" if our minds are processing it in the exact same manner it processes "Real" stimuli, which means not sequentially, but in an echoing, repetitive, staggered, disrupted, broken, vague order. David's "story" has therefore been translated so that it is similar, parallel, consistent with everything else that our mind is experiencing at the moment "Rabbits" is being "watched." You just have to understand the "language" that it's been translated into, which David gives some helpful directions to right at the very beginning and all through. It's by performing the slightly complex contortions of your awareness in order to experience his "story" that you are "opening" yourself up to fully receive, experience it. Once you make this necessary adjustment of your awareness you then "see" so much more clearly. It's one hell of an experience - the anxiety, dread, terror, horror, relief, joy, surprise, and desire are experienced much less out of confusion and much more so out of clarity. There's a "story" underneath, behind, around, within all this seemingly random oddness. That "story" is a very intense experience. And the experience is in the moment of accepting it.Sounds complicated but it's just like those 3d pictures that look like a flat repetitive pattern, but when you focus your eyes just right, you suddenly can "see" into it a very deep, dimensional object or scene that appears "real". You shift your focus just ever so slightly, and it's gone, flat and meaningless again. Same thing here, but the shift in focus is not with your optical vision, but with your awareness. The place or attitude or moment we must shift our awareness to is the key to unlocking the whole experience. And that's easy and tricky.It's an astounding process that David has employed. It's something he gleaned from his 32+ years of Transcendental Meditation. And all this just describes the process we must pass through to "get on" the right "eyes" in order to experience the "Real Story" that is "Rabbits". The "Real Story" is in the mind of the creator but it's equally in the mind of the viewer. True Theater of the Mind. It's like turbo-ultra-3D in the mind. And all done without drugs or a severe concussion.I came upon this awareness through his "Inland Empire" where "Rabbits" are so powerfully effective as an element of reverential doom(?). I transposed my experience with "IE" to find my "way" into Rabbits, which has a much less specific "story" compared to "IE." When you happen upon the "way" it all rushes up to greet you. You will know "Rabbits".
mario_c
"Rabbits" is bizarre! In fact "Rabbits" is VERY bizarre! This short film from David Lynch is very weird in many aspects. From the peculiar rabbit suits to the absurd and weird laugh tracks everything is strange in this movie! It has always one scenario, a kind of stage scenario portraying a living room. The characters enter and they leave the scenario
every time they do it we hear applauses from an unseen audience
And many times, when the characters say something that is NOT funny we hear the laugh tracks, which are completely absurd, because they have no connection (at least a logical one...) to what have been said! The applauses and the laugh tracks give a nonsensical humor to the movie; but also a touch of oddness and irrationality
The dialogs are also strange; they are disconnected, senseless and repetitive. In fact, the entire movie is repetitive, as an odd nightmare that doesn't end! I think that "rabbits" is an excellent short movie from Lynch, which explores one more time the boundaries of nonsense. It is mysterious, it is bizarre and it creates an odd ambiance, almost scary at parts (and here the soundtrack helps a lot, because it's really spooky)
But I think it's a bit long! I know the movie is a compilation of 9 short episodes, which were a kind of a "series" made to the David Lynch's website. However, if you watch it just in one time, as I did, the all 50 minutes for once, it turns too long! I think it would work better if it was a short movie with about 20-25 minutes, because otherwise it turns overextended, repetitive and a bit boring. Maybe because it's always in the same scenario or maybe because it doesn't develops too much. I don't know, I just think it would be better if it only had 20/25 minutes. It would be enough to create the same impact and it wouldn't be boring. Probably there's a reason to that extension and to the repetitive scenes (I think it's very possible since it was something which came out from Lynch's mind), but even so it turns out a bit monotonous.Anyway, it's another mysterious, dark and weird "dream" from the master of surrealism!