Boat (2007)

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

More David Lynch video art! Yeah?There is no denying that some of Lynch's later short film projects are among his most divisive work yet, and it isn't very hard to see why this is. "Boat" is among many an avant garde short film in the Lynch cannon and it can be interpreted as either meaningful and beautifully enigmatic art or as pretentious drivel; personally, I rather enjoyed "Boat". I find this brief, self described "journey into the night" to be a haunting and poetic work with some very fascinating visuals in the mix. As the film rows onward (see what I did there?!), Lynch's boat moves faster and faster, splashing and speeding into darkness, and the visuals that ensue pertain a beautiful magic. Water sprints and dances in front of the camera so swiftly it no longer looks like water but rather like...I don't even know what...it's surreal, as expected from Lynch.

I have watched both Boat and Darkened Room this evening. At first, I was losing hope in Lynch because of Darkened Room. I thought it was pointless and boring. Then I saw this one and was very impressed with everything about it. It was filmed and narrated in an almost uncomfortable way and that may be what I loved so much about it. David Lynch has a wonderful way of making a normal shot creepy in every sense. I get so inspired when I watch his films and I want to see every single one of them. This is a must see for Lynch fans if you love his atmosphere and tone. I saw it on Youtube and I know it's not the easiest film to find but if it's still up there, be sure to check it out!

There's nothing magical o mystical behind, there isn't a hidden or unconscious meaning indicating that "Boat" isn't a dream. This Lynch's exercise (still using the freedoms that allows digital video) doesn't have a high technical quality neither the visual aesthetics that generally uses on his films but it shows a glimmer, a thought or rather to say a dream of those who many times happening to us, where we are a strange more going towards night, towards the dark side of our being where, while we sleep, we are true, we're real. The journey to the real part of oneself. Only a dream of Lynch.There's nothing to fear unless we jumped out of the boat.

This little short film/experiment from Lynch is meant to be some kind of home movie-cum-fever dream where the basic act of going out onto a lake with a motor boat becomes like some sort of journey to some unknown destination. It's at it's best an immense jolt of visual splendor, shot on Lynch's hardy digital camera, where one of Lynch's expressed joys as a filmmaker- to be able to make the flow of water a truly cinematic feat- is put to a successful test. At first he just shows images of the boat, with a girl doing a voice-over meant to be very mysterious but somewhat cognitive of having an idea of what's around her (or it, as it might be). Then the boat goes off, Lynch himself (steering the boat) says to the camera "we're gonna try to go fast enough to go in to the night", and soon all there is to see is water rushing past, very fast, and then superimposed is night over day. The voice-over itself is probably the lesser part of the experiment; Lynch says on the DVD the short is on that he thought there was a story there, so he put on a voice-over track to go with the images. The narration, truth be told, makes it a tinge more poetic, but not necessarily for the better; I had flashbacks during some of the narrative bits to short films (and not the better short films) I used to see in film classes at school. Yet it's a good little effort that Lynch has strung together here at least by way of eye-catching digital video, where everything seems a little extra heightened (very bright by way of daytime, then nighttime is much darker, naturally) and the movement of water at such a fast clip, as one might take for granted, makes for some powerful viewing.