Over the past weekend, like many many people, I'm sure, I thought a lot about David Lynch. I had a busy weekend so really didn't have time to revisit any of his feature-length films, but I did go back and re-watch for the first time in a few years the last released film he made, What Did Jack Do?. Available to see on Netflix, it's a 17 minute black and white film he made that premiered at the Fondation Cartier Museum in Paris in 2017.
To get to the point: this is 17 minutes of Lynch bliss. The film is at times absurd, at times serious, often both at the same time. Lynch is a such a master of dialogue made up of non-sequitorial language, and What Did Jack Do? is full of it. The detective and the monkey start their talk more or less answering each other directly, but as the conversation proceeds, the two employ more and more cliches and platitudes. Lynch in his performance is utterly deadpan and the monkey too is serious, but their exchange becomes increasingly farcical. They do anything but communicate in a meaningful way. At the same time, in its terseness, the dialogue sounds like a parody of every interrogation scene you've ever seen in a 1930s or 1940s crime film. It's very funny, but of course -- this is Lynch -- the emotion underlying what's funny is strong and genuine. If the capuchin monkey did commit murder, he did it driven by amour fou. He fell madly in love with a chicken named Toototabon, and this avian femme fatale apparently had something sexual going with someone named Max. It is Max who Jack Cruz may or may not have murdered.
Is there coffee in this film? Check. Cigarettes? Check, smoked non-stop by the detective. And the combination of the monkey's real movements, head bobbing, eyes alert and darting, combined with the deepfaked mouth talking, makes Jack Cruz quite a compelling figure. He has a gravelly voice that fluctuates in tone from defiance to annoyance to pride to desperation. He's a suspect in pain, and his pain, resulting from love, is extreme. I won't reveal the ultra Lynchian thing he does towards the end to express in full his love for Toototabon, but it strikes a chord that is at once comical but also heartrending, a blending of moods that is vintage Lynch.
What did Lynch do with What Did Jack Do? In 17 minutes, he made yet another richly textured gem. And I'll tell you, short as it was, it really cheered me up.
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