I had known of David Lynch's made-for-his-website shorts called Rabbits long before his latest feature-length film came out, Inland Empire, and when I saw what he had taken from the shorts into the picture it worked a lot better than taken out of context and left by their own. The interpretations can only be so many- are the rabbits meant to be symbols of emotively-drained TV caricatures, or are they just, um, rabbits? The shorts ended up working better in I.E. because they could go alongside with the other wild and manic scenes of surrealism, and be in a much stronger sense of 'dream-logic' when taken as part of the completely non-linear structure of the picture. By themselves, they're much more confusing- even as a Lynch fan I admit this- and to use the word often maligned with auteurs, it's self-indulgent to a fault. It's not that seeing how the rabbits interact isn't absorbing in the sense of wanting to see what will happen next, or when the laugh-track is implemented. But what the shorts lack are clearer ties to what is being abstracted. Only Lynch knows, which is just as well. I wasn't unhappy to see the Rabbit segments on their own online, and a few times the ultra strange humor that may or may not be the point of these cinematic exercises. But I wish it could've been more on their own legs, or ears, or whatever. It's not like it's nothing, but it's not as substantial of a Lynchian 'something' as usual with his shorts.
Review of Rabbits
