‘Boat’: David Lynch tries his hand at ASMR
Have you ever wanted to watch David Lynch drive a boat? Well, you’re in luck. Most fans are familiar with all of Lynch’s masterpieces, especially seminal gems such as Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive. But even many devoted followers of Lynch probably haven’t seen Boat, a strange little 2007 short directed by the master of surrealism. If you haven’t heard of Boat, make sure you strap in because you’re about to embark on the calmest ride of your life and David Lynch is your captain.
While Lynch’s features are definitely transgressive in their approach to cinematic realism, it’s his bizarre world of short films that is even more experimental. The unique restrictions of the short format has often allowed Lynch to break away from the conventions of narrative storytelling, creating a radically different presentation instead. Ranging from Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) to The Grandmother, the filmography of Lynch’s shorts is essential viewing for all film fans.
Unlike most of his other shorts, Boat is not disturbing or unsettling in any way. Narrated by Emily Stofle, it’s a dreamy seven-minute journey into a slightly incomprehensible day. Filmed like a home video, Lynch translates the passage of time into the cinematic medium. Boat is about spatial as well as temporal motion, inevitably generating subtextual comparisons to the unique motion we experience in our dreams. In the film, Lynch cooly declares: “We’re going to try to go fast enough to go into the night.”
Although Boat might seem like a random short upon first viewing, it has a lot of things that are essential to Lynch’s philosophy of art. In addition to the fact that the boat used here is the same one that was featured in the first season of Twin Peaks, the central metaphor of the boat is an integral part of the director’s creative process.
During a conversation with The Talks, Lynch explained: “I always say ideas drive the boat. Ideas are a huge, huge blessing. That’s the thing you try to catch – an idea that you fall in love with. Every time that I have made a film that’s not from a book or somebody else’s screenplay, it happens the same way. The whole thing doesn’t come at once, but fragments of things come, and these fragments form themselves into a script.”
The director added: “You write the idea down and save it until the next idea comes, and little by little, the majority of ideas find themselves in a script – which is organised ideas. Then you go and shoot that script and edit it, and you mix sounds and music. It’s a process. An idea can give a story that is more abstract and not so straight-ahead, and sometimes it gives you a story that is more straight-ahead.”
Despite the fact that Boat obviously predates the ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) trend that has garnered a lot of momentum on social media, it’s the perfect ASMR short. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to be lulled to sleep by a David Lynch film (almost unthinkable), this is your best shot.
Watch the film below.
