How The Grandmother mixes reality and surrealism

 In The Grandmother, Lynch addresses the real-world and serious issue of child abuse and neglect. He does this by presenting the family in the film as a typical dysfunctional family. For example, the two parents are rarely seen together, showing their relationship is most likely not particularly stable, therefore they take out their anger on their failing relationship on their son. It is unclear if the grandmother that the boy grows is a real being or simply a way to escape his own reality. Either way, both of these options are quite common in reality; many children from abusive households will use escapism and their imagination as a coping mechanism, many children will also have family members outside of their household that they turn to for support. The grandmother's true intentions remain ambiguous as well as they are left concealed. While, as the film is from the perspective of the boy, we see her portrayed in a positive light through the use of musical cues and her much more friendly demeanor in comparison to his parents, this ambiguity means that this could be interpreted as an allegory for how abuse in a household can lead to a child being groomed, which is also a serious, real world issue, but is presented in such an abstract, surreal and absurd way. 

The surrealism in The Grandmother is there to symbolise the fear of the boy. For example, the entire film has a nightmarish quality to it; in fact, it is up to interpretation based on the final shot that the entire film is a nightmare based on the boy's traumatic experiences, which is reinforced by the use of lighting and set design. This entire film uses very low-key lighting and hard lighting, we only see specific parts of the set, for example the boy's bed and the dining table, as these are integral to the film while specific details of the rest of the set seem to be irrelevant.  This is very reminiscent of dreams as well as memories, as people will often not pick up on specific unnecessary details, and will only remember what is important to the scenario that they dreamed or experienced The distinction between what is real and what and what is just conceptualised by the boy is much clearer with the animated sequences, which have a clear distinction from the reality of the rest of the film. I believe that these sequences represent the boy's abstract thoughts and feelings, traumatic repressed memories or even dreams, which, considering the theory that the entire film is a nightmare, would add an extra layer of lack of lucidity and consciousness, therefore making the imagery even more surreal and absurd. The lack of distinction between what is and what isn't reality is a common theme among Lynch's work, especially his 2001 film Mulholland Drive.