Eraserhead (1976)

Starring: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Allen Joseph, Jeanne Bates, Judith Roberts, Laurel Near

First, the Lowdown: A mild mannered man finds himself taking care of a mutant baby – then it gets weird.

Meet Henry Spencer, a mild-mannered employee of an industrial printer who is enjoying a pleasant week off to traipse around the dessicated wastes of his neighborhood (I’m guessing he lives in Detroit). He arrives at his lowly one-bedroom apartment and is informed by the sultry lady across the hall that a woman named Mary X called and has invited him for dinner. Mary and Henry used to be an item, bur Mary hasn’t called or visted in quite a while. Not having anything better to do, Henry shows up at Mary’s house for dinner and is introduced to her oddball parents. After an abortive attempt to dine on “man-made chicken”, Mary’s mother finally gets to the point – Mary has had a child recently and the only man she has been in contact with is Henry. Mother X wants Henry to do right by her daughter and marry her, and Henry is too non-confrontational to argue the point further.

Married life isn’t easy for Mary and Henry. The “child” Mary gave birth to looks like a stillborn calf that constantly whines. Mary, frustrated at the abomination she gave birth to and the pretty squalid conditions that Henry lives in, walks out to go back to her parent’s place, leaving Henry to raise the misshapen abortion on his own.

This is my first time watching Eraserhead. (And whenever I make that confession a lot of the people who know me closely stare at me non-believing.) It’s a movie I’ve heard much about, and it seems that everyone who has described it to me has a different take on it. Even though my friends and acquaintances have had different (sometimes contradictory) descriptions of the movie they all agree on one point – it is weird as fuck. In fact “weird as fuck” doesn’t even scratch the surface of this film, the movie is like Un Chien Andalou with a plot. I was surpised to find out that Lynch didn’t fire rifles and set the theater on fire during its premiere.

With each passing moment of this film I wanted to shake my fists at David “this time-elapse sequence of decaying roadkill represents the philosophical decay of society” Lynch for encouraging future generations of aspiring film students to use grainy black and white cinematography of spilled milk and people walking up staircases while discordant music plays in the background so they can call it “art”. (Performance art is “art” too, but the message it says is always the same: “I stopped taking my medication.”) But in all honesty, to curse David Lynch for being the inspiration to a bunch of lazy copyists would be as effective as whining that Woody Allen’s Annie Hall created the modern romantic comedy or that Star Wars would eventually lead to Michael Bay. I did enjoy the movie for the same reason I enjoy a lot of the movies I’ve watched that have been copied unsuccessfully – I am always more impressed by the original than the multitude of weak duplicates. David Lynch – much like David Cronenburg – knows that often times the best way to elicit a reaction out of the audience is to hit them viscerally. All of Eraserhead feels uncomfortable, like you’ve stumbled into the open-casket memorial of a complete stranger – you are polite as you can muster, but there’s a dead body in the room.

Speaking of Lynch, I was afraid that the DVD presentation of Eraserhead would be filled with his usual directorial pomposity, and my suspicions were confirmed even before the movie began – after the usual copyright and anti-piracy notices, a series of diagnostic tests appears so that you can calibrate your TV screen to the brightness and contrast levels necessary to maximize the effective range of value the movie provides. (Gimme a break.) Lynch designed the DVD interface himself, not trusting anyone else to handle it properly (something I wish more directors did, actually.) Don’t get me wrong, I like the output – but a lot of the time he comes of like an artist who likes talking about himself more than he likes producing works.

I am going to sidestep the obvious choice a lot of reviewers of this film have made by giving my interpretation as to the film’s “meaning.” In an interview, Lynch has stated that none of the reviews he’s read or fans he’s spoken with have come close to guessing at the film’s true meaning – which tells me that the film doesn’t really have one. In a lot of respects the movie comes off like a Rothko painting – a collection of shapes and sounds that occupy space without any significance other than to be part of the collective whole of the movie (much like Dali’s Un Chien Andalou). Lynch has also stated that of his catalogue, Eraserhead is his most “spiritual” for him. And in a way it makes sense to me, the kind of images we’re presented with (especially at the beginning) is something that could be evoked by the kind of religious apotheosis that’s the result of days of fasting and barbed hooks driven into your flesh.

Line of the Movie: “Oh, I don’t know much of anything.”

Four stars. There’s a hole in my pocket.