Feelgood (Eraserhead (DVD))

Member Name: george_lazenby

Product:	Eraserhead (DVD)
Date:	02/01/02 (142 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Weird, fascinating

Disadvantages: Immensely depressing

There are two sorts of David Lynch film; the first is a kind of filmed dream or nightmare, full of weird and disturbing images, and leaving logic far behind. These are films like 'Eraserhead', 'Fire Walk With Me', 'Lost Highway' and his most recent 'Mulholland Drive'. The second is more conventional, attempting to tell a proper story (usually provided by someone else); examples include 'The Elephant Man', 'Dune', the first series of 'Twin Peaks' and 'The Straight Story'. Lynch's most successful and popular films have been 'Blue Velvet' and 'Wild at Heart', both of which successfully marry the two sides of his career; in effect, they are dreams with coherent narratives.

'Eraserhead' was Lynch's first film, made over a period of several years, and on a very limited budget. Of all of his films, it's probably the least coherent, the least logical and the most intimidating. Like a very few other films (offhand, I can only think of Jean Cocteau's 'Orphee' and 'Le Sang d'un Poete'), it actually feels like you've stumbled into someone else's dreams. I don't have dreams like 'Eraserhead' very often (happily), but the lurches from comedy to horror, the insistent rumbling on the soundtrack, and the way in which events seem to be moved by rules that do not make sense to the outsider are all reminiscent of a dream.

It might be pointless to summarize what goes on, but I'll try. Henry (John Nance) is a painfully uncommunicative man living in a nightmarish wasteland of crumbling apartment blocks, clanking industrial plants and general squalor. Things are definitely not right: a weird old lady lives behind the radiator in his flat, and when he eats with his girlfriend's family, they dine on artificial chickens which flap their wings and ooze slime. His girlfriend is pregnant, and eventually leaves Henry to cope wit
h their hideous mutant offspring.

Like all surreal works, 'Eraserhead' does not come with footnotes to explain what everything means; parts of the film are a brilliant evocation of the low-rent side of life, but most of it is absurd and outlandish. Henry has dreams (like the sequence in which he sees his head being mined for pencil erasers, from which the film gets its name) and visions of planets, but the strangest events take place in the film's version of reality. 'Eraserhead' often gets classified as science fiction or horror, but while it has elements of both, I don't think you can label it at all.

You could justify 'Eraserhead' solely as an accomplished exercise in surrealism - it is brilliantly photographed and directed, and it's one of the first films I can remember which uses noises on the soundtrack in a deliberate way to evoke a certain mood and feeling (i.e. one of all-embracing dread). Though most of the cast are a bit zombiefied (something which nevertheless adds to the dreamlike feeling), Nance is very compelling, spending most of the film with an unforgettable look of dread and frustration on his face.

Nevertheless, if what you really want to know is what all of this actually means, then I think that Lynch was exploring his own fears about parenthood and commitment. Henry is an unwilling father, and Lynch sees the baby not as a thing to love and cherish but as a repulsive monster which can never be satisfied or controlled. Henry is ultimately overwhelmed by a responsibility he just can't meet, and I think that this reflects Lynch's own inability to cope with fatherhood. Lynch divorced his wife while making 'Eraserhead', and you can see how straightforward and well-adjusted his daughter is by watching her one film, the addictively terrible 'Boxing Helena'.

In the end, I think you should resist my explanation and watch the film for yourself. It's one of
those movies which is so compulsive and weird it becomes more fascinating every time you see it. People who like a nice clean movie with a solid plot will probably dive for cover long before the final fade, but for anyone who feels slightly adventurous (or anyone who wants the ultimate antidote to the standard Hollywood depiction of happy family life), this is a must.

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