This is the latest movie from Empire magazine’s Greatest Movies list from 2008 that I got to scratch off during my many, many hours spent indoors over the past months. It was not my first time experiencing the unique filmmaking style of David Lynch, and that’s a good thing because otherwise I might not have watched any of his later stuff. Eraserhead felt to me like a bizarre art house film by a young student who clearly didn’t care one bit about convention or pleasing the masses. I must not be as well-versed in the art world as I thought, because I spent most of the movie asking myself “what the heck am I watching?” or “did I dream that bit?”.
Film reviews, even amateur ones like mine, usually require about three paragraphs to give a brief spoiler-free overview the plot. The problem is that Eraserhead does not seems to have a plot, or at least one I could understand. It feels more like David Lynch once had a nightmare, wrote it down in his dream journal and then decided to somehow film it.
The opening sets the tone, which is grey and disturbing. The story, the one I could discern, follows an ordinary man living in an unnamed industrial landscape. Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) works in a printing factory, or something. Henry is a bit of a cypher, always wearing the same suit, rarely speaking, and sporting a truly bizarre haircut that is not far removed from Marge Simpson’s hairstyle. Somehow this man has a girlfriend named Mary (Charlotte Stewart), who has invited him to dinner with her parents.
A lot of weird things happen when Henry meets his potential in-laws, but I guess the weirdest thing is the chickens. Mary’s father proudly tells Henry they are man-made (????) and are the size of his fists. When Henry tries to cut them, liquid oozes out of them and the mother goes into some sort of seizure. After she has composed herself, she asks Henry if he has had sexual intercourse with her daughter. She asks because Mary recently gave birth to a baby prematurely and the two must now of course get married and move in together with the baby.
I’ve seen enough seasons of E.R and other medical shows to know premature babies don’t look like ordinary babies, but what is depicted by Lynch doesn’t look like an ordinary baby. In fact, it looks more like a cross between an alien and the Loch Ness monster, if it could be wrapped in a tiny blanket. It constantly wails and squirms, making it impossible for Henry and Mary to catch any sleep. Frustrated, Mary leaves for her parents’ house and tells Henry to take care of the “baby”.
I got my three plot paragraphs out of the way, which is good because once Mary leaves that is when things truly stopped making sense. After Henry started having hallucinations about a woman living in his radiator I stopped trying to understand and just waited to see what happened next, not always with anticipation. You have to give David Lynch props for being creative and bold, but as an average viewer with no in-depth knowledge of surrealism, I felt way out of my league.
Obviously, a lot of what is on-screen must be metaphorical. The baby/creature probably represents the fear of becoming a father or maybe of children becoming monsters. As for the chickens, I haven’t got a clue. It feels like this movie should have come with a Cliff Notes for dummies. Or maybe I should have paid more attention in art classes.
Even though if I am possibly not smart enough to understand the message, I still have an opinion about the movie, especially it’s ranking. It is well-shot, the sounds are very creative, it is aesthetically astounding, and it is bold filmmaking for sure, but does it truly deserve to be ranked 192 on a Greatest Movies list? Do people seriously think it is better than Amélie (196), Fargo (198), or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (199)? That last one is a gory horror movie, but at least it has a plot I could follow from A to Z. Eraserhead barely seems to start at A and I think it finished outside of the known alphabet.
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