Eraserhead
Sometimes, just sometimes, a cinematic work is just so surreal and abstract that any review and / or analysis of it must be done from the direct interpretation that the reviewer himself has comprehended from it and hence can be fairly judged on those merits. Thus is the case with this legendary 1977 cult film from the soon to be a big name filmmaker David Lynch, a so called “midnight movie” mainstay (back when long running midnight showings of strange and unusual classics were so common that they almost constituted a weekly communal experience) for years and years and one which still astounds and confounds many to this day. As far as the most coherent interpretation by this reviewer is concerned, it seems to be a precursor to the later 1990 film Jacob’s Ladder (minus all of the direct spelling out of what the point of that movie was about) in that it appears to be telling the story of an average man named Henry (John Nance, who appeared in almost every Lynch production until his still unsolved murder as a result of having his head bashed in during a brawl with some homeless people in 1996) who has literally just died (offscreen) and as he transcends into the afterlife, suddenly has an urge to NOT let go of his former life, one that impedes his spiritual progress and compels a creature known as The Man In The Planet (Jack Fisk) to quickly compose a recreation (probably based on Henry’s memories) of his former existence, albeit one where all is not what it seems (i.e. weird shit can happen or appear at any given time) and even as Henry is back in the places that he used to frequent and around the people that he used to know, in actuality he is living in his old life as filtered through the lenses of Hell, a realm of misery and even at times a still death atmosphere which he shrugs off and attempts to continue living his life and going about his usual business. He receives an invitation to have dinner with the family of his old girlfriend (Charlotte Stewart, a B actress who reputedly had affairs with many A list celebrities including Jim Morrison) and given that his fondness and attachment to her was probably one of his primary motives for not wanting to let go in the first place, he accepts the invite only to bear witness to the girl and her mother both having epileptic seizures, a catatonic Grandma who sits in the kitchen the whole time smoking a cigarette but otherwise not moving, a plumber father who comes across as being such a simpleton that he seems borderline retarded, a chicken dinner where the chickens ooze a disgusting goo when cut open and then having to endure the indignity of having the (much older) mother come on to him after calling him into another room to have a talk. But the worse part of this cavalcade of horrors is yet to come: Henry is finally told that apparently his girlfriend Mary has had a baby based on their prior relationship and that it(?) is still down at the hospital waiting to be picked up. And of course it is this “baby” that remains one of the most terrifying yet pathetic monstrosities in the history of cinema, one which still remains as such even now because to this day Lynch has refused to divulge exactly how he was able to create such a thing on only a $10,000 budget with the only reasonable explanation out there being that he used an embalmed calf fetus to play the role of The Baby while he mysteriously found a way to bring it “to life” not only with baby like sound effects, but also in the way that it is constantly moving and struggling and bobbing its head up and down. While an easy answer would be to say that the baby’s mutation (along with others whom we see throughout the film) is the end result of toxic chemical pollution being spewed out into the air, the more plausible conclusion is that the creature actually represents some sort of warped responsibility suddenly being forced into Henry’s life, an unholy cross to bear which Henry by his own nature feels obligated to take care of even after the baby’s mother has walked out on both of them. Meanwhile, there are other signs and hints abounding which indicate that Henry should ultimately “give up” on this warped, nightmarish shadow of his former existence in order to finally ascend (possibly to Heaven?) as embodied best by the Lady In The Radiator (Laurel Near), an angelic yet deformed creature who serenades him about the better life he is missing out on all while he continues to cling to this one. The over the top nature of much of the nightmarish imagery is what drives much of the narrative here (most of which has to be seen to be believed) but the constant thematic element remains the idea that taking on responsibility even when it’s seemingly unnecessary, or rather in the way that some people must go through life only being satisfied when they’re shouldering some kind of a burden, is actually the surest way to guarantee unhappiness and misery. And Henry is certainly one of those types, taking care of this baby thing when the more realistic and humane option would be to have constant supervision by medical professionals for however the remainder of its obviously short life would be. And only when the baby reveals its true nature by clearly adopting a more sinister cackling noise and then mutating and expanding into something far worse than what it once was, does Henry finally seem to figure out that holding onto this old life of his is just not worth it anymore, a realization that The Man In The Planet is only too happy to see and hence accommodate him for. And Lynch himself (whose own daughter Jennifer was born with clubbed feet and supposedly inspired some of this) would go on to much greener pastures after defining himself here in possibly his most unfiltered piece of work, one that takes the position that piling on too much responsibility in your life (including the alleged “joy” of raising a child) can be in and of itself one of the worst nightmares imaginable…
8/10