Not many films conjure as much discussion as David Lynch’s “Eraserhead.” Stark and troubling, it’s a film that encourages additional visitations, but also becomes more disturbing with each viewing. It’s often self indulgent, like a student short on steroids, and suffers from oddly flat moments, but it’s also unwavering in its vision, and wraps the audience so tightly in a feverish dreamscape it’s almost impossible to escape the film’s metaphysical grip.
“Eraserhead” was a labour of love for Lynch. It took over five years of intermittent filming and postproduction work to finally pull the project together into a release in 1977. At the time, many critics responded coldly, but soon enough the film turned into a cult phenomenon, becoming a particular favourite on the late night horror house circuit.
Narratively, things are pretty sparse in “Eraserhead.” Jack Nance takes on the role of Henry Spencer, a timid and socially malnourished man living in a desolate industrial city. Upon learning that a recently ended romance has resulted in a bastard newborn, Henry agrees to wed the child’s mother, Mary (Charlotte Stewart) and moves both her and baby into his musty flat. But the child that’s been born seems hardly human: it’s a strange, malformed creature whose wailing never stops. Mary soon flees the flat in anguish, leaving Henry on his own with just the child and his increasingly unstable thoughts, his grip on reality seemingly caving in under the pressures of modern life.
One of the big points of discussion in any dialogue on “Eraserhead” is the fact that David Lynch refuses to explain the film. In interviews on the topic, the writer/director/producer can be frustratingly obtuse, but you also get the impression that he wants the challenge to remain for the audience, because Lynch is less concerned with what the “Eraserhead” is about, and more concerned with what it’s really about.
Of course, “Eraserhead”’s subtexts and themes are open to different interpretations, but with his debut feature Lynch seemed out to illustrate the perversity of everyday life and the sickening nature of guilt. Henry’s moral slips have physical manifestations, creating striking totems to his sins that will inevitably drive him mad. It’s frightening stuff, and captures perfectly the stomach-churning, maladjusted nature of true guilt.
The film pushes aside the rudiments of narrative progression to concentrate on these often-horrifying scenes, so a chicken dinner oozing black blood or Henry’s head being reconstituted to make pencil erasers are given extra room to resonate with a shocked audience. And these are but two examples in a film full of deliciously bizarre imagery.
Adding to the impact of the film’s demented sensibility is the technical work of Lynch and his two cinematographers, Herbert Cardwell and Frederick Elmes: make no mistake, despite the confronting material “Eraserhead” is a good-looking film. The compositions are often formal, but never static and rarely stagy, and when the DOPs move the camera it’s with a light and graceful touch that suckers the viewer into the horror that’s about to unfold.
The photography is deftly packaged by Lynch’s own editing, while Alan Splet’s sound design is frequently the most frightening part of the whole enterprise, sculpting noise into a terrific cacophony that augments the otherworldly visuals.
The final result is a delirious fever dream that sweeps away its weaknesses and ticks away in your consciousness long after the final credits have rolled. Lynch of course would go on to more ambitious projects and start balancing his darker concerns with slightly more narrative-driven material. But it’s this “dream of dark and troubling things” that will forever define him as a filmmaker.
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