Eraserhead (1977) film review - honouring the Lynchian nightmare
★★★★★
‘Eraserhead’ follows Henry as he grapples with the horrors of fatherhood against a landscape of industrial decay and nightmarish visions.
Director: David Lynch. Starring: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Laurel Near, Jack Fisk. 15 cert, 89 min.
David Lynch died last week at the age of 78. Following an emphysema diagnosis, the director had announced in August of last year that he could no longer leave his house to direct, or walk without the aid of extra oxygen. Describing him as the ‘most authentically alive person’ he’d ever met, actor Kyle Maclachlan wrote: ‘While the world has lost a remarkable artist, I’ve lost a dear friend’.
Lynch’s legacy is phenomenal, his visual style so distinct that it has spawned its own adjective: ‘Lynchian’. It is often said that in Lynch’s films, the mundane and everyday become macabre, twisted to take on the shape of a nightmare. In Blue Velvet (1986), a college student discovers a severed human ear in his nice suburban neighbourhood; in Lost Highway (1997), a saxophonist is sent ominous VHS tapes filmed from inside the apparent safety of his home; and in Mulholland Drive (2001), a monster lurks behind the unassuming bins of an LA diner. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that Lynch reveals that which is macabre, magical, otherworldly, in day-to-day life. This is the nature of the Lynchian nightmare. And no film of his embodies this better than Eraserhead (1977).
‘Eraserhead’ (1977) film poster artwork
Eraserhead was Lynch’s first feature film. In remembering him, there is a certain poetic appropriateness in going back to the beginning, so to speak. Lynch has described Eraserhead as his ‘Philadelphia Story’, deeply inspired by his experiences living in the city in his early 20s. The Philadelphia of Eraserhead is a dystopian wasteland eerily devoid of humanity. Through this grim industrial world walks Henry (Jack Nance), a shy, awkward man whose anonymous black suit is offset by his striking, gravity-defying hair. When Henry’s girlfriend Mary (Charlotte Stewart) announces that he is the Father of her premature, monstrous baby, Henry is plunged headfirst into the spine-chilling world of parenthood. Visceral and experimental, Eraserhead is a sumptuously layered mystery of a film. Black comedy and body horror collide to create a nightmarish parody of family life, imbued with ambiguous visual symbols evocative of the inner workings of the subconscious mind.
In the opening scene of Eraserhead, a disfigured man on an alien planet pulls a lever, launching a sperm-like creature out into space until it falls, landing with a splash in a milky white puddle. What are we to make of this? Is The Man in the Planet perhaps God, indifferently deciding Henry’s fate before the narrative gets underway? Or are we seeing unfold before our eyes the conception of Henry’s baby, set in motion by the orgasmic ‘O’ face Henry pulls at the start of the film? That Eraserhead encourages interpretation and stimulates its viewer to ask these questions is part of what Lynch is renowned for, and his refusal to provide answers to his films’ mysteries has only exacerbated the intrigue surrounding them. Returning to Eraserhead, however, I was struck less by its narrative obtuseness and more by its aesthetic richness.
Eraserhead is an almost overwhelming cacophony of sounds, textures, and images. The film’s background noise is incessant; high-pitched whistling, cricket-like chirping, and the ominous groans of metal follow Henry wherever he goes. Dialogue is sparse and stilted, and the high-contrast, black-and-white cinematography creates the unnerving impression that something is always being obscured by shadows. The overall effect is one of intense claustrophobia and dread, a malaise which is amplified by the film’s fetishistic attention to texture. A handheld camera tracks over ground ridden with alien craters. When Henry is invited to have dinner with his girlfriend’s parents, he is served some kind of mysterious imitation chicken. As Henry carves into it, the chicken begins to gyrate grotesquely in protest, spewing a thick, oil-like substance. This unnatural stickiness later appears in the form of Henry’s baby, a decidedly inhuman thing swaddled in white bandages. In Eraserhead, organic matter is nauseating and offensive, an imposition on the sterile industrial environment Henry inhabits. Nothing healthy can grow here; even Henry’s ‘houseplant’ is just a few dead twigs stuck into a mound of dirt.
In this diseased husk of a world, comfort comes in the form of ethereal visions of a lady living inside Henry’s radiator. The Lady in the Radiator, with bloated cheeks of crater-like texture, dons a blonde bouffant and dances playfully across a chequered stage. Her warm smile, cherubic appearance, and defiant actions—in one scene, she is seen stamping on the slimy, sperm-shaped creatures raining down on the stage—give her the appearance of a guardian angel. Later in the film, she performs a song for Henry, wherein she repeats the words ‘In heaven, everything is fine’. This refrain is both a reassurance that Henry is safe in his fantasies, and a seductive suggestion of the possibility of escape from the responsibilities imposed upon him by his hideous baby.
If Eraserhead is a nightmare, then Lynch cleverly constructs nightmares within nightmares. When Mary leaves, forcing Henry to take care of their sick baby alone, the film’s fairly linear narrative spirals into a series of increasingly surreal abstractions. After The Lady in the Radiator performs her song, the baby springs from Henry’s body and sends his decapitated head flying across the empty stage. In the peculiar scene that follows, a child discovers Henry’s head on the ground and brings it to a factory. A worker then extracts Henry’s brain matter and inserts it into a machine which promptly begins producing pencils—eraserheads. There is a palpable fear being expressed here. The brain, alienated from its body, used not for creative means but for repetitive mechanical action; it is a kind of spiritual death, a terrifying conformity. That it is the sudden appearance of the baby which triggers this course of events reveals Henry’s fear as similarly triggered by fatherhood. Indeed, this is the most common interpretation of Eraserhead; that it is reflective of Lynch’s own discomfort upon becoming a father.
The film’s descent into madness mirrors the deterioration of Henry’s mental state, ultimately leading to his decision to cut the bandages containing his baby. It is this action which solidifies the viewer’s identification with Henry, for who among us were not asking ourselves the same questions: what lies beneath the bandages? What stuff is this creature made of? It is soon revealed that the bandages are the only thing holding the baby together, and Henry’s decision to stab it to death becomes a mercy killing. The baby’s organs are pierced, and it excretes copious amounts of gritty sludge; electrical sparks fly, and the lights flicker to reveal, intermittently, the baby’s freakishly enlarged head jeering at Henry. The ensuing image of Henry’s head with the gust of eraser shavings in the background is reminiscent of a suicidal gunshot. We then see The Man in the Planet again, but this time, he is evidently not in control. Struggling with the levers, teeth gritted in pain, his face is a mess of wounds. A heavenly chorus bursts forth on the soundtrack as he loses his struggle, and in a misty white afterlife, The Lady in the Radiator embraces Henry with glee.
If The Man in the Planet is in some way controlling the narrative at the start of the film, then his loss of control is surely representative of Henry’s decision to take matters into his own hands by killing the baby, thereby setting him on a path toward transcendence and freedom. This could be a literal bodily transcendence, a death which culminates in heavenly escape from grim material circumstances, or perhaps a more existential transcendence—an act of self-definition that brings Henry closer to finding meaning in absurdity.
Either way, the cryptic ending of Eraserhead solidifies its place in cinematic history’s hall of fame. There is a particular childlike, playful quality to Lynch’s films, a whimsy that, juxtaposed against darkness and terror, defines his work. Eraserhead remains a key embodiment of this unique vision. Lynch was unafraid to embrace the things in life that simply don’t make sense, and always did so with characteristic wit and creative flair. As he once said: ‘I don’t know why people expect art to make sense when they accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense’.
Rest in peace, David.