Eraserhead

Moving on to another winner of a Governor's Award from the Motion Picture Academy this year is David Lynch, and I imagine there were few, including Lynch himself, who would have thought he would have won a lifetime achievement award after his first film, Eraserhead, was released in 1977. I watched it for the first time this weekend, and though I'm not sure if I liked it or not, I certainly won't forget it.

Eraserhead became a sensation on the midnight movie circuit, an experimental film that doesn't have a straight narrative but is instead a dream-like assemblage of visceral images, many of which are stomach turning. I talked to my friend about it last night, a professor of film, and she walked out on it.

If it can be described, Eraserhead is about an everyman (Jack Nance), who always wears a suit and has hair piled on top of his head. He lives in a squalid flat, and is dating a girl (Charlotte Stewart) who invites him over to meet her parents. This dinner dominates the first section of the film, and is sort of like the Addams Family, as Nance is put amidst the weirdness of this family. The dad cooks "man-made" chickens that are as small as your fist, and when Nance cuts into one it oozes blood (oozing liquid is one of the key images of the film). Stewart's mother insists that Nance has fathered some sort of baby, so the couple marries.

This "baby" is an abomination, that looks like a turtle without its shell and is constantly crying. Stewart can't take it anymore and leaves Nance to take care of it. Also in the apartment is the "Lady in the Radiator," a woman with deformed cheeks that sings songs.

Lynch made the film over several years while studying at the AFI. I have no idea what it means, if anything, though some suppose it's about a fear of fatherhood (Lynch was married with a child at the time) as not only does Eraserhead feature the world's worst baby but there are numerous images of sperm-like creatures. Toward the end of the film the Lady in the Radiator stomps on them.

It is not recommended that you watch Eraserhead while eating. Based on this film, Lynch got the gig to direct The Elephant Man, a much more conventional film. But Lynch wasn't done making weird films, which I'll take a look at here in the coming weeks.