All the films that I’ve seen at Adelaide Cinematheque have benefited from being shown on the big screen, but none more than Eraserhead. David Lynch’s debut feature is one of the strangest movies I’ve seen, and as seen in a theatre as it was intended it simply envelopes the audience, drawing us into a bizarre, terrifying and hilarious shared dream.
Eraserhead is a wholly unique film -- the special effects are unlike anything else seen on film and likewise the sound design truly sensational. The movie full of strange and disturbing images and sounds that are deployed with precision, never used only just to shock or disgust the audience, but to draw us deeper into the film.
Lynch has wisely refrained from explaining what the movie is supposed to be about, except to say that it does have a specific meaning to him and that no reviewer has ever gotten it right.
To me Eraserhead seemed like an expedition into a young man’s fears and anxieties about childbirth, reproduction and parenting. The first truly unsettling thing we see in the movie is a horde of puppies nursing on their mother, creating a sickening sound that disturbs long before its source is revealed, and the images of fertility, birth and parasitism don’t stop for the rest of the movie.
The strange baby that our protagonist suddenly finds himself having to take care of is an ugly, alien-looking thing that he never asked for, but which still manages to take over his entire life.
I wasn’t surprised to learn after watching Eraserhead that David Lynch had indeed been a young father and was forced to marry his girlfriend when she got pregnant. All of this transpired while he was living in Philadelphia and he has called Eraserhead his “Philadelphia Story.”
I’ve read a lot of theories about what this movie is supposed to be about, which is actually quite a lot of fun, but I think the meaning is not that far from the surface. To me it seems clear that this movie is a nightmare about trying to raise a child that you never wanted in the first place.
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