Review #243: Eraserhead (1977)

This review was originally written in October 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #97: Eraserhead (1977)

I want to say at the top of this review that I knew nothing whatsoever about this film before watching it, except that it's made by David Lynch (and therefore I assumed it would be very, very weird). It is in fact very weird, but as the movie went on and I actually thought about what Lynch seemed to be trying to say and do, I'm not really sure "weird" is the word I would use to describe it.

Watching this film distinctly reminded me of the term "deepity". A deepity is a saying or platitude, that at first seems deep or profound, but to the extent that it's true, it's trivially so; and to the extent that it's profound, it's false. An example is "Age is just a number." If you take it literally, it's so obvious nobody would have ever needed to state it. If you take it metaphorically or instructionally, it's not true at all- there's quite a bit more to age than just being a number. But as a statement, "Age is just a number" is something people say to make themselves or others feel better because it sounds deep or profound... as long as you don't think about it.

Eraserhead feels like the cinematic version of a deepity. To the extent that it has a plot, the plot is incredibly simple and pretty straightforward: It's a story about Henry, a man who finds out he got his girlfriend pregnant, but the baby was born with special needs and the responsibilities of parenthood drive the two of them apart. He grows frustrated with their lack of intimacy and has an affair, and then regrets it and he kills the baby. Roll credits. But much of the movie is told through surreal and bizarre imagery, which makes it feel incredibly deep and philosophical- but once I got a handle on what the metaphor seemed to be (which took maybe until halfway through the film) it once again became trivially simple and not very deep or profound at all.

The film starts with Henry releasing some kind of white snake-like creature from his body that goes into a watery crevice, and a few minutes of screentime later he finds out his girlfriend is pregnant. (The imagery is incredibly surface-level and hard to mistake once you see it.) After the baby has caused strife between the couple, he has a dream where a woman is dancing on stage and wakes up to find more of these snake-like creatures under the covers, which he frantically cleans up so his sleeping partner won't notice. (His sexual frustrations are obviously becoming an embarrassing problem for him.) His neighbor from across the hall comes onto him when his partner is away and then suddenly the two of them are embracing in the same watery crevice we saw at the start of the film. Then he has another dream where his head falls off, replaced by a penis-shaped creature, and his head is stolen and sold to a pencil factory, where his brain is cut out and turned into pencil erasers. (He's realizing he was thinking with his penis, and he needs to find a way to erase his mistakes.) What seemed at the beginning to be "whoa David Lynch is so weird" has become "Oh, he made a very blatant and direct metaphor".

Not that making a blatant and direct metaphor is a bad thing, but the actual story here is incredibly basic and not really very interesting, so it kind of feels like he (and everyone who praises this movie) put all of his eggs in a single basket and thought the metaphor was enough to carry the film. Which, to put it simply, it isn't. I can only see this movie being interesting as a puzzle- if you don't know what's going on, then sure, it's going to seem intriguing and weird. But once you realize all of the imagery is pretty much literally what it represents, the story isn't interesting because it's on a foundation that isn't interesting. Maybe the rest of his work is like this too, maybe it isn't- I'll have to watch some more of his stuff to find out- but it really seems to me like this movie got notoriety purely because it was "weird", and likely because few people understood what was happening. (But even in that case, what good things can you even say about this film? "There was a lot of weird stuff I didn't understand but it seemed deep. 10/10"?) A cursory glance at IMDB shows that this was Lynch's first film, so I guess I can give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was still figuring out what works. But, in my opinion, this one doesn't.

Overall Rating: 2/10 Ladies in the Radiator

Huge Time Sink: Apparently this movie took FIVE YEARS TO MAKE. At one point Henry gets up and walks to the door, and the camera cuts to the hallway where he exits his room; eighteen months passed between the filming of those two shots but they cut them together seamlessly.