Viewing Thread:
"Eraserhead....."

First of all WTF?

I saw bits of this film when I was young on a late night showing on Channel 4 and back then I thought it was pretty funking weird. I've read good reviews though and I decided to sit down and watch the whole thing through yesterday to see if it was really as bad as I once thought.

I was right it was the biggest load of rubbish I have ever had the misfortune to watch, it makes no sense, there's no storyline it's just one big pile of crap. Usually I let crap films go and just forget about them but I just couldn't with this one. I couldn't help noticing the glowing reviews it has on the front cover of the video.

According to the Daily Telegraph it's a masterpiece, I mean HELLO was I watching a different film it was the biggest pile of pretentious nonsense i've ever seen. It seems to me that the critics saw that it was a David Lynch film so they gave it glowing reports without even watching it.

It made no sense, a man has his head chopped off for no particular reason then a boy picks it up and takes it off to a factory to make Pencils out of it I mean WTF is that about.

Anyway i'd love to hear from a Lynch fan who would defend this film, cause I really can't think how on earth anyone could attempt to come up with something in its defence, it was load of nonsense. Even if there where hidden meanings to the imagery it was still a load of rubbish, if this film is an exampler of what is goin on in Lynch's head then I really am I worried for him. If I hadn't borrowed the film off a friend I would have happily walked out side and smashed the video on a rock it annoyed me that much. Damn film critics are so anal, masterpiece phft i've seen porno's with better storylines.

loki wrote:
Most of the imagery has some religious basis.

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Apparantly Robocop is an American Jesus... Because he got killed, then was resurrected, then walked on water (at the end when he's walking towards Bodigar)

Hmm, I think that stuff went over my head *whoosh*

Ooh, last time I saw the film I made some kind of sense of the levers. I thought ot was something to do with fate, or some kind of norse style God, setting events in motion at the start of the film, and once he committed the act, it picked up an unstoppable momentum. I think at the end, he was pulling the levers to stop the tragic conclusion, but once you start things things you can't take it back.

That may well be drivel, I can't really remember his parts in the film that well. I think I'm going to watch this again over the weekend and have another think about it.

Mr. Happy wrote:
> Can anyone explain the decaying man pulling the levers? That bit
> confused me from the start...

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I don't *even* have a clue what that was about.
I don't know what any of it was about, but as usual I surrender myself to Lynch's visions and just enjoy it.

Like listening to Russian - I don't get it but I like to listen.

Maybe I was bit quick to jump on the film and call it crap. After reading the replys i'm starting to understand the film a bit more, I may even be tempted to go and watch it again and try and make some sense out of it.

Oh and Goatboy what's wrong with Pearl Harbour? it has planes and bombs and explosions and action and killings and explosions and guns and explosions and and and and.....

Can anyone explain the decaying man pulling the levers? That bit confused me from the start...

I had the opportunity to see this at the weekend (after Jaws so I was balancing my arthouse ying with my blockbuster yang) and it confused me a lot too. However, I'm more inclined to defend Lynch than attack him because the amount of work that went into the film. It took him 5 years to complete and you can see why, he did everything in the film, from the sound effects to the special effects and with it being such a labour of love you would expect it to have a deeper meaning. Before I saw this I thiought that Mulholland Drive was complicated, but that's a walk in the park compared to "Eraserhead". It's easy to dismiss the film out of hand as maningless, but as Loki's proved it's definitely rewarding to look for a meaning yourself. Maybe Lynch doesn't tell you what to think, but is that such a bad thing?

My starting point for watching it was what I had heard from various places that Lynch based Eraserhead on his own experiences of fatherhood, which does make some sense but didn't clear up much of the film's content. Though it might clear up why Lynch's wife left him shortly after he finished "Eraserhead".

Given what Loki said about the religious imagery, I thought at the time that the tree might represent the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden and it does now seem a little more plausible, particularly as Mr.Eraserhead has just committed adultery with his next door neighbour - a loss of innocence - when he comes across the tree in the pseudo-courtroom (judgement of adam?) and after that, even though events seem to go into freefall, he knows what he's got to do. Also the opening of the baby/alien's wrapping made me think of pandora's box... He opens it up and the foam starts to spew out, and eventually the baby turns into a demon that confronts him, but I'll file that one in the box marked "vague, unsubstantiated ideas".

Having said that you'd need to look at every single image and put it in its right place to understand the film so any observations made about it are pretty much shots in the dark until you start to build up a fuller picture of what Lynch is trying to say. It's not an easy film by any means but I'm going to keep on watching it until I have some semblance of understanding. For me the film's more intriguing than baffling.

The difference between Lynch films and pretentious crap, something that he's often accused of making, is that Lynch tells you just enough to suggest that there is a deeper meaning at the bottom of it all; it just takes time and effort to put it together. Lynch doesn't make unintelligible films nor does he make pretentious films; he makes complex and genuinely artistic films. It's a razor thin line between pretentious and genius, and Lynch walks it straight down the middle, so he's always going to have critics but he'll also have diehard fans. I think Lynch rocks, although his version of Dune should have been made as a trilogy because he tries to pack waaay to much into one film.

Goatboy wrote:
> Stick to Tomb Raider and Pearl Harbour, you'll be far happier.


Are you being serious? Or is that supposed to be funny?

Because I fail to see how not appreciating a David Lynch film means all you're gonna like (or understand) is mindless action.

The chicken bit also has obvious sexual references, and note how the father (as head of the household) gives away the right to carve to the main character, as if he is granting the rights to his daughter away. The horrific bloody imagery that result shows his fear and repulsion of the sexual act and prefaces his subsequent guilt. It's all very catholic.

The little worms are sins (they are obviously sexually related) and represent his guilt, hence the baby (real or imagined) is the outcome of his sins with his girlfriend. That's why when his neighbour looks at him, he imagined that she saw the babies head on his body (guilt and fear that everyone knows he is a sinner).

The radiator is suicide, when he's depressed and stares at it she sings "In heaven everything is fine". In his dream he goes into the radiator (dies) and is put in a dock - i.e. he is being judged (by the tree which may represent God). As he is judged the worms are stamped on as she sings (e.g. his sins are washed away, the blood flowing from the tree also recalls christian imagery). After being absolved his head is turned into erasers. OK, now that's plain weird but may represent erasing all his fears and concerns.

There's also a lot in there about man's alienation from his environment by the onset of industrilaisation and how that can destroy man's spirit.

I haven't seen it for a while but there is loads more good stuff in there, but I haven't got time to think about it now. If anyone wants to discuss it later, that'd be cool though. It is a good film.

loki wrote:
Most of the imagery has some religious basis.
>
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Really?
I never got that from it.
I have no idea what to make of 95% of it, but I do know it had an effect on me.
I was in stitches at the grandmother not moving,although the chickens frightened the life out of me