evil bill
Posts: 6571
Joined: 19/7/2006
From: mordor/ uk
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ORIGINAL: Platter
I watched Eraserhead for the first time last night.
Eraserhead (1976)
While certainly not a fun movie, I didn't find it difficult or boring. The pace was very slow, but it was strangely compelling and I found time slipped away quite fast. Only the last twenty minutes started to test my patience, but that section has some of the best material in it. Even when nothing was happening for a long chunk of time I felt there was something engaging to look at. Visually it was very crisp and clean with well chosen and informative camera angles so I didn't feel it was claustrophobic and grim with everything closed in and awkward looking. The story didn't amount to much but I didn't expect it to so I wasn't disappointed. The 'In Heaven' song was disappointing as it was just a short fragment of a song, not the full thing which I was expecting. The lead actor reminded me a lot of David Lynch himself with the strange hair and the loud voice saying simple, slow, short sentences. So I suspect this is his most autobiographical film with an actor standing in directly for Lynch. It's not a substantial movie of any great depths. I think it's more style over substance. What is there is just about enough to sustain the film through its short running time. Overall neither good or bad. You have to want to like it to 'get it' though. If you're not on its side, or you want more conventional drama, then it will only frustrate and bore.
5 out of 10 stars
***SPOILERS***
I think Lynch missed a big trick with the end of Eraserhead. He wasted the pencil erasers as a dream sequence. Instead if he reorganised the scenes he could have this instead:
Henry kills the baby. Then he goes mad with remorse and tries to escape into the radiator. Once inside the radiator he is serenaded with the 'In Heaven' song. His refuge turns into a nightmare as the kid's head takes over his body. His decapitated head is then used to make pencil erasers. The end. I think that is odder, more surreal and more disturbing.
Nice review but disagree.
quote:
dannyfltch
I completely understand your view on Eraserhead mate. I absolutely love David Lynch films ( Lost Highway and Dune my 2 favourites) but did find that this film is just too weird and strange to fully enjoy. I felt quite nauseous whilst watching it and didn't find it a particularly enjoyable experience. I know this thread is written for films like Eraserhead but it is one of the very few very strange/weird movies I don't like! Give me any other Lynch film but for me it is inaccessible.
First off as said this thread was set up for such moviemakers like Lynch, and yes I can understand why this film and I believe also Inland Empire cause folks who like strange films to go WOW! to far man, what the hell is this.So here's my old updated review to try and explain why I love this, though not as much as some of his other classic mindfuck films.
ERASERHEAD 1976
ERASERHEAD follows a sensitive young man as he struggles to cope with impending parenthood. Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) lives in a hopeless industrial landscape, lusting after the beautiful woman who lives in the apartment across the hall. After his girlfriend, Mary (Charlotte Stewart), informs him of her pregnancy, he is forced to eat dinner with her extremely odd family. The baby is eventually born, only it isn't a human baby at all; it's a deformed creature that resembles a lizard. The baby won't stop crying, a horrifyingly piercing wail that drives Mary insane. Left alone with the baby, Henry is serenaded by a woman who lives inside his radiator, and soon he decides to murder his baby in order to stop the nightmare once and for all.
David Lynch's remarkable first film, made in 1976, still looks like a minor masterpiece, mixing Gothic horror and surrealism, in a way only a madman or genius could, which one he is is up for us cinema lovers to decide. In this heavily symbolic story set in a post apocalyptic future industrial nightmare, we are taken on a journey like no other, as we see nightmare images in glorious B&W take shape before are eyes.This is the movie that stared my love of the Weird/Strange movies, and for my money is one of the most bizarre films ever made(Except for maybe XTRO). With it's b/w imagery and lack of dialogue it feels and looks more like a silent film in the vain of Fritz Lang's Metropolis(1926), which was also about a post apocalyptic future industrialised world. Also The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari(1919) by Robert Wiene another German Director I feel was a major influence on Lynch,with it's expressionist stylized imagery and exaggerated reality, that has that Gothic nightmare approach, and the decent into madness, which is in Lynch's film also, though with David's own style fully on show. A film he wrote/produced/and directed, a Gothic nightmare on acid would be one way to describe this film, which is both upsetting, disorienting, dark, and mysterious, and the at times futuristic urban landscapes that seem out of place, also feel so real. It's simply stunning as a first feature by David Lynch, which took him five years to film, as he struggled with the lack of funds, as he had only directed a few short films before this feature film. The film's use of eerie sound and brilliant imagery make it disturbing, repulsive, hilarious, frightening, sensitive and challenging all at the same time.
My first experience of Lynch was Elephant Man and Dune, well before seeing ERASERHEAD and discovered the visuals that gave birth too these movies, as i watched it late one night on BBC2.What a mind fuck this was, with it's opening of a worm like creature coming out of the mouth this strange looking man, while he pulls levers inside a jagged planet. We then meet his girlfriend and her parents, and they have a meal with a tiny hen that haemorrhages blood, on his fork as he goes to eat it. I really could go on but enough to say it gets even stranger as it goes on, there's no way to summarize this plot, but 'i'll try, as with most if not all his work this is his own sub consciousness mind put to film and turned into art. Now if you take the story down to it's bare bones, it's a tale of a young man in a meaning less job, with a meaningless life, who finds out his girlfriend is to have a baby, which turns out as his luck would have it to be deformed. Add to this having to meet her parents, and his fantasy of a lady in the radiator who he has fallen for, plus the fact he see's his only escape from his meaningless unloved life as killing the baby, you see it's about a decent into madness. The end with Henry are hero/villain pulling the guts out of the baby, and then the room filled with a blinding light as the lady from the radiator once again appears, seem to suggest his escape is to the afterlife/death. Now Lynch's approach is from a sub conscious level, or dream state, it's like when you day dream, or you have a nightmare that's so real you think your trapped, yet it suddenly changes for no real logical reason, or you wake up to the real world, or both. Like when your in conversation with friends, and for a second your mind drift's off(i'm sure we have all done this from time to time, or is it just me) it feels like you've missed minutes of the chat, which in real time was only a spilt second or couple of seconds, but you feel disorientated. Well Lynch turns this on it's head and the sub conscious dream/nightmare world becomes the reality, while every so often it drifts into the real world that we live in, which he has used in Inland Empire, Lost Highway and toned down for Wild At Heart and his other more approachable films.
David Lynch is a unique director who can make great mainstream films like Dune etc, but he's at his best with his own wonderful films like this film. Which if you peal off the visual madness, is all about Life. Death, Love, Depression and Decent into madness as the lines between the two worlds of real and dreams become blurred. Yes it's a hard film to watch and you'll need some aspirin or a strong drink, but like all his deeper films with repeated viewing the plot and meanings become a little clearer, but the unease and horror do not lessen. It's a must see for any fan of Lynch or these type of movies, but beware it's very intense and will screw your mind, and this one puts a capital W in Weird movie, it's such brilliantly powerful, first movie with mind blowing visuals that will stick in your head long after you've viewed this totally weird film. I love Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart which is his most excessable movie's not counting his mainstream films, but next to Inland Empire and Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me, this is Lynch at his crazed best. It took me a few watch's but i'd place it about 3rd on my all time favourite Lynch film's of mine, so just remember like a fine wine it' get's better, you don't have to be a Mensa level guy/girl to get into it, just open your mind and you just might enjoy this one, it just might need a second viewing or more to work out the plot.8/10
< Message edited by evil bill -- 11/1/2013 4:58:52 PM >
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RE: WEIRD/STRANGE favorite movies fan base? - 
RE: WEIRD/STRANGE favorite movies fan base? - 
I can not deny that it is indeed a film that is made for this thread though
added to my colection which will of course get a spin.
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