The best thing about “Eraserhead” (1976) is that its director, David Lynch, refuses to explain it. Unfortunately, incomprehensibility can carry a film only so far.
Jack Nance plays Henry, a blank slate of a man with a towering head of hair. Henry merely passes through the film. Things happen to him, and most of the time he is powerless to understand why they are happening.
One evening, Henry goes to his girlfriend’s house for dinner. He learns that she has had a baby, a tadpole-shaped mutant that may or may not be his. Soon, man, wife, and child are all living in Henry’s one-room flat. Not long after that, the infant’s constant screaming becomes too much for its mother, and she leaves. Henry is left alone to figure out the meaning of his life and to decipher the true nature of his relationship with the baby.
Throughout “Eraserhead,” Henry transports freely between the real world and a dream state. Disturbing sounds – the hiss of his radiator, the wailing of his tyrannically needy infant – herald the transition. In Henry’s dreams, a disfigured but angelic woman sings to him. But all sorts of upsetting events transpire involving death and disfigurement. It is unclear whether the woman is an angel or a siren of doom.
As is to be expected, elements from Henry’s real-life existence show up in his dreams. More unsettling, elements from his dreams show up in his real life. “Eraserhead” was Lynch’s debut feature, and in it he showed his mastery of a theme common to his work ever since: the presence of parallel worlds that exist simultaneously.
Lynch struggled on “Eraserhead” for five years. His care and attention to detail are evident in every frame. The film features all manner of dystopian sounds: clanging pipes, rumbling thunder, a clacking pencil factory. Generally, the audience hears the sound first, wonders what it might be, and then is shown the explanation – making each microcosm within the movie its own mystery world.
“Eraserhead” is filmed in black and white, and its shabby interiors harken back to 1940s film noir. A variety of films are referenced obliquely in “Eraserhead,” from silent movies to “Carnival of Souls” (1962). For viewers who delight in pure visual and aural challenge, this is a movie well worth watching. Many of the parts are hideously wonderful.
But the movie lacks a beating heart. Its horror elements fail to scare, because Henry never seems frightened. Its sexual overtones are unexciting, because Henry never seems aroused. Henry is somewhat mechanical, a cousin of sorts to the Tin Man. Nance’s performance is as it should be. The problem lies not within the acting but within the character of Henry.
In later movies, Lynch proved himself a master by filling in the parts that were missing from “Eraserhead.” His characters in “The Elephant Man” (1980), “Blue Velvet” (1986), and “Mulholland Dr.” (2001) are all driven by their passions. “Eraserhead” suffers from comparison with these later works. It is an early experiment – neither a total failure nor a complete success – by a tremendously talented director.
DIRECTOR: David Lynch SCREENWRITER: David Lynch PRODUCER: David Lynch CAST: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Allen Joseph, Jeanne Bates
