Eraserhead (19 March 1977)
directed by David Lynch
starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Allen Joseph, Jeane Bates, Judith Anna Roberts, Laurel Near, Jack Fisk, Jean Lange, Darwin Joston, Neil Moran, Hal Landon Jr.
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MPAA rating: Studio: American Film Institute, Libra Films Script: David Lynch Music: David Lynch Running time: 89 minutes Tags: Drama; Horror; infants; mutants; pencils; radiators; surrealism Tactical strength: [7/10]
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The movie Eraserhead presents a sparse landscape where Henry (Jack Nance) lives out a surreal existence accompanied occasionally by his wife Mary (Charlotte Stewart) and their mutant baby. In keeping with the movie's sparse tone, the DVD has only two special features: the trailer and a ninety-minute reminiscence with David Lynch. At the end of David's recollections, he says that no critic or reviewer has ever suggested an interpretation that matches his own views of Eraserhead. To his credit, Lynch didn't say the critics had the movie wrong, just that the interpretations do not correspond with his own. I doubt that I have the ultimate answers to the meaning in Eraserhead, but I think we can find some thematic elements that everyone can agree appear in the film.
First, Henry clearly has a fixation on sexuality. Perhaps he has issue with performance or virility, but he clearly has recurring thoughts about sex and particularly about conception. In several scenes, Henry believes he watches a performance by the Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near). She appears with swollen cheeks and dances on a stage. She sings that, "In Heaven, everything is fine," and then as three-foot sperm fall around her, she dances across the stage, crushing the sperm under foot. Apparently the ovum lives a happy life prior to insemination and chooses not to allow conception. Later, Henry wakes up to Mary thrashing in bed. To calm her down, he must pull oversized sperm from under Mary and throw them against the wall. Again, we can attribute any number of meanings. Henry has concerns about conceiving another mutant child and wishes to take back the material of recent love making. Or perhaps, he wishes to go back and unmake the mutant child lying on the nearby dresser top.
At one point Henry has a dream that his head comes off and bounces into the street. A small boy (Thomas Coulson) finds the head and takes it to a pencil factory. There the pencil machine operator (Hal Landon Jr.) takes a core samples from brains and uses the brain matter to make erasers for the pencils. The operator tests one of the erasers and announces, "It's okay," and then brushes the eraser shavings off the desk into the air. We then see the shot similar to the one on the current DVD cover of Henry's head superimposed on the aerosolized brain/eraser shavings. This scene provides the source material for the title, but doesn't do much to give us clarity about the film's meaning. One could easily attach numerous meanings to the event. Perhaps Henry has concerns about just serving as a cog in an industrialized world. Or maybe Henry has issues about his own sanity and wants someone to pronounce that he has a regular brain.
I think much of the appeal of Eraserhead lies in its ambiguous events and meaning. Because Lynch doesn't make his intentions clear, he leaves the viewer wide open to project personal meaning onto the film. The film does deal with issues of universal concern, such as sexuality and human isolation, but no matter how you interpret Eraserhead, it makes an indelible imprint on your own brain that you cannot erase.
