Eraserhead

Back to back rewatch: Industrial soundscapes. Apocalyptic wasteland. Twilight liminality. Filmed at the tailend of the cold war, you can still feel the pervasive existential dread and sense of doom throughout this entire movie seeping through like the omnipresent hum of industrial machinery. Henry literally has a painting of the atomic bomb explosion looming by his bedside. The world that Lynch creates with a 1.5 hour run time truly gives dune a run for its money. Bleak, hellish, grotesque, and inhospitable world that is somehow comical and goofy in its own absurdity. This is a film that rewards multiple viewings. On the second watch, everything felt more comprehensible and I could see what Lynch was doing. Even then, its still a behemoth of a work that I don’t think I could ever fully understand. At its core, it’s about Henry’s fear of fatherhood and underneath that, a broader existential fear of adulthood itself: facing consequences, accepting responsibility. Whether it’s an accidental pregnancy with a woman he doesn’t love, an affair with the girl next door, or the imagined act of killing his own child (and maybe himself), Henry’s nightmare is responsibility turned monstrous. I believe that from the moment he hears he will be a father at Mary’s home, the slow pan out from the strange noises of the dog to the lamp to the window into the evening void indicates that the rest is all his disturbed nightmare of what fatherhood would look like. Its a loveless relationship where his wife leaves him. Might this be Henry externalizing his own guilt, frustration and pitifulness onto Mary? He absolves his guilt and blames it on Mary. She leaves him to deal with the child himself and realizes he is totally and utterly pathetic and all alone. My favorite part of this whole movie, although there are a plethora of gorgeous shots - is the one where the camera slowly pan across the bed. As Henry and the neighbor make love, it feels like Henry is lying in a puddle of his own mistake. The sheets become this mound of dirt, wet and heavy with consequence - calling back to the beginning where this “god” figure shows the conception of Henry’s deformed child. Literally reaping the consequences of what he is sowing. The texture of the sheets is reminiscent of the otherworldly moon or egg object we see in the beginning. What a clever way to suggests that Henry will never learn from his mistake. He knows it. He is drowning in a pool of his own lust and regret, doomed to repeat the cycle again and again. This one truly hit all the spots on the second viewing back to back.