Review of Eraserhead (1977) by Lucas C — 17 May 2015
I started watching this movie about ten years ago. Once I got to the first shot of the baby being sick I turned it off. It was just too much.
About two years ago I was able to bring myself to watch the whole thing. It is now one of my favorite movies of all time.
Some people just don't like sushi, and they think people who do are nuts. The same can be said for David Lynch movies.
The common thread through most of Lynch's movies is that feeling of being in someone else's nightmare. Inexplicable events, characters that shift in identity (psychologically or physically), but most importantly that dreadful sense of being at the mercy of the dream. You can't control it. You can't understand it. You're afraid of what it's going to show you next, but you can't get out of it. You believe that if you keep watching, the dream will explain itself. But in the end you're left with nothing but interpretations.
To explain the plot of Eraserhead, or to even discuss it's thematic elements, you have to have seen it. Any sentence beginning with "there's this one part" would leave a very confused person on the other end of the conversation.
It is a horror movie, but with none of the traditional elements. It is surreal, but it is also about some very real truths about male paranoia regarding sex and fatherhood. It is disturbing, both in it's grotesque imagery and it's uncanny similarity to all the things that make dreams what they are.
One in ten people could appreciate this movie. There's nothing wrong with the people who don't; they just don't dig the sushi.
This review of Eraserhead (1977) was written by Lucas C on 17 May 2015.
Eraserhead has generally received very positive reviews.
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