Long, long ago, in a far off land called the 1970’s, I was a
geeky kid who loved movies. Unlike normal, non-cinema obsessed youth, my
favorite part of the year wasn’t summer vacation – it was the weeks devoted to
the Los Angeles Film Exposition (commonly called “Filmex”), the annual
international festival that ran from 1971 to 1983 before morphing into the
organization American Cinematheque.
For a budding film geek, having a Filmex pass was like being
given free rein in a candy store filled with exotic treats from around the
world. I’d ditch school and take a series of city buses to Century City
every day for the length of the festival, grab a program, and cram as many
movies into my day as possible. Choosing films based solely on the three or
four sentences in the festival schedule, I gambled my time on movies from
countries like Ireland, China and Cuba and on interesting-sounding
American films that would likely never see wide distribution.
Which is how I first saw David Lynch’s freaky fever-dream Eraserhead. Three decades later, we know what to expect from Lynch, but in
1977 his beautiful, surreal, terrifying contemplation of urban anxiety was
wholly new, and utterly baffling. The non-linear story uses Lynch’s personal
brand of dream logic to tell the tale of a man named Henry (Jack Nance) whose
girlfriend abandons him and their grotesquely deformed baby. While the baby’s
in his care, Henry sleepwalks through a bizarre chain of interactions with
increasingly strange characters.
As a young filmgoer fed on a regular diet of standard Hollywood genre-bound fare, I was floored. And I became a
fan of Lynch forever, even when he’s at his most infuriating.
Now, what Eraserhead is actually about is anybody’s guess.
Lynch himself has never fully explained it other than to say it reflects his
anxieties while living on his own in an industrial part of Philadelphia. Critics have come up with
numerous interpretations from parental fear to sexual dysfunction, but really
it’s just the world’s greatest audition film – Lynch made the movie to show off
what he was capable of as a filmmaker, and it got him noticed. After seeing Eraserhead, Mel Brooks contacted Lynch and offered him The Elephant Man,
kicking off the director’s uneven-but-always-interesting career.
Watching Eraserhead for the first time is a revelation, a
mind-altering experience in an utterly unique way of telling a story on film.
Despite its incomprehensible storyline, Lynch’s masterful use of shadow,
industrial sounds and grotesque imagery creates an inescapable feeling of dread
in the viewer, a palpable sensation of being trapped inside someone else’s
nightmare. It’s absolutely gorgeous to look at, even when the images are so
awful that you want to look away.
Sporadically shown over the years in art house and repertory
theaters, the film received a broader DVD release last year (previously it was
available only through Lynch’s website) but it really ought to be experienced
on the big screen. The Northwest Film Center is offering that experience this week, and you should take advantage of the
opportunity, even if it leaves you jittery and scratching your head in
confusion.
Playing with Eraserhead is Lynch, a new documentary that
reveals the director to be obsessed with Transcendental Meditation, which he
promotes to his cadre of worshipful protégés in between power walks. Direction
is credited to “blackANDwhite,” who may be one of Lynch’s young in-house bootlicks
or could really be Lynch himself, since this seems like the sort of thing he
would do. Whoever directed it, it’s awful – tedious, unenlightening, and
sluggishly paced. Skip it if you can.
