Parenthood is bad enough, but parenting a sperm-chicken hybrid is another can of sperm worms.
arenthood is a soul-crushing ordeal for those who are not equipped enough for the task. Needless to say, not everyone is suitable enough to be a parent. Some manage to pull it off with varying degrees of success, meanwhile others completely screw it up and just bestow their screwed-up traits down into a new generation. I’m most certainly in the camp of people who should never be allowed to be responsible for a child, in any case my lifestyle is far too hedonistic to fit a child within the picture.
Anyway, enough about parenthood and me, here’s my take on the strangeness that is Eraserhead (1977)
David Lynch’s first feature length film is a weird surreal take on the loss of mind and personality that comes from taking care of a child. These strange twisted images of parasitic parenthood are everywhere from the cosmic down to the very ground we walk on, we come from parents and we can either continue on that pattern or cut it short with us. There’s no way to really describe the things this movie throws your way without turning your mind upside down. You question the nature of what you’re seeing and how their achieved it during the filmmaking process and that’s the handle for a good film for me.
As an allegory for the imprisoning nature of childcare, the film frames the burden that weighs upon the central character, Henry as a half-alien, half-chicken, half-sperm snake looking creature that emerges from Henry’s mouth at the start of this preternatural slog of a film. Throughout the film, Henry and his wife must care of the child but fail to do so without plunging into deep hysteria. As he’s left to care for the child by himself the film takes on an oppressive presence as the child, and I’m really stretching the definition of the word here, begin to suck Henry’s identity dry and assimilate itself over it.
I’m quite glad this film was in black and white because I’d lose my appetite and throw up if I had to see any of those gory details in colour, but cinematically the lack of colour adds to the ominously depressing essence of the world where each object exudes noisy and evil vibrations. The soundscape is an assault upon the ears, each sound is a perilous curve in the labyrinth of dread that forces itself down into your ears. Imagine a kettle whistling through a microphone with a swarm of birds chirping and a planet rumbling right past your ears, that’s how I’d describe the soundscape.
Moving through the world of the film by way of the camera, we’re swallowed up by one hole and spat out another as the camera transitions through the ruptures in sense and normality of the film. The camera becomes a moving entity, a malevolent eye that looks upon the craziness with indifference. Everything that litters the world has a malicious microcosm that fills it and the camera forces us into the devilish details that play out between each millimetre of object.
The acting is as bizarre as the rest of the film where expressionless faces convey a depth of unpredictability. Characters will break out in uncontrolled spasms of wailing, shivering and intense staring that holds you hypnotised to the surreal madness.
I found myself scratching my head by the end of the film, although able to comprehend and somehow get what I had just seen, the effect it had on me was one of profound confusion, the sort you get when you see experience a microwave for the first time. Go watch it, (the film not the microwave, or do that too) it’s bizarrely great!
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