Movie Review: Eraserhead (1976)

When in an early scene of Eraserhead Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) is informed by his alluring neighbor that his girlfriend requests his presence at her parents' house for dinner that night, Henry's reaction is shock. Neither producing unhappiness nor fear (and certainly not pleasant expectation), the stimulus is so mortifying to awkward Henry with his polygonal hair and highwater slacks that his nervous system shuts down. Like a deer in headlights, he lacks the fortitude to process the danger that's coming his way. Having spent the first ten minutes of screen time silently wandering the apocalyptic city streets alone, he responds to the invitation by immediately sitting on the corner of his bed, drying his socks, and staring at the radiator, waiting for darkness to fill his room so that he can make his nighttime appointment. From inside the radiator comes a promising glow, a suggestion of something orderly, peaceful, and longed for, but the glow fades away with the promise unfulfilled. Tonight is not a night of pleasant routines. Tonight he will be yanked from his comfort zone into uncharted, perilous territory: girlfriends, parents, dinner etiquette.

Long past dusk, at the industrialized home of girlfriend Mary (Charlotte Stewart), Henry is chastised for being late. Mary has stood by the window, nervously awaiting his arrival with a frown furrowing her face; in her opinion, there was no guarantee that he would come. Perhaps she's used to him blowing off plans with his friends, either from forgetfulness, fear, confusion, or something else. Henry supports her assumption when he tells her, in a panicked outburst like much of his speech throughout the film, "I wasn't even sure you wanted me to come!" Despite the straightforward terms of the invitation and Mary's obvious desire that he show, Henry has almost unconsciously convinced himself of what he wants to believe, that his presence at the uncomfortable dinner is neither necessary nor wanted. Nevertheless, he hesitantly comes, and the dinner that follows is more uncomfortable than he could possibly imagine.

In the corner of the room, a newborn litter suckles at a mother pup's teats. The sound, which fills the room constantly, is like feasting, scurrying rats. With this grating, inhuman noise combines a steady whir of lonely wind, a sound like chaos howling before the dawn of time, and the combined effect is to set the viewer--and Henry--constantly on edge. The sound could be his own overworked nerves on the verge of snapping; whether the film depicts an objective reality or a manifestation of Henry's subjective perspective (I lean toward the latter) is never quite clear. Mary's mother, Mrs. X, is at once abrasive, insistent, and dismissive. When Mary assures her that Henry is a very clever printer, she responds with what could easily be either agreement or sarcasm: "Yeah, I'll bet he's clever."

When Mr. X, an excitable plumber, enters, introducing a string of new conversation topics from chickens and pipes to progress and knees, Henry's panic level rises. Henry has trouble keeping up with one thread of conversation; following half a dozen is impossible. When Mr. X later asks him, "Well, Henry, what do you know?", the openendedness paralyzes him. "Oh, I don't know much of anything," he humbly replies, but the future father-in-law continues to stare at him with an expectant smile. The question is a banal piece of conversational fluff, a statement devoid of depth, intended more as grease for the wheels of social interaction than as any prying insight into human understanding. Henry could easily respond with any number of trivialities--the weather, sports, work, politics, a humorous anecdote--anything to keep the chatter flowing, but Henry, completely lacking in social consciousness, interprets the question literally as an interrogation demanding a complete accounting of the vast corpus of knowledge he possesses. "What do you know?" Where to begin? Better not to begin at all--and so the conversation stalls.

When Henry is asked to carve the chickens--a task made more difficult by the fact that these are unknown, alien chickens, miniature mechanical creations--Henry is forced to perform as the center of attention. If he had any fears about making a fool of himself, now would be the time when that would happen. The tiny, squirming chicken, moving in a rather sexual motion, vomits blood as he slices it, sending Mrs. X into a violent, screaming convulsion that causes her to run from the room. Pandemonium erupts. Mrs. X aggressively questions Henry about his "sexual intercourse" with her daughter, combining guilt, anger, and threats with sexual awkwardness when she suddenly begins licking and kissing his neck. Responsibilities, expectations, restitution, and threats are piled on: Henry has a baby, he must marry his girlfriend, he'll be "in very bad trouble" if he doesn't "cooperate." The whole spectrum of difficult, confusing social interactions and expectations combines in one disturbing climax as the ratlike puppies continues suckling and as Mr. X worries about the chickens growing colder and as Mary's catatonic grandmother puffs at a cigarette.

If I had to guess what Eraserhead was about, I'd say social anxiety disorder or perhaps even something severer like autism. How else can I explain the peaceful satisfaction that Henry derives from his lonely wanderings and his isolated quarters? His window looks onto nothing but bricks, yet this doesn't seem to bother him. Instead of pets or photographs of people, his apartment is furnished with plants and dirt. His favorite passtime (or should I call it a ritual or an escape or a safety net?) is the solace of staring into his humming radiator, where he imagines a shy, affectionate, inhuman woman dancing and promising him better things to come. The repeated lyrics of the only song she sings are, "In heaven, everything is fine. You've got your good things, and I've got mine." You have yours and I have mine--no "ours." They are both separate, and everyone is happy. Henry is prone to misinterpreting and misreading the statements and actions of others. When his beautiful neighbor tells him that she has locked herself out of her apartment by accident, we see her move close into his face in a sexual aggressive maneuver. Is this real, or is Henry's confusion--his eagerness to see the most awkward in any social interaction--forcing him to imagine a conversation that is much more complicated and loaded than it really is? Does every conversation Henry has really end in disaster, or does his hypersensitive mind merely convince him that they all do? Is Henry "on vacation" from the printing factory because of psychological reasons? Why does Henry's baby--which cries and moves like a real baby--look like a monster? Perhaps because Henry has enough trouble seeing fully grown adults as humans; a tiny, babbling creature is as alien to him as an embalmed calf fetus. Henry's problems and reactions, his fears and perceptions (if we are to view Eraserhead as existing entirely within Henry's perceptions) all resemble the innerworkings of a mind riddled with social anxiety, right down to the climax in which Henry, at the height of his stress, imagines his head becoming disembodied and used by caricatures as a cog in a factory machine. The portrait of severe social anxiety is disturbing, stressful, and accurate. David Lynch has fascinatingly depicted what it looks and feels like to feel utterly disconnected from the people around you.

Of course, when I first saw Eraserhead about five years ago, before I was dealing with the social anxiety I presently deal with, I didn't interpret the film in any such manner. I thought it was about the fear of growing up and facing responsibility. The worries of parenthood. Maybe even abortion. The baby's fetal appearance, the odd sperm-like creatures that the woman in the radiator stomps on, the infidelity that Henry commits with his neighbor while trying to conceal his crying baby, the bizarre infanticide: everything pointed to this conclusion, and I think that's a conclusion that many viewers reach.

But trying to analyze what Eraserhead is about is an exercise in futility, stupidity, or arrogance. No explanation is all-encompassing; any analysis will still be rife with holes and questions. If the film is about social anxiety, then what are the worms that the woman in the radiator battles with her feet? If the film is about anxiety or about fatherhood, then what does the horrifying man who lives inside the moon and pulls the levers that begin all the action in the film represent? David Lynch is a surrealist, and in his filmography he has proven himself a master of cumulative effects. Scenes, visuals, dialogues, songs, sounds, and other aspects of Lynch's films don't necessarily fit together like jigsaw pieces. More often the varied parts of a Lynch film harmonize together kaleidoscopically, achieving an effect of plenitude. In a symphonic composition, a flute plays a part, a tuba plays a part, and every few moments a tympani drum plays a loud part. In isolation, these parts are scattered, unstructured noise; together, they are music. The unsettling soundscape, the dystopian landscape, the bizarre dialogue, the overemotional overacting, the lush black and white photography, the immersive cinematography, the horrifying imagery, and the haunting music of Eraserhead combine to create the overall effect of a nightmare.

David Lynch's first film, assembled in Philadelphia over five years for a modest budget, is a fascinating, terrifying dream that pries its way into the mind, demanding to be understood despite refusing all attempts at explanation. In over thirty years, Lynch has never abandoned this aesthetic, instead perfecting his mind-boggling vision into works of art like Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire. Eraserhead may perhaps suffer from being too long and too baffling, but like certain disquieting dreams, it will never be forgotten by those who have seen it.

Eraserhead (1976)
d/w: David Lynch
(Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart)
TSPDT?: #318
8/10

Movie Review: Time of the Wolf (2004)

Michael Haneke's Les Temps du Loup (Time of the Wolf or Year of the Wolf) is perhaps his least regarded and least discussed film for good reason. The movie mistakes pretension for seriousness, with a meandering, enigmatic plot that never begs any interesting questions, a large ensemble of loosely sketched characters, and none of the horror, suspense, or cinematic thrills that typically mark the post-apocalyptic genre. Michael Haneke believes that his film is the most meaningful of an overdone genre, yet none of its cursory themes ever take hold and at the most fundamental level it fails to resonate, entertain, or provoke.

Of all genres, the post-apocalyptic fantasy is perhaps the format that carries the most symbolic weight. Night of the Living Dead is an intense examination of anarchy and how self-interest, survival, and teamwork do not always intersect. Serendipitously, it is also a statement about race relations. Children of Men explores xenophobia and the nihilism of having no future, and in a profoundly moving climax it juxtaposes the universal reverence of creating life with mankind's thoughtless pursuit of destruction. Dawn of the Dead and Shaun of the Dead both satirize mindless consumerism and lifeless routines. Day of the Dead, 28 Days Later, Starship Troopers, and 28 Weeks Later all present horrifying depictions of military rule, fascism, and war. The Road examines trust and sacrifice. The Road Warrior, and its most rudimentary, is a condemnation of oil dependence. I could go on, but the list would be very long. My point is that most dystopian films criticize some destructive element of society, be it mass media, group thinking, anti-environmentalism, drugs, or what have you. And most of these films also manage to be exciting, in fact some of the most exciting of all films.

Time of the Wolf offers no new insight, and it does so with a stillborn plot. The film has little visual flair, except for some haunting scenes of roving bands silently moving by torchlight in the distance. Haneke's depiction of the French countryside is misty and gray, but it's not far removed from present reality. It's his way of saying that for many people in other countries (say, Somalia) his depiction of the "end of the world" is their present world, a life of poverty, rape, anarchy, and hopelessness that they must live with daily. By not explaining the origins of the apocalypse and by having the conditions thrust suddenly and awkwardly on the film's central characters--a mother (Isabelle Huppert) and her two children--Haneke suggests that this dystopia is not as far off as we would like to imagine. Beyond this, he offers no clear message about what we must avoid in order to avoid destruction. We must imagine for ourselves what must be undone in order to change our fate (stop polluting? stop warring? end class inequality? end ethnic racism?), but why do we need to imagine this when there exist ample films that imagine these things for us? Since the writers of the Hebrew Bible wrote grizzly prophetic visions like those in Isaiah and Daniel, people have been imagining the end times, how rapidly they are approaching, what might cause them, and what we must do to avoid them. Time of the Wolf offers very little to this established train of thought, instead merely depicting outcomes that are far more resonant in other films.

A man who has had almost no prior screen time is randomly murdered, and when his killer is later accused before a crowd he escapes penalty since the crowd is incapable of justice without evidence and structure. A young girl is raped and then she is either murdered or she commits suicide; the rapist is never revealed or punished. People commit robberies that others are accused of, and stress and prejudice become controlling factors of some people's behavior. Characters are introduced and dropped, none of them ever reaching two or more dimensions. It's all very realistic, but ultimately drab and tedious.

Out of everything, few moments are memorable:

When a woman (Luminita Gheorghiu) asks another (Huppert) for a cigarette, she readily offers a tin of food in exchange. Later, out of some remnant of politeness, she offers the woman a puff of the bartered cigarette, then stares longingly as a lost-in-thought Huppert lets the cigarette turn to ash. Having been returned the cigarette, she smokes it to the filter, knowing that the exchange has not been fair and that she may never again have another cigarette.

A father's burial is edited over, but when his son's parakeet dies, the mourning ritual is highlighted, perhaps illustrating the child's attempt to confront the larger, more difficult issue by treating the smaller issue with excessive care.

And in the film's climax, that same son builds a fire and prepares to thrust himself into it as a sacrificial lamb. Having overheard a description of such a religious ritual from an old man who swore by its religious effectiveness, the boy attempts to solve the world's problems. The scene is an instant of genuine insight into child psychology, revealing the boy's inclination to believe that everything is his fault and his readiness to fix things with a superstitious gesture of no real value.

Yet despite these brief moments, the film is a pretentious bore, uninspiring, selfish, and forgettable.

Time of the Wolf (2003)
d/w: Michael Haneke
(Isabelle Huppert, Luminita Gheorghiu, Anaïs Demoustier)
4/10