Philadelphia State of Mind

 ERASERHEAD (1977)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
One of the top 20 films of all time

Henry Spencer is not an enigmatic character, he is a lost individual who has no sense of identity. It is not his fault - how do you find your identity in a world of obscenely loud industrial machinery sounds and intense humming radiator noises? The beauty of a bewildering cult classic like David Lynch's "Eraserhead" is that story interpretation isn't as important as the held-back emotions and feelings, notably Henry's. "Eraserhead" is the one of the most haunting, violently troubling and exasperating disturbances of fractured human souls in cinema history, more threatening and heart-stopping than the surrealism of Luis Bunuel. There is no safety net and not much of an escape - you are held in a trance of nightmarish proportions at least until the end.

Jack Nance plays Henry as some dark-suited factory worker who first appears looking back at something, as he comes home from work, walking past mound-sized mud hills and pools of dirty water. He lives in an apartment that is squarely hidden away from society - call it an entrapment as our ill at ease protagonist feels throughout this movie. The lobby is deserted and the doors to the elevator take forever to open and close. His apartment which looks small and sullied has one window facing a brick wall and piles of mulch. The drawers of his dresser have objects that don't belong, like a bowl of water with coins in it! The next-door neighbor is a sultry woman (Judith Anna Roberts) who seems to have emerged from some B-movie noir and her few exchanges with Henry have an intoxicating stillness. The sounds from the outside world though overwhelm everything, including the humming from the radiator (that radiator houses the Lady in the Radiator who has extremely puffed-up cheeks singing about Heaven). When Henry visits Mary, his girlfriend (Charlotte Stewart), he has to deal with her parents who are cooking "man-made chickens" which spurt blood when you try to cut into them ("Just cut them up like regular chickens," says Mary's father who has bad knees). Mary gets occasional epileptic seizures and is also pregnant, a fact the mother disapproves of. Mary's mother also disapproves of Henry though she tries to make a pass at him. I have not even gotten to the subhuman, deformed baby devoid of limbs who cries and sometimes laughs, particularly at Henry's failure at continuing an infidelity with the woman next door. That last bit made me laugh. Oh, and the scarred man pulling levers that emit sparks in the unreal world, possibly controlling Henry's sperm count.

"Eraserhead" is not a digestible narrative nor is it completely surrealistic. Within the unreal world lies a real world and David Lynch, in his striking directorial debut, is saying the real world is hardly manageable but the unreal world, that's suicidal. Unlike Luis Bunuel's first film "Un Chien Andalou" which was just pure surrealism and not of nightmarish intent, "Eraserhead" is a blackened, smoky and fractured nightmare of Henry's own nightmare world. The whole film is his subjective look at himself and he's trying to break away from this sickeningly unhealthy world and find solace. Mary is his nagging wife who can no longer live with Henry and that endlessly crying, misshapen baby. Henry is left alone to take care of it and the baby becomes a nagging, sickly child whom, depending on how one sees it, is killed by Henry - why is hard to say other than putting it and himself out of misery. Meanwhile, we are treated to imagery of dead and living sperm flung from one space to another (one is a comical stop-motion animated sperm that grows larger and larger); Henry's severed head that travels from the unreal to the real world and is used in an eraser factory, and lots of billowing, unhealthy smoke and eraser shavings that look like falling snowflakes. Did I mention how Henry's head is sometimes replaced with the baby's head as it is screaming? Are these moments Henry's own nightmares, separate from the real and unreal worlds? 

Then there's the appearance of the Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near) - she is the one that could bring him solace (she steps on Henry's sperm that falls onto the stage while she performs a dance routine). Others have interpreted her as Death but I am not sure that Henry's escape from the real (and possibly unreal) world means he's dead and has committed suicide. In the most spiritually heightened final sequence I've ever seen, amidst the soundtrack of choral voices, Henry is hugged by the Lady in the Radiator and she smiles. Henry seems relieved, as does the audience. He might have temporarily found solace. 

David Lynch has described "Eraserhead" as some sort of Philadelphia state of mind, the real Philadelphia story nobody talks about. It can also be seen as the strangest coming-of-age story ever of a parent who is unfit to be one. Or it can be the strangest, more bizarre take of an unfit parent who is unfit for society. Henry might have found peace with a deformed angel instead of a deformed baby, but it seems he's at peace by the end. Lynch's masterful and transcendental "Eraserhead" will be studied and debated for ages to come.