I'd never put Eraserhead down as one of the hundred best films of all time, but it remains a personal favourite, since I first encountered it (happily, on a big screen) about 12 years ago.
I can accept that the film is a personal statement by Lynch, reflecting his own distress at accidental parenthood, but this matters less to me than the film's unique atmosphere. Certainly, it's hard to watch in places (Laurel Near's facial deformity is particularly repugnant, as is the sequence where Charlotte Stewart rubs her eye), but the rawness of the images make it compulsive viewing. How sad that Lynch couldn't match this in anything he's done subsequently (Twin Peaks, which I simply adore, still can't come up to the same standard).
Here's an interesting thing to try: go and get a recording - any one - of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, and listen to it all the way through. Then tell me that doesn't make you think of this film. Honestly, try it.
Just cut them up like regular chickens...
I can accept that the film is a personal statement by Lynch, reflecting his own distress at accidental parenthood, but this matters less to me than the film's unique atmosphere. Certainly, it's hard to watch in places (Laurel Near's facial deformity is particularly repugnant, as is the sequence where Charlotte Stewart rubs her eye), but the rawness of the images make it compulsive viewing. How sad that Lynch couldn't match this in anything he's done subsequently (Twin Peaks, which I simply adore, still can't come up to the same standard).
Here's an interesting thing to try: go and get a recording - any one - of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, and listen to it all the way through. Then tell me that doesn't make you think of this film. Honestly, try it.
Just cut them up like regular chickens...