Friday, May 26, 2017

Baby mine

While David Lynch is in vogue now due to the Showtime revival of Twin Peaks, I figured I'd go back a little further. About as far as you can go, in fact.

The baby in Eraserhead has all the vulnerabilities of a regular baby, but not the cuteness. It is cute, but in a reptilian or amphibian way. And no one raises their pet salamander with the expectation that it will live on after you and carry on your legacy. You know you'll eventually flush it. Then there's the fact that Henry is a prime screwup overall, not that I'm throwing stones. It's not too hard to figure that Lynch made this while experiencing some angst about parenthood.

The black and white is canny. It bleeds the seventies out of the movie. Makes used but newish furniture look like antiques. But Eraserhead doesn't look or feel like a movie from the thirties. It looks and feels like a nightmare experienced by someone who's watched a lot of old movies and gazed at a lot of Diane Arbus photos.

2 comments:

semiconscious said...

remember seeing this not long after it was released, &, while i've never been especially fond of it (it's a very 'incomfortable' movie?), it's certainly as distinctive aa directorial debut as any other i can think of. as far as any possibility of re-watching it goes, i'm afraid i'd be facing some serious objections :) ...

what we did re-watch quite recently was his follow-up - 'the elephant man', produced by mel brooks, who removed his name from the credits so as not to give the impression that the movie was a comedy (more here: 'how does a guy known for fart jokes make the elephant man?')...

hard to believe that the director responsible for everything from eraserhead to twin peaks also happened to end up making as beautifully deeply moving a movie as has ever been made by anyone, but there you go :) ...

Ben said...

Incomfortable? Oh, I can definitely see that. It's fascinating too, though. Putting his unconscious onscreen is something Lynch always talks like he's doing, but this may be the one time he actually did it. That said, there are some slow spots, which might be an inherent downside. I can understand the objections as well.

I saw The Elephant Man years ago, with you I think. I remember Anthony Hopkins playing a very non-Hannibal doctor, and he seems to have been quite moving in the role. I'll have to check it out again one of these days.

Mel Brooks is famous for fart jokes, but he also had a sharp eye for talent. I mean, I think the whole idea of Gene Wilder as a comedian basically started with The Producers, plus he also had Richard Pryor as one of the writers on Blazing Saddles. That seems to extend to more dramatic works too.