As much as I like David Lynch, Eraserhead is the kind of movie that’s only good in hindsight, after you’ve already familiarized yourself with his themes and tropes. Sure, it’s easy enough to read about it and listen to Lynch’s own comments about how it’s all about alienation in an industrial town, but if you can’t get that from the movie itself it kind of defeats the purpose.

To Lynch’s credit, Eraserhead is very, very different. It certainly earns the title of “experimental”, but two other adjectives come to mind when placing it alongside the rest of his work: unfocused and unrealized. The narrative is completely boggling to even the most patient viewer, and it’s hard to distinguish between fantasy and reality for the most part. It’s more surreal than a Haruki Murakami novel, and the gnarling soundtrack certainly helps this image.

Artsy film students will naturally continue to praise Eraserhead as a classic experimental film from one of the more eccentric filmmakers of the world, but only because of Lynch’s reputation. It doesn’t make Eraserhead any easier or fun to sit through.

I saw it in a real theater! It was an 11 PM showing at the local indie cinema because they had a new print of the film or something?

It was weird and exciting, and it was probably the most memorable sound experience I’ve ever had in a theater—the mass of swirling, grinding, hissing industrial noise throughout the film is astounding.

Otherwise, well, I’m not really sure you can say you’ve consumed this after one viewing, can you?

I like art films- I don’t mind black & white. I don’t need everything
all laid out to me in a film… I’ve taken film classes & learned to
enjoy German expressionist films for their lighting & symbolism,
etc….. but for the life of me I can not comprehend how this film has
such a high rating.

I felt like I had wasted 1.5 hours of my life in trying to see this
film. I think I would’ve enjoyed it better had I skipped the movie &
just read the reviews and learned that it was supposed to be about an
alienated man in a depressing industrial who suddenly has a monstrous
baby. If only I could’ve gotten that from the film. Instead I stared at
piles of hair, a deformed warty chipmunk woman, and a alienlike giant
spermatozoa being stabbed to death while people hallucinate. I wasted
the entire film searching for meaning…. trying to figure out what the
piles of hair?/hay? were for? What alien looking spermatozoa had
anything to do with what was going on?... etc.

Just a few hints could’ve helped make it a good film… there were
things that if explained would have been more enjoyable and seemed
interesting… the ominous/abrasive music, the creepy mis-en-scene (the
elevator that hesitates, the radiator, the dead tree in dirt, etc.)

This film is in no way a work of genius. I’ve seen films that deal with
alienation & isolation. There are tons of films out there about the
fear of parenthood or the feeling that your child is an evil entity
(Rosemary’s Baby, Omen, Bad Seed, etc.)

You CAN convey these emotions in a coherent/logical fashion and have a
plot/make sense.

This just added to my internal debate that David Lynch movies provoke:
Is he literally schizophrenic and unable to process reality the way
most other people do? Has he taken too many psychotropic drugs? I even
tried watching the interview with him after the film on the DVD and was
unable to bear it. He seems lost in another world and just rambles.

People seem to like this film simply because it’s shocking &
experimental. Sorry, but that’s not enough for me. I’d rather have
something that’s original, pushes the envelope but ALSO be interesting (or at least not like watching someone’s disjointed nightmares). I took nothing away from this film – and that makes me feel like I wasted my time.

I give it a 3/10. It gets a few points for 1. No T&A, no sexism, no racism, no homophobia 2. No product placement 3. Showing the otherside of the overly sanitized/sentimentalized concept of parenthood.

It was one of the most beautiful and intelligent surreal movie i’ve ever seen – as Kubrick thinks the same.

I hear some comments like “Whoa! I didn’t understand a shit from it!”, “It’s nonsense, nothing!!”. lol. If you hadn’t watched any Lynch film, then sure you won’t understand it. Or if you don’t know how to watch a Lynch film, you wouldn’t understand it, too.

From the first seconds of the movie, you start to catch hints, givin’ meanings to images.. from up to the end it’s like a logical game.

Long live David Lynch.

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Remark to the potless tree.

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I think this is the kind of film you need to be high to fully appreciate. :-)

Also, I am very entertained by the thought of expectant parents watching it. Ross and I were making alien-baby noises at each other all last night.