Different kinds of movies make different demands on their audiences. Most simply ask you to sit back and be entertained. But every now and again, a movie makes a tremendous request on its viewers, and promises that if you participate to the best of your ability, the reward is a much deeper and more meaningful experience than what most movies provide. Most serious movie-goers seek out the latter; the majority are happy to be entertained. Yet there is that rare movie that defies all expectations and descriptions, a work of art that demands so much but manages to catches the attenion of a broader audienc for the simple reason that…we don’t know. Such is the case with Eraserhead. By all accounts, David Lynch’s feature film debut not only should not have succeeded, it probably should not have been able to gain funding. It seems that the American Film Institute, which gave Lynch a grant in order to make the project, was intrigued enough by his off-kilter, idiosyncratic sense of style and substance that they may have given him the funds simply to see what this clean-shaven, home-spun young man from Missoula could conjure up. Surely no one could have expected this.

To even describe Eraserhead is to invariably miss some crucial details and limit its potential emotional reactions. Indeed, it is clear from one viewing that Lynch, who spent nearly five years working on the project and lived on the set during shooting, put nearly all of himself into the work. He also divorced and remarried during the production and, most importantly, discovered Transcendental Meditation, which he continues to endorse to this day as the best form of clearing one’s mind and preparing for limitless creative potential. As contextual background, this gives one the understanding that when Lynch attaches to an idea, he will not rest until that idea has come to fruition, specifically the exact kind of fruition borne out of his obsessions. The trick is that Lynch never reveals what that final form looks like or should look like to the audience. To this day, he refuses to give any definitive answers about the bizarre themes and symbols of Eraserhead, prefering instead cryptic summations such as, “It is my most spiritual movie,” and “my Philadelphia Story.” This leaves the viewer to his or her own interpretation of the images, although Lynch has also made it clear that no one has yet put forth a proper analysis of the movie. Clearly, there are some interpretations he values over others but to admit them would be improper in terms of the artist/patron relationship.

As an artist in the fullest sense of the word, Lynch is never concerned with elements so obvious and blatant as to be understood by all. Rather, he seems most obsessed with the details, the minute traces of bleakness and turmoil that threaten an otherwise benevolent and inviting world. Of course, it is this fine mixture of the sacred and profane, the beautiful and the ugly that drives Eraserhead. A number of critics and fans have pointed to the juxtaposition of Lynch’s upbringing in the Pacific Northwest and his five years in Philadelphia while making this feature. Given that context, the depressed industrial setting of Eraserhead, contradicted by its surrealist, dream-logic imagery becomes a perfect summation of what David Lynch sees cinema as capable of accomplishing. In his words, he wants ‘moving paintings,’ thus a true collaboration of kinetic and visual. In a way, this juxtaposition of two different elements of the arts mirrors his views of society, with its beatified exteriors and shocking interiors, although Eraserhead‘s interior settings are perhaps just as desolate and foreboding as the empty, spoiled earth on which Henry Spencer travels. The black-and-white cinematography enhances the vast smokestacks and their endless amounts of poisonous black vapor; a terrifying postcard image of a world all too familiar, even forty years after its production.

If Henry’s outer world seems barren and uninviting, once he enters buildings, the threats simply become more compact and fear-inducing. When the protagonist enters his apartment building, the elevator closes after a too-long pause; the thin corridors feel as if they might shrink into themselves, and the radiator in his tiny unit raises tensions further with its constant hisses and creaks. When Henry visits his girlfriend’s parents, their house is shrouded in shadow, a constant gray haze hanging over every room and unusual happenings in each one as well. On top of this weirdness, he finds out to his amazement that he has surprisingly become a father, although to what he is not sure. The rest of the movie focuses on Henry’s attempts to come to terms with the creature now sharing his confined quarters as its continuous cries and moans evoke a dreaded sense of horror that will not stop. Some have seen this as Lynch reacting to unexpectedly becoming a parent in his own right, when his daughter was born in 1968. This seems not only like a solid interpretation but a powerful insight to the inner psychology of an individual who is still trying to take care of themselves, with the added responsibility and the immense pressure that comes with being the caretaker of something incapable of any form of self-reliance. Is Henry fit to be a parent? The movie doesn’t say, but the responsibilities bear enormous weight and consequences.

If the question of whether Henry is fit to be a parent is raised but not answered, the same could be said of the notion of sex as both a constructive and destructive force, in Henry’s life as well as those around him. The idea of Henry and his girlfriend together and conceiving is merely raised and not looked at in depth, but it also serves as an introduction to the idea that sex is such a force of life that it can disrupt whatever peace and normality may exist in a situation by bringing into being a new creature, which in the case of Eraserhead is exactly that. Some commentators have noted that Lynch’s eldest child, filmmaker Jennifer, was born in 1968 with clubbed feet that required corrective surgery and this most certainly would have laid heavily on Lynch’s mind during the entire production of Eraserhead, given that he brought his wife and daughter to live on the set in order to make a movie that could have potentially bankrupted their future. Is sex to be blamed, then, for all these possible consequences? Within this very notion also lies the idea of an alternative, which in the case of Henry Spencer is his fantasy of the Lady in the Radiator, with overtly chubby cheeks and a constant smile that can set you on edge while being oddly seductive. As he dreams of her and what she offers, her actions become increasingly destructive, and this could also be personified by the sultry neighbor across the hall. What do these women represent to Henry and us? They certainly are quite different from his girlfriend, who seems so emotionally fragile she cannot even deal with having a child and flees back to the safety of her parents’ home. Motherhood is defenitely not meant for all women, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying. Perhaps, then, Henry’s way of coping with being a single parent is to acknowledge he cannot by removing both the problem and himself from the situation. As horrific as this may seem, it speaks to the unconscious selfish nature that both protects and undermines our happiness and coexistence with others. For Henry, his ability to choose one leaves him no other options and the consequences, left unknown, are certainly to last for a long time.

How, then, does one summarize Eraserhead? Not easily. The meticulous sound design, which hovers constantly over the characters and the settings, evokes a tremendous heavy feeling to the story, lending it the weight of uncertainty and mystery in order to convey Henry Spencer’s unusual circumstances. As the story progresses, the viewer is taken ever further into this world of decay, depression and death. In the end, all we are left with are the images as they appear together to create a unifying whole. Undoubtedly, Lynch knew endless interpretations would be put forth. Perhaps, regardless of their differing merits, it is best to simply understand this first feature as an extreme surreal experiment, a complete submersion into the world of nightmares and unconscious desires by a gifted artist unsure if he would ever get another chance to make such a project. Fittingly, Eraserhead becomes a litmus test for David Lynch’s entire career. Can you withstand the disturbance? If so, welcome to a most unusual but fascinating world. If not, there is nothing else but to step away and fade into the white.