“in heaven, everything is fine”
November 30, 2007
I recently saw Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977) in a theatre. If the film is like someone else’s nightmare, watching it in a theatre is like being trapped in the said nightmare. The image is all compassing. As the film berates you with bizarre and surreal imagery – like the singing, swollen-cheeked radiator girl or the suggestively bleeding chicken – you sit there, with nowhere to advert your eyes, watching and digesting the images, enfolded in the entire experience. Eraserhead, which is as about as logical as a feverish delusion, is based on personal interpretation. Everyone who sees this film walks away with something random, while Lynch has stated that no interpretation yet has matched his own. It is a personal nightmare that must be worked through, must be dealt with, must be fought with and dreamt again and again and again. With this, the film is an experience, one that you feel and react to as you watch – and best experienced if you are totally immersed in it.
So, to achive total immersion without a theatre? Watch on a laptop, with huge headphones on, all the lights turned off, a sheet over your head, and enclose yourself inside the nightmare.
Hello.
Found your blog while looking up Eraserhead stuff.
I was able to catch the film in theatres recently and I’m glad I did!
It’s such a haunting and beautiful exploration of mind and sense.
It’s movies like Eraserhead that enhance the idea that film IS art.
And though I don’t think the theatre experience could ever be replicated your laptop-headphone-no lights technique does seem like it’d be fun to try sometime!