In Heaven, Everything is Fine

Recently I was at Hollywood video looking for two movies: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Eraserhead. I found the latter, and was checking out the 3 for $20 rack where I procured The Host, The Fountain, and Knocked Up. I was feelin' pretty good about things.
When I got home, I had a couple of hours to kill, so I decided to pop in Eraserhead (it's due on Wednesday, after all). Let me preface my Eraserhead experience by explaining my recent David Lynch fixation.
David Lynch movies have a tendency to crawl into your head and stay around for awhile, even when you'd prefer it if they left. I endured many nights of terrible dreams after watching select episodes of Twin Peaks as a lad, but since then have become fascinated with why his stuff managed to scare me so bad. Over the years, I've seen most of his work, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive being my favorites. Each of these films have a special way of making things that are normally safe and familiar (Bobby Vinton/Roy Orbison songs, the elderly, coffee, and traffic lights) and making them scary and alien. Awhile ago, Sheree introduced me to Sigmund Freud's essay called The Uncanny where Freud explains that this transition from the familiar to the unfamiliar is the basis of what he calls "the uncanny." I think that this is why David Lynch's films are so unsettling and bizarre.
That being said, Eraserhead (Lynch's first movie, filmed over about six years while he was attending the American Film Institute) is the weirdest movie that I have ever seen. In a nutshell, it involves a dude named Henry Spencer whose fling with Mary X has produced a strange, reptilian baby. The two get married, but Mary X can't handle the mutant baby's constant crying and gurgling throughout the night and leaves. Henry takes care of the baby, and has become fixated on the radiator in his apartment, where he sees this June Cleaver type woman (but scary because she has these huge distended cheeks) that sings and dances on a dilapidated stage. Henry falls in and out of bizarre hallucinations, has a brief fling with his neighbor (who stiffs him for another dude, causing the mutant baby to laugh at him), freaks out and stabs the baby-creature. This causes the electricity to overload, and (I think) the world to blow up. Man, just reading that doesn't even do it justice. It's so damn bizarre.
Anywho, the next movie I watched was Knocked Up, which in a completely weird and unexpected way, helped me understand Eraserhead a little better (but not much, mind you). I think that, like Knocked Up, Eraserhead is about life unexpectedly catching up with people who aren't really prepared for it. Eraserhead is just a really twisted and psychologically unsound interpretation of this phenomena.



Take that home. Chew it.