“In heaven, everything is fine.”

No, in heaven, everything is most certainly not fine.

It is 11:04 p.m. on a Tuesday, and I just finished watching Eraserhead, David Lynch’s legendary cult film. In fact, the credits are rolling even as I type this.

Making heads or tails out of what I just saw, what I just finished witnessing mere moments ago, is not likely to happen. At best, I can offer my jumbled thoughts at what is nothing less than the visual tone poem of a mad genius.

Eraserhead is a story about a man who finds himself guardian over a nightmare, seemingly alien baby.

Well, maybe. Maybe that’s what it’s about. It might not be about that at all.

We open with alien landscapes and images from the most horrible of dreams; a man with twisted flesh in a dark room pulling on levers; a man with a funny haircut; and a … thing. Cut to the strange world Lynch creates, an industrial landscape that is bleak and barren and saturated with decay and steam and grime. It’s a world that springs from the same dark corners of the mind as those featured in cult classics like Brazil and The City of Lost Children, only less alive and accessible.

We follow the man with a funny haircut, Henry (Jack Nance, as John Nance), home, and then to his girlfriend’s house, where we meet her off-kilter family. The characters are odd. Not normal. And neither is the baby, central to the film and introduced here. The not-so-happy couple gets married and takes the baby back to Henry’s apartment.

The baby. The legendary baby. What the hell is this thing? It’s disgusting. Much of the time, it seems very real, shining with a grotesque sheen. How did Lynch create this thing? He has never said. Won’t speak of it. It moves and caws and looks around, a horrible little alien fetus, a creature conjured from acid trips and bad dreams.

After Henry gets into a tiff with his wife, Mary (Charlotte Stewart), the film spirals into insanity. Up until this point, it is bizarre but at least has a coherent narrative to follow. But suddenly it all goes mad. A seduction by a beautiful woman across the hall descends into a bed of milk and a tumored woman sings. Heaters glow with malevolence and children bring severed heads into local shops for processing. An opened blanket leads to a spurt of gore and a mish mosh of images harder to describe than to watch. Snatches of this are dream, snatches are reality, and differentiating is disorienting.

I could come up with theories. Impressions. But in the end, I don’t think Lynch, who wrote, produced and directed this film, could offer any simple summary of what his film truly was, either. I don’t think even he knew. It’s an acid trip; a tripped out blast of music; a freak show; a stream-of-conscious poem. Eraserhead is all of these things and none of them. Bleeding chickens and dancing worms.

Eraserhead is not for the casual movie fan.

So aside from seeing what the whispered adoration by its small following of fans is all about, why see Eraserhead? Does it have any artistic merits? Yes. Yes it does. We are frequently offered interesting camera composition, images that simply yet effectively convey the bleak and dying world of Lynch’s film. The sound is fantastic, relying not on flashy surround sound effects, but rather on industrial sounds that are strangely organic, like wind pushed through a dying factory or the tortured, rasping breathing of rusted machinery. The acting is surprisingly good, and Lynch manages to find ways to unsettle the viewer without resorting to low-brow shock or in-your-face grotesque imagery (though there is a touch of that, especially in the film’s final minutes).

Production
If you’re in the United States, there is only one way to get Eraserhead, and that’s the Eraserhead: 2000 Edition, available only (to the best of my knowledge) through davidlynch.com. It’s certainly a fantastic set.

First, there is the packaging: A giant, attractive box with a 20-page booklet and a fold-out DVD holder. It won’t fit on your shelf very well, but it looks great. Any fan will be pleased to own this (an item that fetches a pretty penny on eBay).

Then there is the film. Simply put, it looks great, especially for something shot on 16mm. It’s a clean, crisp print, rich in texture and detail. A fantastic restoration job was done here.

Finally, the extras. No, there is not a documentary explaining what it all means and how it was all done. That would spoil the fun. What there is, though, is likely to appeal to ardent Lynch fans. For the length of a feature film, a camera is pretty much pointed at David Lynch while he reminisces about his early film career and the making of Eraserhead. He even calls some people on the phone and chats with them about the film, too.

The Final Word
On one hand, it would be difficult to recommend Eraserhead to just anyone. It’s hardly entertaining, and is likely to turn most people off. On the other hand, it’s something that should be seen by anyone interested in exploring the darker, stranger avenues of cinema; and there is a lot to see here. And naturally, it’s vital viewing for fans of David Lynch, best known for Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, offering a glimpse into his early work. For fans of the film especially, the Eraserhead: 2000 Edition is reason enough to join davidlynch.com.

In the end, Eraserhead can be called many things – disturbing, perplexing, twisted, hard-to-watch – but “bad” is certainly not one of those things. At some point, it’s a film that should be experienced by everyone interested in the cinema.