Eraserhead: One of the Best Films Ever Made?
If you enjoy science fiction, fantasy, surrealism and film art in general, I highly recommend that you spend an hour and a half engulfed in David Lynch's Eraserhead. The film was independently produced over four years, slowed by the perfectionism of the director but supported by some important people behind the scenes financially, politically and spiritually, resulting in a very strong mixture of art, social commentary, surrealism, future madness and a present nightmare, resolved by a trip to 'heaven'.
Here is the Eraserhead trailer, to give you a taste:
One of the most amazing aspects of the entire movie is the soundtrack, which never lets up for one moment. The depth of environment characterized by the audio ambience is commanding throughout the picture. My personal association is with another classic created in black and white and on much smaller scale in an episode of the original Outer Limits called "The Guests" which features a similarly pervasive audio signature, almost as powerful, yet not nearly as highly developed as the soundtrack from Eraserhead.
I was always intrigued by the film but never knew the whole story behind it until I did some digging and learned about the backstory of Eraserhead on wikipedia. Here's an interesting documentary in which David Lynch, the creator of Eraserhead discusses the background of the movie.
"In Eraserhead Stories (2001) David Lynch talks about the process of making his first feature, Eraserhead (1977), and Catherine E. Coulson helps him recall so..."
While I think his film "Dune" failed to capture the full scope of the written novels, I still enjoyed it immensely and I see elements of Eraserhead in that film shining through - not to mention the fact that the main actor in Eraserhead also plays the part of a Harkonnen in Dune.
What do you think - did you enjoy Eraserhead?