Eraserhead (1977)

"Eraserhead". The title alone sounds disturbing. However, disturbing is only a slightly fitting title for this David Lynch film. "Eraserhead" follows an industrial worker in a post-apocalyptic world named Henry on his downward spiral into the rabbit hole. When I first watched it I didn't really understand much of it, but when I was given the hint that everything is metaphorical, I began to figure most of it out. Unfortunately because of this it is hard to give a plot synopsis and have you understand it without seeing the movie, but I'll do my best. I explain what happens and then below that give the metaphorical and symbolic meanings (as they are kind of spoilers).

aIt turns out that Henry is on vacation from his industrial job. He lives in a small, shabby apartment with a scandalous woman across the hall in a not-so-nice part of town (not that any part of town is nice). So Henry returns to his apartment and is informed by the woman across the hall that Mary called and that he should go over for dinner. Henry goes to Mary's house to have dinner with her family but everything is awkward between them. The dinner goes wrong when Henry tries to cut the artificial chickens that are the main course of their meager meal, and they start twitching and bleeding. After the failed dinner Mary's mother interogates Henry about whether he and Mary had sex. He admits that they did and Mary's mother tells him that they must get married at once becuase she gave birth to a premature mutant baby.

The next scene cuts to after Henry and Mary are married and living in the same apartment with thier mutant bundle of joy. Henry arrives home and checks his mail to find a small box with a worm in it, which he hides from Mary. When they go to bed Mary gets fed up with the baby crying and leaves to sleep at her mother's house.

Henry slowing begins to slide deeper into the rabbit hole. He begins dreaming of strange and troubling things. He dreams that the woman across the hall seduces him and he continuously sees a woman singing in the radiator about how everything will be fine in Heaven. He also dreams that he is decapitated and his head is taken to a factory where it is used to make erasers for pencils, hence the title. One day he sees the woman across the hall being intimate with a stranger and he is noticably surprised and sad. The mutant baby begins laughing at him in a disgusting sort of cackle. This enrages Henry to the point that he kills the child and it's innards splatter all over the room. The film ends with him embracing the woman in the radiator and smiling.

As promised here is a explanation of all of the symbolic and metaphorical occurences:

• At the beginning there is a scene with a man in a planet pulling levers. This represents Henry's brain controlling him to do things. The man shoots a sperm into a puddle of water which symbolizes Mary's vagina.
  
• The worm in the black box symbolizes porn, which he hides from Mary, and near the end of the movie looks at often.
• The woman in the radiator symbolizes suicide. I forgot to mention above that the chord on the side of the radiator had a bunch of sparking wires on the side which inevitably aid in Henry's suicide.
• The woman in the radiator squashes a bunch of sperm as they fall from the ceiling which is like saying that commiting suicide will solve all of your problems.

As I said, it's a very disturbing movie. However, I definitely enjoyed it. It's rare that you come across a film that requires this much thinking to understand, especially in todays market. So if you enjoy a film that will probably make your brain hurt, this is it. It gets a 4/5.