This film is a very high sensory experience. The mental activities that are difficult to express in words, scenes, and (in the usual sense) character performances are bombarded directly into your brain with more direct visual & auditory impact. You can replicate the protagonist's inner turmoil, fear, hesitation, disgust, despair, struggle until hysteria.
I had to cover my ears in some places because I was afraid of sympathetic nerve damage.
Henry, a small clerk, lived a boring life. Stepping into the puddle, the socks are dirty and wet, that is, look helplessly, take it off and throw it on the radiator. An ex-girlfriend whose photos have been torn up? Suddenly calling him to see his parents, Henry the sheep went into the tiger's den.
In the movie, everything is exaggerated.
Mary: The meticulously braided hair that she doesn't take off when she sleeps, and her nervous convulsions in the face of her mother, shows that she is a girl who received strict tutoring. She became pregnant before marriage and had to marry Henry. After marriage, she wanted to be a good wife and good mother, but she couldn't Reluctant to let Henry touch her (one may be that she has no feelings for Henry, the other may be that her sex life caused a freak, which made her a shadow), and she was not ready to be a mother at all, so Mary fled back home .
Mary's mother: the powerful head of the family. Maybe Mary's father's ramble was suppressed by his wife, or maybe it was because of his cowardice that his wife became the leader. When pressing Henry, the association of Henry and Mary's sexual behavior actually made her kiss Henry.
If before marriage, Henry's life was nothing but numbness; after marriage, for Henry, the effect was to turn his room into hell.
baby: why so ugly? First of all, human larvae are really ugly when they are first born. Second, this child should not have existed, and neither father nor mother or even anyone wanted it to come. Third, Mary and Henry hate each other. The child is half Mary and half Henry, so in the eyes of both parties, it is ugly.
After Henry's marriage, he suddenly fell into the quagmire of taking care of the baby alone (increasing the burden, losing his freedom) and leaving his wife (a sexless marriage).
This is where Henry's characteristics emerge: he has no initiative in his own life, and always passively changes the trajectory of his life with the flow.
He wanted to leave, but was called back by the baby's cry. Living an unwanted life, I can only hope in my dreams: the beautiful singer sings "In heaven~ everything is fine~".
The coquettish beauty opposite the door (of course she is the opposite of Mary in image and behavior) saw through his needs at this time, and a night of cloud and rain was really a nectar for Henry.
And at this time, the ugly baby crying loudly without knowing each other is even more disgusting. So that Henry had nightmares and Mary gave birth to many horrible ugly babies, one after another, and the nightmares were endless.
This kind of desperation crushed by married life made Henry want to unload his brain, and after unloading, there was only one penis left in his body. If only sex was so good—and soon the penis was replaced by an ugly baby—why would sex produce such a terrible product. Henry didn't want to think anymore, and he couldn't understand it either. His head became the raw material for the eraser tip on the pencil. After wiping the pencil words, it was ashes. (Here's a lovely association - "People make mistakes, that's why they put erasers on pencils" line from "London Living")
The final outburst comes from the inability to woo the coquettish beauty (not the failure to court, again, showing how cowardly Henry is, or how powerless to struggle with this life) - this cowardice is also ridiculed by the ugly baby. Everything is because of you! - Henry finally couldn't bear it anymore and stabbed the baby to death with scissors. Is this nightmarish life over? Will it end?
And Henry was only a little bit braver, daring to live happily with the radiator singer in his dreams.
View more about Eraserhead reviews