Originally Posted by Oriphiel
(Post 1552028)
There's nothing wrong with disliking a movie, and you shouldn't feel the need to insult it to try to justify your dislike of it. You didn't take to it, and that's fine. Now, prepare for a long winded defense of Eraserhead, because I've got nothing better to do right now, and maybe I can help you to understand why people like it so much...
When you say that Eraserhead is boring I have to agree, because in my opinion, that's kind of the entire point of Eraserhead. Horror movies try to shock us by tapping into the things that scare us, things like violence, submission, pain and suspense. Eraserhead is a horror movie that ignores all of those topics, and focuses purely on the things that scare us most; loneliness and boredom. While other movies are certainly more shocking at first, the fact that they have drama, heroes, and villains excites us by playing off of our social construction, as well as our need to have structure (i.e. good versus evil) and meaning in our lives. Eraserhead reminds us that no horror movie can be as frightening as what happens when the movie ends, and we have to go back to marching on towards our inevitable and probably meaningless deaths. Because when we think that there really aren't any villains and heroes in life, that there isn't any grand plan or deeper meaning, the implications in our imagination are more unsettling than any horror villain could ever be.
Most of us will never know what it's like to have a slasher stalking them, and most of us will never experience the clarity of morality that comes from defeating some ancient evil, but we all know what it's like to wake up alone in the morning and to simply stare at the room around us. We've all thought about whether our lives are anything more than our bodies trying as hard as they can to reproduce and keep the species alive. The horror of having to go back to a job that you hate, of having to keep living the same routine every day, of constantly wondering if anyone else in the world feels as alone and meaningless as you do, and living through all of this while knowing fully well that it doesn't really matter because you're going to die soon enough anyway.
Also, Eraserhead is incredibly open to interpretation. It's one of the few movies that doesn't force a clear-cut conflict on the viewer. You get to decide what it's about, and in the end you decide what to take from it. Is it about the difficulty of becoming an adult, and a parent? Is it about a man who longs to return to his youth, and is jealous of his infant child to the point of hate? Is it about shame and social conventions forcing humans to hide away what they really want? Is it about how everything we do is an attempt to stay alive and comfortable for as long as possible, to seek whatever warmth we can find in our cold lives? You decide.
Basically, I think you should give it another shot sometime. The lack of a clear narrative seems very pretentious at first, but it's actually the opposite, as David Lynch is essentially entrusting the entire point of his movie to you. He's not insulting your intelligence by forcing specific morals on you, or trying to talk down to you from a point of moral superiority, and that alone makes me respect him and Eraserhead.
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