David Lynch explains why ‘Eraserhead’ remains his “most spiritual” movie
The movies of the American artistic maestro David Lynch span a whole range of themes, moods and emotions, even if each one shares the quality of existing in the nether zone between reality and the dreamscape. From the nightmarish power of Lost Highway, which deconstructs memory, to Mulholland Drive, which delves into the fantasy of the Hollywood movie industry, Lynch has long been interested in the human subconscious.
Lynch shows this in his own life, too, having dedicated every day of his life to practising transcendental meditation, which he performs twice a day. Unsurprisingly then, many of Lynch’s films also toy with spirituality, with Blue Velvet diving into questions of morality and sin, while The Straight Story explores the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, questioning life’s inherent meaninglessness.
Yet, where these aforementioned films are known for toying with such themes, Lynch chooses neither to be his most spiritual piece of cinema. “Believe it or not, Eraserhead is my most spiritual film,” the filmmaker stated in a conversation with Bafta, “But no one has ever gotten that from it. The way it happened was that I had these feelings, but I didn’t know what it really was about for me”.
Speaking further about his debut movie, which took the world of independent American cinema by storm, Lynch added, “Eraserhead would have been long gone, but a guy named Ben Barinholtz, who they call the grandfather of midnight films, saw it in New York, loved it and he distributed. He said, ‘David, I’m going to spend no money and no advertising, and it’ll be lines around the block within two months’, and it was sort of true”.
One of the most notorious midnight movies of all time, Lynch’s debut remains beloved by audiences across the world, largely for its DIY properties. Taking around five years to complete, Lynch made the movie for just $100,000 and even lived in the set of the protagonist’s bedroom, all to get the film over the line where it has since attracted fandom from everyone from H.R. Giger to Charles Bukowski.
Another significant fan of the flick was none other than Stanley Kubrick, who was known as one of the industry’s brightest talents at the time. “It wasn’t one of his favourites, it was his favourite,” Lynch once stated regarding Kubrick’s love of the film, with the latter even borrowing one specific shot from Eraserhead for use in his 1980 horror flick The Shining, penned by Stephen King.
Take a look at Lynch discussing the spirituality of his debut movie below.
