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Taken from www.wikipedia.com

Eraserhead is a 1977 surrealist-horror film written and directed by David Lynch. The film stars Jack Nance and Charlotte Stewart. Eraserhead initially polarized and baffled many critics and movie-goers, but over time the film has become a cult classic.

Interpretation
Eraserhead is considered a difficult film to understand and is open to various interpretations. For example, the review at DVD Verdict offers at least three interpretations.[3] The story does not have a strictly linear plot, it is punctuated with fantasy/dream sequences of differing lengths, and the boundary between these sequences and the primary narrative strand is often blurred. Many have interpreted it as a visual-sound experience rather than a narrative or story, a film that is more about conveying a very specific and powerful mood and atmosphere. In an interview on the cleaned and remastered edition of the film (2006), Lynch said he has yet to read an interpretation of the film that is the same as his own.


[edit] Synopsis
The setting of the film is a slum in the heart of an industrial center. It is rife with urban decay, rundown factories, and a soundtrack composed exclusively of the noises of machinery. Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) is a printer who is "on vacation." He gives off an air of nervousness, but makes few direct complaints about his life situation. At the start of the film, Henry, who has not heard from his girlfriend, Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) for a while, mistakenly believes that she has ended their relationship. He is invited to have dinner with Mary and her parents at their house. During dinner, Henry is told that Mary has just had a baby. Henry is then obliged to marry her.

Mary and the baby move into Henry's one-room apartment. The baby is hideously deformed and has a reptilian appearance: a large snout-nose with slit nostrils, a pencil-thin neck, eyes on the sides of its head, no ears, and a limbless body covered in bandages. It continually whines throughout the night.

A sleep-deprived Mary abandons Henry and the baby. After Mary leaves, Henry must care for the baby by himself, and he becomes involved in a series of strange events. These include bizarre encounters with the Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near), a woman with grotesquely distended cheeks who lives in his radiator (she sings the iconic song "In Heaven"); visions of the ominous Man in the Planet (Jack Fisk); and a sexual liaison with his neighbor, the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall (Judith Anna Roberts).

The film's title comes from a dream sequence occurring during the last half hour of the film. In it, Henry’s head detaches from his body, sinks into a growing pool of blood on a tile floor, falls from the sky, and, finally, lands on an empty street and cracks open. A young boy (Thomas Coulson) finds Henry's broken head and takes it to a pencil factory, where Paul (Darwin Joston), the desk clerk, is rendered speechless by the gruesome sight and summons his ill-tempered boss (Neil Moran) to the front desk by repeatedly pushing a buzzer. The boss, angered by the summons, yells at Paul, but regains his composure when he sees what the little boy has brought. The boss and the boy carry the head to a back room where the Pencil Machine Operator (Hal Landon, Jr.) takes a core sample of Henry's brain, assays it, and determines that it is a serviceable material for pencil erasers. The boy is then paid for bringing in Henry's head. The Pencil Machine Operator then sweeps the eraser shavings off of the desk and sends them billowing into the air.

After waking from this dream, Henry looks out his window and sees two men fighting in the street. He then seeks out the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall, but he finds her at her apartment with another man. The baby begins to laugh, and Henry takes a pair of scissors and cuts open the baby's bandages, which turn out to be part of its flesh (or simply what is holding all of its organs together). By cutting the bandages, Henry splits open the baby's body and exposes its vital organs. As the baby screams in pain, Henry stabs its lung with the scissors. This causes the apartment’s electricity to overload, and as the lights flicker on and off, an apparition of the baby's head, grown to an enormous size, materializes in the apartment. Henry is then seen with eraser shavings billowing around behind his head. The last scene features Henry being embraced by the Lady in the Radiator.

This film became a very important part of our research... it's surreal feel and atmosphere is just what we intend to convey through our short film.We also like the idea of the film being interpreted in many different ways, depending on what the audience brings to the film as individuals...the idea that the audience is active and not just a passive mass will make our film more creative. The idea of there being no strong narative also appeals to us as it means we can be more surreal and dream like in our approach.