An Absurda production, an immediate title screen, an open door to planetary abstractionism. A film where immersion of the senses forgoes colorization for a symbolic dreamscape of nuclear proportions. The concepts of personified sanity are lost to the foreboding warning of an ill-prepared attempt to care for others, when you cannot yet care for yourself. David Lynch’s “potent little nightmare”, awards the viewer with the opportunity to adore the irrational, the nonsensical, and the artfulness of disaster.
Eyes of what could be taken as shock/fear manifest more as existential distress, as the protagonist’s head defies gravity along the left side of the screen. The sounds of deep space increase in intensity, hurdling us toward a cavernous spherical formation. It glistens for the black and white setting with peculiar wetness, contrasting its rocky texture like a newborn still covered in fluid. A figure looks out of a broken window into a galactic sky, mimicking the rough meteor texture. As an embryotic creature floats in a layered projection in the foreground, he pulls a lever opening the protagonist's mouth until fully agape. The god-like man at the window seems to have begun the nightmare with a flip of a switch and welcomed into the world the “monstrous” child. A glowing porous hole transforms into bubbling water submerging itself, begging for air; an air that space will not provide. We begin.
The main plot welcomes us in with a staunch white screen that brightens the aesthetic minimalism on the screen. Our protagonist muddies his shoes in a puddle, as he walks on the distressed and messy area of ground. Avoiding conventional walkways implies an unconventional destination or a journey through avoidable troubles. The score begins with industrialist surroundings and ambient winds, turning to mechanical transportation noises, then to shallow footsteps. The “habitat” of his home has abandoned its aestheticism, deepening the moody nature of his character. Somehow the absurdity of his hair seems fit for his reality/ an extension of the disproportionate world. As he is greeted unexpectedly and uncomfortably by a laissez-faire neighbor, we learn his name is Henry, and he has received a call from a woman named Mary.
Upon entering his apartment, we see an unfortunate amount of inconclusive and haphazardly artificial decor. Artificial lighting only does so much to swallow the shadowy atmosphere. There seems to be an intentional sculpture of dirt atop Henry’s dresser, all by its lonesome. To think of cleanliness in such explicit and literal terms is an interesting and creative choice. Henry removes his puddled sock and places it on his radiator seemingly watching it dry, as a depressive would with paint. With distressed forehead lines and a window that looks out to only a brick wall; even his outer world feels internalized. A ripped image of a lover (Mary) transitions to her face, fearsome in its own right, glancing from yet another window. Henry walks on train tracks and steps back onto solid ground when he hears the bark of a strange dog. He seems more afraid of a domesticated animal than being hit by a train, or perhaps the normalcy of a common animal shocks him back into the expectations of reality (aka don’t walk on train tracks).
As Henry and Mary meet for the first time on film, their dialogue informs us of the infrequency in which they meet, and thus the severity of their current predicament. As he sits on his functional parent-in-law’s couch, there remains an unsettling squelching sound. We come to find that these are that of puppies suckling at their mother. The noise disturbs the “peace”, as does the suggestion of forced motherhood that is soon to come. Mary’s family is strange in distressingly familiar terms. Her father, a violently anger patriarch of the group. Her mother, a questioning force looking for sexual gratification. The eldest is puppeted by Mary’s mother into passive participation in the making of dinner, though she is unable/unwillingly to move her body on her own, and is most likely lost to time. This may be a reference to the forceful hope the family has in maintaining appearances despite the limitations of their circumstances, or a metaphor for the ways in which our ancestors play a hand in all that we do. A cuckoo clock sounds.
For dinner the family has prepared miniature chickens, horrifying and child-like, a grotesque and newly popularized grocery (Fame in despite of nonsensical vulgarity can be in reference to the societal structures in place). As Henry carves into it on account of Bill’s request, the bird begins to twitch and ooze a placental fluid. Mary’s mother moans in reciprocity with the meat on the table, a Midsommarian transference of birthing pain. “Well Henry, what do you know?” “I don’t know much of anything.” The use of silence becomes sinister in a film with such a heavily vivid soundscape. Bill’s unforgiving smile sits in the foreground, as Mary cries in the doorway behind him. The lights flicker and die, we can assume that any semblance of “goodness” goes with them.
In light of a premature baby at the hospital, the couple seems to have explaining to do. After being rightfully accused of sleeping with her daughter, Mary’s mother kisses Henry’s neck, abusing her knowledge of his sexuality. The mother dog whines and the sound fills the room once more. As Mary cries, Henry bleeds, and the wedding is on.
Mary struggles to feed her child and must, literally and metaphorically, force life into it. Without a proper nursery, the baby is put to bed on the hardened surface of a small desk in Henry’s smaller apartment. He smiles for the first time, at the child. His home, not suitable enough for one happy human, is now their family “sanctuary”. As the couple fails to sleep amidst the child’s cries, a dead branching plant sits in its soil, potless on the bedside table in a pitied and eco-brutalist state. The light through their unfortunate window only manages to illuminate their horrible child. The length of each scene is similar to the never-ending feeling of restlessness, and the unforgiving nature of nighttime. Mary’s pity for the baby turns from disgust to anger as she shouts in its face, only to be rewarded for her brutality with more crying. Her attempt at fleeing the situation shows her preference for absenteeism to the normal struggles of sleepless infancy. When Henry aggressively implies that she should never return, she shakes his bed frame, “rocking his boat” and mimicking the sounds of sex. As the headboard hits the wall, she falls into more tears and leaves. The neighbor, more inherently sensual than Mary with her femme-fatale features, saunters through their shared hallway upon her exit.
Henry takes the abnormality of the child’s distress as a warning of sickness and takes its temperature. There is a quick cut in reality to the discovery of pox covering the child’s unfortunate form. He attempts to will the baby back to health by humidifying the “nursery”. The helplessness of the child, predisposed already to the hardships of life is heartache-inducing, as it struggles for air. Water bubbles into frame again, this time because of the humidifier. The sensation of liquid being brought to a boil is perfect symbolism for the expectation of chaos and disaster.
Sleep, though no longer made impossible by cries, struggles through the efforts of the radiator’s foreboding, industrialist noise. As Henry falls into a musical dream state, upon the stage an abnormally faced woman performs minute attempts at dance. She manages to waddle through the choreography, out of the way of miniature babies that resemble Henry’s own. As she stomps one to death, then two, the traditionally beautiful woman crushes the need for a baby, with a smile on her genetically abnormal face; an abortive nightmare. The rubbery noise of a returned Mary rubbing her eyes as she hogs the bed muddies their marital bliss. The slap of more children leaving her body, thrown against the wall. The knobs on the pillared cabinet, adorned with floral paint are alit, at least in Henry’s mind. An animated worm-like and especially small “body” shrieks as it enters and exits an earthy ground. Henry is tortured in his unconscious and ever-reminded of his child’s existence.
The dark and foreboding neighbor seduces her way into Henry’s psyche, and his apartment like a siren would a lonely sailor. The fertile consequences of female sexuality as well as the societally ideal “sex without responsibility” add to the looming themes of parental unrest. We are beginning to see how Henry chooses to act when left to his own devices. This is a plot point you would expect in a single man’s dreams, yet it is bookended with the fear and uncertainty of a nightmare. The woman takes advantage of his loose will, making no mention of the voyeuristic baby’s abnormal form. They make love in a craterous hole, similar to the one from the beginning, divoting its way into the midst of Henry’s bed, sinking them both into a milk mist. The creaminess of wet space emulates that of both ejaculate and breastmilk, perfect representations of the conflicts at hand.
“In heaven, everything is fine,” sings our deformed Marilyn. Her hands are clasped in promising prayer as she continues, “You’ve got your good things and I’ve got mine.” Her smile is as unbreakable as the tenseness of the atmosphere. Henry joins her onstage and upon her touch, the bright white returns to disturb the entire screen, disappearing the singer into sinister images of the happenings thus far. A naked tree, now atop a hardened and rocky surface, rolls onto the stage and emits Henry’s decapitated head, replaced with his child. Again, the plant draws blood; mother nature emits weakness. The baby’s cries overlap and echo, the ejected head falling further and splitting open on the ground in which he walked at the beginning of the film, and is consequently stolen by a local child. He subsequently enters a lobby and prompts the receptionist to (literally) siren for assistance. The child seems happily rewarded by the boss of the building, who greets his “finding” with a smile. The men drill into it, resembling a lobotomy to cure the crazed imagery plaguing our protagonist. They enter the gouged piece into a machine that transforms it into erasers, referencing the pun of the title. There is absurdist humor in the way torment leads up to nothing but utilitarian stationery.
Henry awakens at home, tightens his headboard, and looks with his trademark dismay off-screen. A knocking sound prompts him to successfully leave the apartment. His baby laughs at him, almost as if it had tricked him into believing the knock at the door. What goes from annoying to unbearable, an instrumental sound plays through the wall, and crying turns to laughing and back again. The neighbor has seduced yet another man in the hallway, and we see from her perspective, envisioning Henry as having the head of his child, almost like a sexually transmitted curse. In anguish brought to finality, Henry unswaddles the child with scissors, as it seems to beg him against it. The fabric, more of a gauze, holds the baby’s body together and its insides are now exposed out of the open like a cut. fruit. Blood throws itself from the child, who doesn’t die instantly, but whimpers as it foams through the cavity in its chest. The substance attempts to smother the child, though it elongates its neck into a “larger than life” version of its despicably original form. As the lights and electricity shake in response, the baby’s head moves unpredictably through space, the planetary blob cracking like an egg and his head, now right side up, is presented before glittering space. Metal sparks against the godly lever-pulling figure and Henry embraces the abnormally faced singer. Cut to a familiar white, then black. The End.