Reviews

A few minutes from the beginning of Eraserhead is a single image which unlocks the whole film - a nearly abstract shot from above the radiator, with a sock drying between the third and fourth coils. The first two radiator coils form an `H'. The sock's placement suggests the letter `O', and the remaining verticals complete a jolting likeness of the famous sign in the Hollywood hills. Henry's walk home, the puddle, and the wet sock are simply a `deus ex machina' leading to this shot.

It turns out that the radiator plays a major role – it is home to the only semblance of entertainment in the whole movie. (In a way it takes the place of a television set in the apartment.) In its next appearance the radiator opens onto a stage, and later a dolled-up girl comes onstage to sing and dance. The song is a caricature of Hollywood: `In Heaven, everything is fine!/You've got your good things, and I've got mine.' Eventually this becomes `...you've got mine,' pointing to Hollywood's seductive use of glamour.

The indication is that Eraserhead is about Lynch's struggle with Hollywood. Like Henry, the director is an outsider (with respect to Hollywood at this point in his career), and the baby seems to represent his movie.

Successful films on metaphysical subjects are rare, but Fata Morgana is a good case. You can chalk up the large subject to the ambitions of youth, but Herzog does an amazingly good job. The movie's point is to show human beings, and even the world, from a non-human point of view.

The movie is in three parts: Creation, Paradise, and The Golden Age. The imagery of each is in counterpoint to the voice-over. Although the text of `The Creation' (from the Popol Vuh, a Mayan myth) refers to the primordial wasteland, the scene goes no further in illustrating the myth. It dwells on the waste, and on various specimens of destruction (fire, smoke, wrecked vehicles). The images from `Paradise' are anything but that, and `The Golden Age' is darkly comic – the highest culture is the strange roadside musical act.

The Popol Vuh suggests that mankind is the central object of creation, but the movie does everything it can to undo this notion. Its mythological framework has no referent in human historical time. There are no human characters to speak of. When a boy stands with a dog in an extended shot, the initial suggestion is of the boy's point of view; by the end it is much more the dog's. Likewise the lizard is a stronger character than the human who introduces it, and the turtle's partner barely looks human with his big flippers.

Animal stories and nature documentaries always anthropomorphize, but Fata Morgana has none of that. Certainly the dunes look like a female body, but the simile cuts both ways. Presumably only humans can distinguish easily between their creation and nature, and here airplanes and factories are presented alongside mountains, lakes, and waterfalls. People and civilization are all part of a broader natural landscape.

In 1979 Herzog put a new twist on the idea when he remade Nosferatu from the vampire's point of view.

This gem is based on an ingenious irony: it is a puppet film, but what is the star? The one thing you are never supposed to see in puppet animation - Strings! There is a bouncing ball of string; the walls are lined with strings; the camera moves as if pulled by strings; and guess what instruments are on the soundtrack?