Eraserhead

STYLE / T: STYLE MAGAZINE | February 25, 2007
A Moving Canvas
By HOLLY BRUBACH

It's dark in David Lynch's world. You wish that Laura Dern had brought a flashlight for her role in "Inland Empire," his latest film, as she repeatedly ventures into blackness, her presence reduced to the rhythmic clicking of high heels on concrete. The experience is a familiar one to Lynch's fans of long standing, beginning in 1977 with "Eraserhead," his bizarre and haunting breakthrough featuring a mutant baby and shot in black and white (mostly black, a little white), continuing through "The Elephant Man," "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Drive": time and again, characters disappear into darkness; characters emerge from darkness into light. The shadows, with their implicit sense of menace, define the contours of a body or a face, carving out the hollows. Lynch paints with darkness the way other filmmakers slather on the sunbeams and fluorescent glare. The images unfold — breathtaking, perplexing — and we watch, in the grip of beauty and fear. Read more...