A Critical Analysis of David Lynch’s “Eraserhead” (1977): Whose Dream is it After All?

Eraserhead’ (1977), directed by David Lynch, has intrigued and interested film critics for decades. A cinematic puzzle, David Lynch successfully creates a surreal and dystopian world through Eraserhead. With its twisted plotline and ambiguous subject matter, very few cinema enthusiasts have successfully maneuvered through the movie’s diegesis. Lynch, who is largely considered the best postmodern filmmaker of all time, manages to create a reel enigma through ‘Eraserhead’. This paper makes a dedicated attempt at deconstructing the movie using the auteur and psychoanalytical film theories. It also finds out the ingrained themes used by Lynch in designing the nightmarish and hallucinatory world of ‘Eraserhead’. In doing so, the paper critically dissects all the cinematic elements used by the auteur. There is also an ingrained objective to highlight the psyche of the director in making this cinematic quagmire.