Reviews

***SPOILERS***

For about 5 minutes, I loved "Happiness". If judged only on Jon Lovits' opening scene, this would be an amazing film. The opening words are shocking, brutal, and totally truthful, things the film loses very quickly. Instead of going for an emotional structure, the film delves into the same sick, overblown, gross spewing of bodily fluids that occupies many comedies these days. In those films, they are played for laughs. Here, they serve no purpose other than to shock; to make the audience feel like they're watching something insightful and interesting. During the manipulative moments of suspense, like when a suburban pederast hovers over a young boy with a sick depravity in his eyes, we should feel terrified. Instead, I felt very cheated. All that this film has done is taken an ordinary human drama and inserted numerous shots of ejaculation that make no effort to spare the audience any sense of taste. In teen comedies, this is disgusting. Here it is considered art. I had just about had it in with film a good part through, but I stuck it out until the end. After all of the ignorance this film shows to humanity, we see the aftermath of a suburban father raping a small boy. After everything else, we aren't subjected to a rape scene, thank God, but for all that apparently went on, there is no soul left in the film. After all that, one of the final shots is of another boy ejaculating off a hotel balcony. I do not want to see that in any film, but this one has the nerve to end itself with Micheal Stipe singing "Happiness, where are you? I haven't got a clue..." with the kind of chipper, country folk styling that always makes me cringe. With this, the film fools you into thinking that it was actually about the way people find happiness, making you forget all the sick scenes that came before. Well I wasn't fooled, folks, and you shouldn't be either.

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS**

Henry Spencer walks through a massive wasteland of human excistance, on his way to his girlfriends house. When he gets there her father says to him "We're having chicken tonight. Little damn things, smaller than my fist, but they're new!" That line pretty much folds out the concepts of Eraserhead for us. Bizzare, meaningful, senseless, symbollic, all depending on who's watching. To most, Eraserhead is the ultimate example of disgusting drivil, making the audience turn their heads and stop watching. To others, that is the ones who'll rightfully give any movie a chance, will no doubt find Eraserhead one of the most fascinating movies of all time.

We follow Henry, and basically only Henry, as he operates in his grey coloured world. He is both innocent and confused throughout his daily life, forced into situations beyond his control, much like our own suburban mishaps (meeting your girlfriends parents and embarrassing yourself). Henry's life can be viewed as a complete mockary of our own. His problems are our problems, only given some LSD and thrown off a cliff. He slowly drives himself over the edge as he stares at the angel in his radiator and contemplates suicide.

When Henry reaches dinner at his girlfriend Mary's house, we learn that he has impregnated her, thus giving in to the most primitive of human temptations, lust. That is Henry's sin, and his punishment from God (The Man in the Planet, possibly) is a deformed baby. And when i say deformed, I mean DEFORMED. Henry and Mary are soon both living in Henry's closet-esque apartment, but in contending with the screeching baby, Mary leaves Henry alone to deal with it. And rightfully so, since it's his punishment. The baby cries through the night, but once it stops Henry tries to leave the apartment. The baby cries louder as Henry tries to run, escape if you will, so basically they are both stuck together.

Henry later destroys his sin, and thus is free to live with the angel (the lady in the radiator) in heaven (the radiator). He faced his punishment and ended it himself, becoming free from it.

That is Eraserhead from the mind of a 15 year old. Go see it and tell me what you think. Hopefully it will be totally different.

**Spoiler** (But everyone who knows anything about movies knows the end anyway)

Since I'm all of 15, I can't begin to imagine what kind of impact Citizen Kane had on motion picture history at the time. Frankly, I can't see any clear reason why this is the 'finest motion picture ever made in America'. Nothing about this film holds up today. The 'ingenius' camera work is merely shining a bright light over someones head. What's the big deal? Someone explain it to me please! At no point in this movie was I moved to feel for Kane in any way shape or form. Wells script is merely an altered version of William Hearsts rise and fall. Even if it wasn't intended to be a movie of the week style exploitation, (you know the drill-'Citizen Kane: The William Randolph Hearst Story; Sunday at 9:00 on ABC) that certainly the way it looked to me. Nice plot twist at the end too. Rosebud was his long-lost SLED. Maybe if I didn't know the end before I watched it that would have seamed a clever way to symbolize his lost childhood. Or not.

I'm just rambling, but someone please tell me what the big deal is with this movie? It's competing with "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" as the most over-rated movie I've ever seen.

Go rent Casablanca, a true classic, instead of this sappy drama.