Earlier than delving into the narrative, I wish to discuss concerning the movie’s stellar sound design, which closely lends to the sense of relentless discomfort that defines it. The story’s industrial setting, though reflective of some corners of postmodern society, emerges as alien as a result of approach sound accentuates the threats of residing in such a panorama, the place secure areas are a fantasy and feelings are as deformed because the toddler that seemingly falls from the sky. Whereas some industrial sounds overpower sure scenes, a majority of the occasions are layered with an unnerving, low-level background noise that follows Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) wherever he goes.

Music has at all times been a full-fledged purposeful side in Lynch’s world, be it within the type of Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting soundtrack that instantly defines the interior landscapes of “Twin Peaks” or the essential significance of Roy Orbison’s “In Desires” that acts as a turning level in Lynch’s “Blue Velvet.” For “Eraserhead,” Lynch labored alongside Alan Splet to carve out the visceral sound design, whereas working carefully with Fat Waller and Peter Ivers, who composed authentic items that underlined a way of Kafkaesque claustrophobia, harking back to the menacing, bureaucratic world of Joseph Okay. in “The Trial.” 

Lynch additionally makes use of sounds to induce anxiousness or anticipation in audiences, utilizing clanks, hisses, and refined foreboding notes to set the stage for allegorical strands, corresponding to when Spencer stares on the radiator and hears steam escaping, however that is meant to allude to his interior world and never his tangible actuality. That is what makes the movie’s horrifying points more practical, as acquainted sounds provide a mirage of normalcy, solely to be undercut by an countless, hopeless nightmare with no starting or finish.