People who use the word pretentious are pretentious themselves
They just think they are all that, and that they are so smart, when they're just lame-os.
share"Eraserhead" is one of the least pretentious films ever made. There is absolutely no pretense to any of it, every single second is just for the pure joy of the visual, with no specified context besides whatever context happens to come about as it goes along. That's the opposite of "pretension". You aren't even really supposed to get anything out of the movie, specifically, besides some kind of primal joy of creation, at the pure fantasy and craft that goes into making these dream images a reality. If someone call this film "pretentious", they just have no idea what they're talking about.
That's not to say that there is no deeper meaning to be had from the film, but it's not veiled, or encoded, in any kind of "pretense". The movie requires no background knowledge or prior information to be understood, it's not some kind of plotted riddle for the in-crowd, it's an incredibly universal film that can be understood by anyone, even if they don't know the language. It's all right there in the movie, the dream.
In all the interviews I've seen, David Lynch is never more humble and hush than his is about Eraserhead. Someone who was pretentious would want to talk about it constantly and act highbrow when people don't understand it. That's not the attitude I perceive. What he does is ask people to really look into and into themselves to find something.
share