ERASERHEAD is back where it belongs, screenings on weekend midnights at IFC
ERASERHEAD (David Lynch, 1977)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at Third St.
Friday, February 10, and Saturday, February 11, 12 midnight
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
David Lynch’s debut feature is about faith, fidelity, and fatherhood. Jack Nance stars as Henry Spencer, a lonely, scared man who suddenly has to raise his newborn child himself after his girlfriend, Mary X (Charlotte Stewart), leaves. Oh, it’s also about fear, fascination, and futility, the most bizarre film ever made by a major director. The avant-garde narrative seems to come from another dimension, with mutants, decapitation, a lady in a radiator, and a pencil-making machine. Everything about the movie, shot in creepy black and white, is strange, from the sound to the special effects to the bizarre score to the greatest hairstyles this side of BARTON FINK. It’s nearly a one-man show, with Lynch serving as writer, director, composer, producer, art director, production designer, editor, and special effects guru. ERASERHEAD is an amazing, unforgettable journey through the diseased mind of a madman. You haven’t truly lived until you’ve seen it at least once.
From June 2007 to July 2008, journalists Sebastian Junger (THE PERFECT STORM) and Tim Hetherington (LIBERIA: AN UNCIVIL WAR) made a total of ten trips to the dangerous Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, documenting the full deployment of Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. With snipers hidden all around them, the fifteen soldiers of Second Platoon built a remote, strategic outpost they named Restrepo after PFC Juan Restrepo, the well-liked company medic who was killed early on. Junger and Hetherington film such men as Captain Dan Kearney, Staff Sergeant Kevin Rice, and Sergeant Brendan C. O’Byrne as they go about their daily duties, joking around, playing the guitar, meeting with Afghan locals to get information about the Taliban, and digging trenches while prepared to be shot at at any moment. The journalists took more than 150 hours of footage, supplemented with interviews with several of the soldiers after they were safely back at home base in Italy, talking about what they went through. There is nothing political about RESTREPO, nor does it pull at the heartstrings with melodramatic, overemotional scenes; instead, it depicts the harsh realities of battle, including the long stretches of boredom punctuated by sudden life-or-death situations. There is no narration, no one discusses the possible merits of the war, and no generals or politicians are on hand to defend America’s involvement in the region. There’s no ethnocentric yahooism, nor is there racist treatment of the mostly unseen enemy. It’s just war, pure and simple, seen from the perspective of men who chose to join the army and risk their lives for their country. The film won the documentary Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Sundance Festival and also screened at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival at Lincoln Center. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary, RESTREPO is having a special presentation February 10 at the Paley Center, followed by a panel discussion with Junger, Hetherington, and THE WRONG WAR author Bing West, moderated by Foreign Affairs’ Gideon Rose.
Indie writer, actor, and director 
The 1950 lurid Gothic noir melodrama HOUSE BY THE RIVER might be midlevel Fritz Lang, but even second-rate Lang is worth watching. Louis Hayward stars as Stephen Byrne, a novelist who lives on the riverside of a small town with his wife, Marjorie (Jane Wyatt), and young maid, Emily (Dorothy Patrick), next to a very nosy neighbor, Mrs. Ambrose (Ann Shoemaker). On a lonely, unproductive afternoon, Stephen gets excited while allowing Emily to use the master bathroom to bathe and makes a creepy play for her that ends up with him accidentally strangling her. He forces his older brother, John (Lee Bowman), to help him dump the body in the river, and as the lies build, John is wracked with guilt but Stephen takes advantage of his suddenly newfound writing success and popularity. Based on the novel by A. P. Herbert, HOUSE BY THE RIVER is a dark psychological crime mystery that melds Robert Siodmak with Douglas Sirk, with shadowy black-and-white camerawork by Edward J. Cronjager and Lang’s sure hand lifting it above its B-movie elements, with creepy surprises waiting around every corner. HOUSE BY THE RIVER is screening with Lang’s 1953 murder mystery THE BLUE GARDENIA, starring Raymond Burr, Anne Baxter, and Richard Conte, as part of Film Forum’s Fritz Lang in Hollywood series, which continues through February 10 with the twin bill YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (1937) and YOU AND ME (1938).