Inland Empire plot analysis

I saw Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch) at the Paramount Theater in Austin, TX twenty years ago. And have rewatched it quite often. Even posted a piece here last year. After each and every time I watched Inland Empire I have never got it. Until now. Also proud if not smug claim here I snooped around online and don’t think anyone else has tried this interpretation. And not that it matters but I have been obsessively rewatching it and taking notes and thinking about it these past couple weeks. 

All of the scenes in Poland with LOST GIRL and PHANTOM are Vier Sieben. Scenes I been calling the Sepia Polish Narrative. And as I’m sure you know Vier Sieben is the film based on a gypsy cursed Polish folk tale where both of the leads were killed which had to do with something in the script. The same script being filmed as On High in Blue Tomorrows. In Vier Sieben Lost Girl plays a character having an affair behind her husband’s back with her lover played by SMITHY. Lost Girl and her lover both intend to leave their respective spouses for each other in the film.
     Vier Sieben Lost Girl also eventually becomes a prostitute on the street. Her husband Phantom beats her up because of this. Her lover ends up killed on the street. And her lover’s wife is stabbed in the stomach murdered too. Some intriguing bits along the way are that her lover’s wife earlier says I won’t let you have her. And she mentions that she can’t have kids. All of this either can be found in the same screenplay filmed as On High in Blue Tomorrows or manifested as effects of the cursed old Polish folk tale.
     In On High in Blue Tomorrows NIKKI GRACE and DEVON BERK likewise play an adulterous couple. And Nikki’s character SUE BLUE will similarly work the street as a prostitute. Up to this point I’ve been using character names as they’re listed in the credits but me diverging from that here I’m making up my own names and want to refer to the character Julia Ormond plays instead of DORIS SIDE from here on as ORMOND.
     In both Vier Sieben and On High in Blue Tomorrows the female lead has an affair with a male character whose wife is played by ORMOND. I posit that the interrogation scene with white tee and jean shorts ORMOND with a screwdriver sticking out of her gut is in between the films Vier Sieben and On High in Blue Tomorrows. She has the gut wound she got in Vier Sieben and when she stabs street prostitute Sue it’s a scene that’s part of On High in Blue Tomorrows enacting her character’s revenge for committing adultery with her husband BILLY SIDE.
 
Another big mystery occurs when the two leads are reading the script of On High in Blue Tomorrows what happens when they see someone watching them from then disappearing inside the Smithy’s House set on their soundstage. Later revealed it was another Nikki. I see the Smithy’s House set as a locus where the curse shifts the leads between worlds.
     Nikki Grace is a rich movie star. Her husband PIOTREK is protective jealous possessive Polish. When Nikki shifts to what I like calling her Mumblecore Narrative this starts with the scene she’s cooking scrambled eggs on the stove. The beautiful thing about Inland Empire and David Lynch for that matter is that the divisions between these worlds aren’t clear cut. They’re blurry. Intuitive. Cinematic. Dreamy. I think white trash Sue Blue Axxon N monologues to the guy behind the desk is On High in Blue Tomorrows whereas Mumblecore Narrative Nikki is at the barbecue in the backyard and the guy who has the ketchup accident all over his white tee is Smithy.
     As in Smithy is married to Lost Girl and neither of them are characters in either Vier Sieben or On High in Blue Tomorrows. This couple lives in Southern California. Sometime during or after filming her role as the lead in Vier Sieben Lost Girl got trapped in that room where she has to watch tv and cry. That is until her husband Smithy finds the old Polish people with some kind of metaphysical supernatural or otherwise abstract cinematic capacity who’ve summoned him to reunite them with their son à la Blue Velvet once he delivers the pistol they give him to Mumblecore Narrative Nikki so she can kill the Phantom.
     Yet another crucial link is Lynchian violence. Lynch is a master of sound design. Consider how in Vier Sieben when the character Lost Girl plays is severely beaten by her cuck husband and when Mumblecore Narrative Smithy assaults his wife both instances take on this unsettling jarring abrasive violent static sound design that links them. This link is how the curse works. Like déjà vu or some force beyond your control pulling you into shifting you into another reality. But again speaking of sound design what happens when Nikki kills the Phantom? Peaceful. Soft.
 
Loose ends. What has to be my wildest take the way ORMOND in Vier Sieben tells her husband I’m not who you think I am. And one of the LA girls breaks the fourth wall and reiterates Who is she? Later when Mumblecore Narrative Nikki is getting attacked the aggressor says I’m not who you think I am is the result of the curse taking the linking connective possession of him. The ORMOND character in Vier Sieben curse is she is doomed to shift between Vier Sieben and On High in Blue Tomorrows. In the Smithy’s House set Piotrek is cursed to shift identities between Nikki Graces’s rich husband and Smithy the husband of Lost Girl. 
     What about that black and white scene in the beginning when the man and woman with blurred out faces go into that room with the couch and he uses her as his whore? This feels like Lost Girl submitting to sexual harassment casting couch to get a role in Vier Sieben. And this has been said before online I didn’t come up with it. A lot of people read into Mulholland Drive (2001, Lynch) a whole plethora of blue color-coded vast conspiracy systemic sexual assault quid pro quo Hollywood predator behavior and I’ve long asked myself how does this relate to the overall experience of deciphering meaning from the narrative of that film and now to an extent Inland Empire.
     I’m starting to lean a little more into it. Say Lost Girl had been taken advantage of by some predator producer is part of the curse. Say she’s trapped in that room because she’s captive held against her will forced to have sex with other men there. Say she shows this to Nikki through the silk hole. And the Lynchian exchange say Nikki Grace has distanced herself from corrupt Hollywood but gets this role even though she’s washed up has-been and Lost Girl in return experiences this as evidenced by that shot of her quoting dialogue from Sunset Boulevard (1950, Billy Wilder).
     And cringey notice those lines of dialogue when the LA girls at Smithey’s House say they let the Phantom do whatever he wants and eagerly spread their legs wide for him. This I will concede could serve dual purpose of reflecting him being a predator producer. Say the curse the VISITOR #1 tells Nikki a little boy went out to play and caused a reflection then evil was born could be read as the predator producer of Vier Sieben saw his opposite in that film. Namely him being married to Lost Girl and her cucking him. Say the Phantom’s hypnotizing manipulations is cinematic symbolism for coercing women into something they do against their will? This also presents a troubling interpretation of Smithy’s offhand remarks that he works for Phantom. But all the better to be used by the old Polacks to lure the horse to the well. I have a hunch Vier Sieben didn’t happen so long before On High in Blue Tomorrows as we may have thought.
     So ok Nikki probably drapes her blue silk robe over the chair in the theater at the end to symbolize her shedding the cloak of denial feigned ignorance of predator producer. Similarly at the end when Nikki sees rich Nikki wearing blue this could symbolize her remaining naïve in another sense. It seems too easy the way Nikki shoots Phantom. It can’t be that easy.
     But why we get an insert of Smithy taking off his green silk robe or pajama top I dare not venture to guess. I know what your thinking. But could it be that obvious? It’s not about the bunny. 
 
Closing. Ever notice how often the visual motif of movie lights occur? The title card I used to think was a lighthouse spot now makes more sense. Marilyn Levens’ Starlight Celebrity Show sequence opens with a Klieg light. The David Lynch voice cameo as BUCKY JAY that causes Irons to break character laughing all revolves around adjusting a light. You want the 2K lower boss? Try to find some more on your own have fun.

Under the Silver Lake plot analysis

The key to understanding Under the Silver Lake (2018, David Robert Mitchell) is to approach it for what it is a guy in LA susceptible to the influence of pop culture to the point it has oversaturated his entire existence desperate to find hidden meanings covering up vast far reaching conspiracies through secret codes turns out to be right the whole time. Everything that happens to SAM is real. Save for two separate dream sequences. The film operates according to the logic that what if someone was losing their mind drowning in delusions of conspiracy theories but turns out they were all true? That’s the fun. David Robert Mitchell gets cinema. He’s made a movie where as a work of fiction a movie is capable of allowing for the possibility to give us an experience where conspiracy theories pay off. It makes the impossible possible. Unlike irl. 

     Yet Under the Silver Lake also serves a dual purpose in that it baits would be conspiracy theorist types with a bunch of red herrings and other circumstantial evidence tantalizing them to make their own interpretations that are groundless completely far-fetched and have no bearing on the narrative itself. Like Sam’s a murderer. No. Like Sam’s a schizophrenic. No. And that’s also what makes it so fun too. This self-reflexive aspect is so pronounced that even those of us who know everything that happens to Sam is real and not to infer anything the film doesn’t give us still can’t help but enjoy all of its mischievous deliberately misleading plot points.

Beware of the Dog Killer Sam isn’t the dog killer. But the film certainly has enough in it for some to draw this wholly circumstantial interpretation. 1. Because the first shot of the film has Beware of the Dog Killer vandalism on the window of the coffee shop this is an instance where it leads to Sam’s perspective being affected by society. A collective anxiety rubbing off on him. When he finds the Beware of the Dog Killer zine in the bookstore this displays a self-reflexive narrative within a self-reflexive narrative.

 
The Barking When Sam follows the girl played by Zosia Mamet into the restroom and afterwards lying on the floor that group of young women bark at him this really happens. It’s another misdirect this time leading viewers to speculate Sam hating women = Sam hating dogs = Sam killing women = Sam killing dogs. No. How do I know? Because in both of Sam’s dreams the figures in the dream bark and the sounds are of dogs barking. The girls in the restroom barking are the sounds of their own human voices.
 
His Smell Sam got sprayed by a skunk so he smells. Another plaything for those prone to speculation without the film offering any supporting evidence that would prove otherwise. At the outdoor night screening one of the Shooting Star girls even says it smells like skunk when Sam nears them.
 
The Can of Red Spray Paint In Sam’s room there’s a can of red spray paint. Easter egg red herring. Sam did not tag Beware of the Dog Killer on the street.
 
Disappearance of Sarah In bed when SARAH tells Sam the bracelet was from an old boyfriend then out in the courtyard the way she stares fixated up at the fireworks makes me think she didn’t know until that point that Jefferson Sevence was going through with his ascension protocols and selected her as one of his brides. Yes the fireworks did contain a secret message for Sarah and possibly the other two brides.
 
The Homeless King The guide played by David Yow is real. For those successful in decoding the secret messages hidden for the power elites he is here to open the doors. Why does he ask Sam Do you know what your biggest mistake was? And pull out the dog treats? This is one of the exceptionally ambiguous moments in the film. I stand by my conviction Sam’s telling the truth. And the Homeless King is confronting him about not being able to move on from his ex be stuck in the past pining for a sentimental comfort that is long gone unattainable because Homeless King is a sage.
 
The Songwriter Real. Three slash dangerous. Remember it’s only a movie. So fun. Sam’s a murderer though. Your culture is the shell of other men’s ambitions.
 
The Owl’s Kiss Real. Kills the zine author because he exposed her secrets. Powerful enough to cover it up fake it as a suicide. Tries to kill Sam but he defends himself and for the moment scares her off? Maybe. Or to risk a bit of hypocrisy going against my own key without evidence my intuition leans more toward Owl’s Kiss broke in to steal Sam’s Vanna White research from his dresser.
 
13 When the three girls in the convertible stop and the scoreboard lights up 7 5 1 we know this = 13. They go to a Jesus and the Brides of Dracula show that night. At that show cookies are passed out with 76 we know = 13. The cookies are an invite to one of the members of the group’ solo performance. 13 is just a gimmick promo for the band. But the deeper hidden message is 13 = one guy three wives = billionaire bunker directions backmasked on the seven inch. 

 
The Ending A message for us plainly out in the open is when Sam talks to Sarah in the bunker she says There’s no getting out now so I may as well make the most of it then there’s a cutaway to the Hollywood sign. An uplifting note to end on. Billboard putting up new ad covering his ex is Sam is ready for next chapter in life. When Sam goes over to Topless Bird Woman’s flat it’s him dodging his eviction making the least possible effort to do so. When he stands on the balcony and looks into his place his euphoria is fulfillment contentment seeing the keep quiet diamonds validates that he has attained insight into the explanation to the mystery his quest led him on. And he’s now part of a select few who will ever know. And it’s settled. And he’ll never tell anyone.
 
Beating Up Children Keying a cock onto the bonnet of one’s auto could be infuriating. In this film having everything to do with symbols and unknown forces I think Sam by sheer luck chance catching the culprits in the act is too cathartic karmic comeuppance to pass up.
 
Unsupportive Friends and Acquaintances Sam’s buddy played by Topher Grace doesn’t really care about what’s most important to Sam. When Sam talks about missing Sarah Bar Buddy changes subject to Dog Killer. Insert of Sam anxiously twisting cocktail napkin shows he can’t stop thinking about what happened to Sarah. Later Bar Buddy talks down all Sam’s paranoia. 

     When Balloon Girl tells Sam It’s silly wasting your energy on something that doesn’t matter Brimful of Asha by Cornershop is an easter egg not for Sam but for us suggesting through its lyrics that there’s hope optimism on a forty-five foreshadows the seven inch Sam just obtained that will contain a secret message and lead him onwards to the path to his ultimate quest. And we see it payoff unlike say Sam’s Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde poster in his living room hinting at an alter-ego yet we never see any occurrences that could indicate support such a theory.

 
Under the Silver Lake is Alice in Wonderland for Millennials where following the Volkswagen white Rabbit leads to as the author of the zine tells Sam where the Answers remain hidden under the Silver Lake. My only lingering curiosity troubling me is what was up with the pack of Fruit Stripe in Sarah’s shoe box? Just kidding. I’m not gonna take the bait. I have all I came for. And it’s a hell of a fun movie to rewatch.
     I don’t think Sam is a horrible person. Does that mean there’s something wrong with me? I love laugh so hard every time he beats those little kids’ asses. I don’t read any deeper meaning beyond what I’ve just covered either. I kinda don’t think this movie is okay with whatever you want to think it means. I think it’s only designed to be enjoyed on its surface level while simultaneously showing a hero who’s delusional looking too hard seeing things that aren’t there and rewarding him while also hoping we get the difference and understand not do attempt to be like him in real life.

Synecdoche, New York plot analysis

We can extract its meaning from its title in Synecdoche, New York (2008, Charlie Kaufman) the film stands in for the play stands in for Caden stands in for Adele Hazel Olive Ellen et al.

 

There’s a moment CADEN COTTARD dictates to his assistant the play should all take place in the course of a single day. This is the key to understanding the narrative. At the very end of the movie when Caden is Ellen walking and a note he receives from Ellen as Caden is Now you are here it’s 7:43 Now you are here it’s 7:44 Now you are. Gone.
     And as Caden sits on that bench talking to the actress playing Ellen’s mother he looks over and sees a spray paint tagged brick wall of a clock with its hands reading 7:45. The very first scene in Synecdoche, New York is an alarm clock at 7:44 AM that goes off at 7:45 AM. Near the end when Ellen auditions for the role of Caden she says Caden Cottard is a man already dead. He lives in a half world between stasis and anti-stasis. And time is concentrated. Chronology confused. 
     The entire film is the play itself. And a pretty damn funny one at that. Full of Kaufman wordplay existential dexterity. Like when the psychiatrist played by Hope Davis probes Is that why you killed yourself? Then corrects herself foreshadows SAMMY as Caden committing suicide by jumping off that roof. And Caden emphatically repeating I didn’t jump! Between stasis and anti-stasis. Everyone is everyone. Every day is every day.
     Other evidence that supports emphasizes it’s all a play is the way Sammy turns away from our angle to jump on the other side of the building we don’t see. So the film can conveniently cut to the aftermath. And the way in which at the funeral of Caden’s mother his dad is there and he mutters that his father shouldn’t be there because he’s already dead similarly reflects this as well. 
     

Eternal Sunshine plot analysis

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry) is an excruciatingly painful confrontational indictment against our weakness and inability to move on from the past without succumbing to the desperate need against our better judgement to reclaim the sentimental mild painkiller of a problem relationship that’s over with someone unattainable. Remember how happy we were together = If I could only get her back I’d be happy again = And everything would be better. No. It’s so dangerous because for romantics in our mind our memories of emotions and fantasies about reoccurring connection is as potent powerful as the real thing.

 

In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind the first thing helpful to understand is the reason why its nonlinear narrative is arranged the way it is. Howard from Lacuna erases Joel’s memories starting with the most recent. So if we reverse their chronology what we get based on the color of CLEMENTINE’S hair is.
 
1. Green When JOEL and Clementine meet it’s at a party Joel’s fighting couple friends Rob and Carrie invite him to. At Montauk. On the beach Clem is wearing an orange hoodie and her hair is dyed green. Later that night she B&Es into a large beach house and once inside Joel mutters about his reluctance to be there and Clem disdainfully tells him So go. Humiliated he does.
 
2. Red Joel goes back to Clementine seeking her out at the Barnes and Noble where she works. Clem has dyed red hair. Filling in some blanks it could be Joel and Clementine experience their honeymoon phase during this time. Bliss. Their happiest. Their first time going to the frozen Lake Charles. And though not placed here chronologically and shown in its entirety it seems they go back to what they refer to as Our House on Montauk on a freezing day and run along the shoreline in the snow.
 
3. Orange Honeymoon’s over phase. Clem dyes her hair orange. At Kang’s Chinese restaurant having dinner Joel realizes he’s bored with Clementine. They argue. One day at the flea market Clem says she wants a baby. They fight some more over that. One night Clem goes out alone has some drinks wrecks Joel’s car doorscraped fire hydrant. They fight some more. Joel berates Clem assuming she fucked someone because that’s how she gets people to like her.
 
4. Blue Clem has gone to Lacuna to have Joel erased. Rob and Carrie reveal the truth to Joel well Rob does. Joel cries in car and throws tape out window. Joel erases Clementine. The next day he wakes up and ditches work to go to Montauk. He meets Clementine on the train. They go back to her place. The next night they go to the frozen Charles. The following morning they realize they’ve met before. And erased each other. Decide to get back together.
 
The fun part is the first time you see Eternal Sunshine you think when they meet on the train they’re meeting for the first time. And at the end you think it’s romantic that despite their flaws they accept each other because relationships take work and no one’s perfect. No.
     After the opening sequence when Joel is in his car crying we’re already in his mind and this is the first memory to be erased. Notice how when he has that interaction with his neighbor played by Thomas Jay Ryan there’s already a dot on Joel’s temple. The messy confusing aspect of us seeing Joel in his own memories is due to the conflict that is Joel’s jealousy Patrick is stealing his identity to hook up with Clementine.
     The midpoint of the narrative is Joel wanting to call off the procedure. Iconic line reading by Carrey. Can you hear me I wanna call it off? So because the time Joel spent with Clementine when she had dyed red hair was when they were happiest Joel chooses in his imagination dyed red hair Clem to spirit away reconcile and make a pact to outwit the procedure with.
     But the thing is this isn’t Clementine remember. Dyed red hair Clem is Joel’s idealized fantasy of her. Not real. The only Clementine we could ever consider real in the film is blue dyed hair Clem. At the end when dyed green hair Clementine tells Joel to meet her in Montauk that’s Joel telling himself to. Then how does Clementine know to meet him there?
 
There’s a scene towards the end while Joel and Clem are in his mind on the run from the erasure when they wake up in bed on the snowy Montauk and Clem gleefully says Look where we are but then Joel says Clem this isn’t good. Something ominous about the way he says that line. Because Joel knows that Mierzwiak is definitely going to look for them there. Why?
     Because it’s their happiest purest memory together? So why is Joel troubled? Obvious reason is because it’s surely going to be erased. But the fear in his reaction reveals a dual purpose. It’s because this regressive distant impossible to return to state of jubilation is precisely what deceptively leads Joel and Clem to wrongly foolishly vulnerably pathetically think they can repair their future. 
     That’s why the last scene of the couple running together on the snowy shoreline is jump cut repeated several times. And the sad heartbreakingly aching song plays again the one during the opening credits that Joel was in tears over when the film begins. This is a horror ending. Tragedy impact. They're like addicts. This toxic relationship is destroying them. Yet they will still go back to chase that elusive remote far-gone brief moment when they were in love along with the feelings it brought them over and over again for years to come. And it always ends the same. Impossibly.

1. The Baby—Eraserhead plot analysis

Eraserhead (1977, David Lynch) is about how darkness can control you and embracing the light as a way of overcoming it. The prologue is MAN IN THE PLANET operates the controls in a shack with a hole in its roof, on a planet, in HENRY SPENCER’S head. These are dark forces within any of us. In this case, Man in the Planet releases the ANIMAL FETUS HEAD MOUNTED ON AN APPENDAGE CREATURE into a puddle. Puddles are a recurring motif in Eraserhead. 

     Back in his apartment, when Henry gets the torn in half photo of MARY X from his dresser drawer it shows that he was heartbroken and has since attempted to move on from her. Sex is mysterious in Eraserhead. In the home of Mary X, there’s a foreboding air of sex and terror. There’s something filthy about the way Mr. X has put all of the pipes in the part of town they live in; and something ominous about the way he refers to it as the hellhole it's become. There’s a depravity about him. And the repetitive squishy sounds of the man made chicken gushing ooze from its orifice as MRS X groans with her head tilted back achieves a frightening sexual tone. The shot where the subjective camera moves through the living room is Henry’s trust in Mary going out the window.
     Back at Henry’s apartment we begin to see the first of several shots of his window with the only thing visible beyond it being a brick wall. The mailbox in Henry’s lobby is significant. When he checks it and there’s that small pouch, he goes outside to open it—it’s something he doesn’t want Mary X to know about. Inside it is a small squiggle that’s his sexual desire. Oh and the Animal Fetus Head Mounted on an Appendage Creature no longer has the appendage form it did before entering our world via the metallic interdimensional puddle. It’s bandaged below the neck now. It’s not a baby. It was never meant to be thought of as a real baby. Eraserhead exists in a world where reality and dream logic have merged. So if the Animal Fetus Head Creature isn’t a baby then what is it?
     I don’t think we’re supposed to ask in the literal sense what the Animal Fetus Head Creature is. It’s a means by which Mary X and her family have coerced Henry into becoming entangled with its care. And because he can’t care for it in any proper sense of the term, then what’s it doing in his apartment? So meanwhile Henry’s put his libido squiggle in the little sack in a cabinet stash spot. It’s begun to rain outside. Mary X has left again for the night. The Animal Fetus Head Creature gets sick. Henry then goes to the stash cabinet, but doesn’t open it. Then, notice a shot of the mailbox. (The mailbox isn’t in Henry’s apartment though, it’s downstairs in the lobby. Why this shot? Because Henry’s thinking about some other form of desire or hope that could help him get away from this annoying creature.) But when Henry tries to grab his coat, the thing freaks out. So he can’t leave.
     Now we begin to see what Henry’s been watching when he props his elbows up laying on his bed like he’s watching his favorite TV show, LADY IN THE RADIATOR. She represents Henry’s option to embrace the light. She’s an escape from the darkness (Man in the Planet) controlling Henry. The proscenium arch links her with staged entertainment, an elevated art that enhances your emotions, spirit, or mind. (And take note that doors to the proscenium open similarly to the way the elevator doors in his lobby do.) The remainder of what we get in this middle part of the movie is Lady in the Radiator stomps many smaller Animal Fetus Head mounted on Appendage Creatures as she smiles at us (Henry). Then Lady in the Radiator recedes back into darkness. Next Mary X is back in Henry’s bed, the sound design emphasizing the sound of her teeth chattering in her sleep and the wet sounds of her eye socket as she sweaty writhes in cocoon of bedsheets, spilling out a litter (like the dog with the puppies in her home earlier) of newborn Animal Fetus Head mounted on Appendage Creatures that Henry throws at the wall obliterating them. At this point the cabinet with the squiggle (Henry’s sex impulse) becomes animated and takes on a life of its own. It refuses to stay in the cabinet—as BEAUTIFUL GIRL ACROSS THE HALL calls on Henry for sex.
     When Henry and Beautiful Girl Across the Hall embrace, they’re in something like a giant steaming puddle of white in the middle of his bed. And when the woman submerges below the surface the top of her head resembles a mound of a woman’s pubic hair. Sex between Henry and Beautiful Girl Across the Hall takes him into the proscenium, but at the moment he travels to his next place, the white liquid is seen as to open up like (the elevator doors and) Lady in the Radiator’s proscenium doors—this is there to indicate a sublime (transcendent) ascendance. Also before Henry goes into the radiator there are shots of Beautiful Girl Across the Hall terrified by the appearance of a large lump that resembles Henry’s planet.
 
I think in Eraserhead everything to do with Mary X is experienced in a reality that operates according to the logic of a nightmare. And everything that has to do with Beautiful Girl Across the Hall is experienced as a reality that operates according to the logic of a wet dream. Now the final part of the narrative after Beautiful Girl Across Hall comes over occurs in Henry’s psyche. We get “In Heaven Everything is Fine.” When Henry touches her everything fades to white; he’s practicing. He can’t fully overcome darkness on his first try. When he stops, Lady in the Radiator disappears, and quickly replaced by Man in the Planet.
     When Henry’s head pops off and an Animal Fetus Head sprouts up, he clutches the rail in the proscenium in a way identical to how Beautiful Girl Across Hall did right before she and Henry had sex in his room. A rock is wheeled in that cracks a stream of dark liquid (Henry’s peace of mind). Then his head is sold for erasers. I think this construct is depicting how Henry’s lust is battling his increasing succumbing to the dark taking him over, as is his professional-creative life. He works as a printer. He creates. His head being turned into an eraser is the opposite. He destroys.
 
Upon Henry’s return to reality from his psyche exploration, back in his apartment he looks through his window (for the first time brick wall is gone) and sees someone outside down below beating someone up in a puddle. Then Animal Fetus Head Creature taunts him mercilessly. But a closer shot outside again now shows there’s nothing happening at the puddle. It’s Henry finally beginning to see a world beyond his inner struggles, finding that courage. And his fears at seeing an attack are what the darkness delights in, but looking again realizing that they aren’t there is overcoming the fear.
     When Henry sees Beautiful Girl Across Hall with other dude she sees Henry’s head for a moment with replacement Animal Fetus Head (dark has claimed him). So Henry overcomes the dark and cuts to the heart of his torment (literally cutting into the guts of Animal Fetus Head Creature). And the lamp shorts out just like the lamp shorted out at the dinner when Mrs X first burdened Henry with taking care of Animal Fetus Head Creature. Man in the Planet explodes. Henry literally embraces the light. 
 
In conclusion, I think Henry might’ve been a virgin before he met Mary X. Or she was his first love. And she dumped him. Ghosted him. And it hurt. Everything else that happens in his reality occurs according to nightmare logic, stemming from them having sex, possibly guilt induced. What if Mary got pregnant? What if her mother Mrs X claimed he’s the father of a baby? Even though Henry knows beyond a reasonable doubt that he couldn’t be. What if he had to take care of it anyway? What if it was hideously deformed, sick, taunted him? What if Mary bailed (like she did the first time) and left him to raise it? What if she had more? And the implication that Mr X is depravity and Mrs X is lust and they are the source of terror sex disease. Nightmare.
     Similarly, I think Henry might’ve only seen Beautiful Girl Across the Hall in passing. And his sex dream logic fantasizes that in his mailbox the pouch is this virility, like magic beans out of a fairytale, that make him so desirable to her that she’ll make the first move, knocking on his door in the middle of the night and outright initiating sex. 
     And throughout all this, Henry needs to get back to work. His vacation needs to end. It’s imperative he find his way back to Lady in the Radiator, his muse. And it doesn’t hurt that after he defeats Animal Fetus Head Creature garmonbozia is released from it like magma. In Eraserhead the elevator is only ever seen going up. The appearance of elevator-like doors to the stage where Lady in the Radiator is found is what uplifts us: heaven, spirit, art, cinema, inspiration; the white liquid elevator doors also include sex in this bliss.

The Counselor plot analysis

Trying to figure out what happens to the shipment of drugs in The Counselor (2013, Ridley Scott) has become a bit of an obsession for me. The biggest questions are how early did MALKINA (Cameron Diaz) get involved in manipulating the outcome of the cargo and how exactly does it benefit her? 
     For a maguffin it seems easy enough to follow. A couple of beaners in Juárez drive the truck across the border. They park it at a septic plant, then remove a small electronic device that they give to a man in a green baseball cap who pays one of the men for it. At a roadside cafe, Green Ballcap hands the device to the GREEN HORNET (Richard Cabral), which is all observed from a distance by JAMIE (Sam Spruell) and a lipreader. In the first of several beheadings in The Counselor, Jamie lops off the Green Hornet’s head. Afterwards, Jamie has a phonecall with Malkina letting her know he got it (the device).
     Once Jamie and SECOND MAN (Richard Brake) retrieve the truck containing the drugs, they’re hijacked and murdered by cartel. So, the 625 kilos ends its journey in Chicago. And that’s pretty much it. So why ask oneself about it any further? When Malkina is on the phone with another voice (this time we never hear), she says she always knew where the truck was going. We also know that she has all of REINER’S (Javier Bardem) rooms and phones tapped and listens in on all of his conversations. 
 
So what do you think? If the cocaine has a street value of $20 million, then why would Malkina implicate the COUNSELOR (Michael Fassbender) and Reiner in a conspiracy that results in the cartel eliminating them before they can flip it? And if it’s a finder’s fee she’s collecting from the cartel, wouldn’t they be highly unlikely to trust her, especially considering the whole motif of “they don’t believe in coincidences?” I mean the easy answer points to the cartel had a homing device that led them to the truck. 
     Upon the film’s conclusion, Malkina has WESTRAY (Brad Pitt) assassinated (you guessed it, by beheading) and hacks into his bank accounts, but if this was her motive the entire time, then was the whole conspiracy/hijacking even necessary? It doesn’t seem like too big of a coincidence that Malkina had forethought stealing the drug shipment before finding out that the Counselor had RUTH (Rosie Perez) as a client, and afterwards hedged her bets then wisely walks away. (Yet Malkina's line “I’m still in” being read as her profiting from the delivery is very difficult to comprehend unless she's talking about going after Westray as an idea she came up with after the jackpot she got into.)

     And this all seems to fit in with Cormac McCarthy’s morality theme of the weak falling prey to the strong. It’s the arc of the movie: the Counselor travels to Juárez to discover for himself that death has no meaning, then live the remainder of his life without LAURA (Penélope Cruz); and the real tragedy that after her death, he has no meaning. Another thing I just noticed for the first time is as Laura's headless corpse is dumped into the landfill there's a black trash bag that tumbles after it that is roughly the size of a human head. Not only is The Counselor so fun because of its confusing plot, but also because of how foreshadowcore it is. Upon rewatch there is so much dialogue that not only predicts, but metaphysically ponders connected respective plot points. The one I get such a big kick out of is when Westray talks about “…what happens when the surety becomes the more attractive holding?” sums it all up. But when the Counselor gives his lady the engagement ring and he says he’ll love her till the day he dies, to which she replies “me first,” that’s one morbid perversely prescient joke.