This blog post follows the film’s surreal imagery and symbols to interpret the meaning of Henry’s death, liberation, and nightmare, connecting them to the existential dread felt by modern people.
Realistic……. Yet Bizarre Landscapes
After the opening sequence reminiscent of a sci-fi film, the movie presents spaces that are very realistic and familiar. Ironically, however, these spaces depicted in the film feel strangely unfamiliar. The cityscape, saturated in gray; structures composed solely of concrete and cement; the barren urban landscape devoid of any forest; and the surroundings of the noisy factory Henry passes by, filled with deafening noise—all are sufficient to give the audience the impression that they are not living in reality, but perhaps within a giant mechanical apparatus. Furthermore, the incessant, faint noise emanating from somewhere triggers a neurotic feeling in both the characters and the audience.
Through the characters placed within these landscapes, the film can be seen as depicting humans living like mere parts of a machine in modern society. Alternatively, the method of isolating the characters in excessively desolate spaces can be interpreted as intensifying the portrayal of alienation and disconnection. Observing Henry’s house, its windows are completely obscured by walls, thoroughly blocking any view of the outside landscape. This expression further highlights the character’s state of isolation, emphasizing the emotional atmosphere and theme the entire film seeks to convey.
Sexual Repression and Family Disintegration
The film also addresses the devastated family relationships within an abnormal household. Henry’s visit to his girlfriend Mary’s house is filled with strangeness from start to finish. The sight of the stony-faced mother, the father who only repeats incoherent ramblings, and the helpless grandmother who cannot even light a cigarette by herself seems to be an extreme expression of an everyday family. This family’s unsettling dynamic begins to manifest in extreme fashion during a scene involving chicken. Henry receives a dish of live, moving chicken. At his father-in-law’s request, he picks up a knife to eat, but a liquid, seemingly blood, begins to pour out from within. This scene bears an uncanny resemblance to the moment a woman’s hymen is broken.
Upon seeing the flowing blood, the mother-in-law suffers a violent seizure. She immediately interrogates Henry about whether he has had a sexual relationship with Mary, threatening him, and attempts to caress him as if seeking to fulfill her own hidden sexual desires through him. This scene seems to blatantly reveal the repressed desires and hysteria of a woman who believes she no longer possesses any sexual appeal. In other words, the film sharply portrays a woman as a human being possessing desires, before she is anyone’s mother. Through this, it expresses the structure of distorted desires and unstable psychology revealed within the framework of family, using extreme imagery and symbolism.
The crushing weight of a nightmare-like reality
Henry, forced into marriage solely because he impregnated Mary, tries desperately to build a happy marriage life, even if it’s forced. However, their child takes on a form closer to a monster than a normal child. Consequently, Mary always gazes at the baby with a dark expression, while Henry continues to struggle within the repetitive daily grind. Driven mad by the child’s incessant, wailing cries, Mary eventually leaves the house, leaving Henry alone to care for the infant. Unable to properly attend to his own responsibilities while tending to the deformed child, Henry becomes increasingly consumed by deep anxiety.
As the burdens he must bear multiply, Henry, increasingly consumed by anxiety, begins to experience hallucinations. He witnesses a bizarre woman with growths on her cheeks on an imaginary stage and watches strange insects fall upon her. These insects are the bizarre sperm-shaped or tadpole-like creatures that appeared earlier in the film. The woman nonchalantly crushes them underfoot, seemingly unfazed. Yet it’s hard to detect any ethical remorse in her smiling expression.
Waking from the nightmare, Henry sees his wife beside him, convulsing in severe pain. Henry senses something abnormal about his wife’s body and eventually discovers that the very strange insect he saw in his dream has emerged from her. Henry forcibly pulls it out of his wife’s body and throws it violently against the wall to kill it. This scene evokes the image of an abortion procedure. Henry kills his own children without hesitation to escape the exhaustion of reality and another responsibility.
I believe the director intended this scene to express the unethical killings occurring in modern society. This interpretation makes one reconsider what the symbols and imagery presented in the film aim to convey, revealing that Henry’s actions transcend being merely part of a nightmare and connect to a social and ethical message.
The Endless Nightmare
Henry, crushed by the weight of reality, saw adultery as his sole escape. After a chance one-night stand with the woman next door, Henry feels momentarily liberated from reality, but soon finds himself tormented by a similar nightmare once more. When the woman with the growths on her cheeks reappears, singing and demanding he go to heaven, Henry faces her with an anxious expression. Amidst his uneasy movements, Henry’s head suddenly detaches, and his face transforms into that of a deformed child.
Soon, his head, drenched in blood, crashes back into the real world, and his face becomes an eraser in a pencil factory. The subsequent scene of the eraser dust being blown away by the wind and vanishing symbolizes the annihilation of existence itself. This dream sequence seems to clearly depict the end of modern people’s mechanical lives. It reveals the futility of a life lived like a machine, subjugated to society’s conventions, ultimately vanishing into nothing but a handful of dust.
Yet simultaneously, it is crucial that this death shows Henry gaining tremendous freedom. Through the nightmare, Henry experiences the constant terror of death, struggling desperately to escape the burden imposed upon him. This is both Henry’s personal fear within the film and the profound fear shared by modern individuals navigating real-world society. This symbolic scene, intertwining death and liberation, reveals Henry’s tragic consciousness while sharply evoking the existential anxiety inherent in modern society.
The Path Out of Nightmares
The woman next door, who had been his only salvation from the pain of reality, enjoys secret trysts with another man, and he is ultimately abandoned. Henry, who had engaged in adultery in front of his own child, is now despised even by the child after being abandoned. Tormented by the constant sound of mockery directed at him, Henry finds reality becoming increasingly unbearable. Finally, Henry makes a decision to escape this nightmarish reality. Approaching the child with scissors, Henry cuts open the child’s belly, concealed by bandages, and ultimately murders the child.
Consumed by immense terror and guilt, Henry is thrown into chaos as he hears the child’s screams. The child, who had been emitting tremendous moans, gradually transforms into a gigantic face, and soon takes on the complete form of a monster. Amidst the incessantly flickering lights inside the house, Henry stares at the child’s form with a terrified expression, holding his breath as that enormous face draws ever closer.
In that moment, Henry witnesses again the scene he had seen in his dream—a planet being destroyed—and he stares at it with wide, shocked eyes. Around him, vast clouds of eraser dust swirl. These images can be seen as a visually condensed scene depicting the process of Henry’s existence being erased and disintegrated.
Soon after, he embraces a woman with bumps on both cheeks against a pure white background. Whether that moment represents Henry’s final escape and liberation, or the beginning of a new illusion, is difficult to determine. Yet, at least for a moment, he wears an expression suggesting he has been freed from all suffering. Ultimately, this scene can be interpreted as symbolically revealing a kind of liberation, or an illusion of salvation, that Henry found at the end of his despair and terror.
The Irony of Death and Liberation
The film’s conclusion ends with a surreal scene. He appears to have murdered the child and ultimately chosen suicide himself. The eraser dust swirling around him already foreshadows his death, and the embrace with the girl bearing bumps on both cheeks further explicitly reveals his demise. The director seems to present a pessimistic conclusion: that death is the only source of stability within this nightmarish reality.
Yet simultaneously, the film leaves room for multiple interpretations. It remains unclear whether the characters exist in actual reality or are merely virtual beings visible only through their perspectives. Perhaps every element the film presents symbolizes one grand nightmare itself. The characters’ actions, surreal spaces, and grotesque imagery all blur the boundary between dream and reality, drawing the audience into an uncertain world.
Yet the essence of this nightmare lies in its extreme realism—a nightmare any modern person might have experienced at least once. It is precisely this point that delivers true terror to the audience. Despite being composed of surreal imagery, the film is firmly grounded in the real-life experiences of pain and oppression created by modern society. Consequently, its ending, while appearing fantastical, feels all the more real, forcing the audience to confront a brutal truth.
