Lost Highway (1997)

Excellent film, not as confusing as some would have you believe

I disagree with the opening line of the Amazon Editorial review which says "Plot is a meaningless term when trying to describe Lost Highway". Frankly that's the answer for lazy people who don't like thinking as part of their movie-watching. [SPOILER (kinda) ALERT] The plot is an answer to a question: How do people deal with a reality so horrific they can't face it?

Also, if you've never seen a David Lynch film, you'll see that the anngles, the colors, the elements and scale in the shots, are all part of his mood setup and are jsut as important to what he's going for as the story is. November 18, 2008

Hell is Repetition

There are those cinema experiences that will always stay with you for various reasons that sometimes even have little to do with the movie you saw, as I will always remember seeing "From Dusk till Dawn", at the midnight hour, not just because I loved the movie, but more so, that during that night in the next few hours the relationship with a girlfriend was initiated. Sometimes a movie is stuck in your memory, because you were deeply moved by it because you totally identified with one or several characters, while another movie you will never forget, because you had such high expectations and eventually so few of them you felt were met.

Seeing Lost Highway in the cinema for the first time was such an unforgettable experience but not for any of the reasons mentioned above. From the opening scene that showed me Fred's face lit by inhaling cigarette, I knew I was about to go on a journey that I had never before undertaken as a viewer, as it turned out to be a journey through a landscape, that never before was seen in any movie in this way, the landscape of the subconscious, in this case the subconscious of the character Fred Madison. Never before or since an exploration of this realm was undertaken in such a brilliant way and shows it as reality. Let's be honest, we all know how much our behavior, thoughts and feelings are determined and directed by it, so it's really quite astonishing, that this journey has been made so rarely.

It's not my intention to analyze the movie scene by scene, however great the temptation as I could talk about every scene for about an hour, but that's not the point. Everybody should get lost in their own fashion on this highway, which the movie travels and which proves to be so fateful for Fred Madison. I'd like to help the viewer along just a bit though and so there are two aspects I'd like to expand upon: `Moebius strip' and `Psychogenic Fugue'.

As is shown in a famous Escher painting a Moebius strip is a strip of paper of which both ends are tied together in a circle, which is however twisted in the middle, causing both in- and outside of the surface to be identical. This relates to the structure of the movie, where conscious-subconscious, fantasy-reality, have become entangled to such a degree that they have merged to the point of indistinction. It also is a structure that has no end and no beginning, only determined by identical starting and end point before a new loop is initiated.

Naturally there are multiple interpretations possible concerning this movie, but what is certain is that the medical condition, named by Lynch himself in relation to this movie, which plays a crucial part is "psychogenic fugue". This medical term refers to a state of mind in which the person suffering from it deals with a traumatic experience, let's say the violent death of a wife by their hand, by creating a construct for itself, a different personality with a different history and a different life trying to suppress reality.

It should be obvious that a combination of these two aspects applied to one character would signify a highly confusing life with no hope of escaping the vicious circle, as the personas the character adopts every time (the start of each loop) cannot prevent that in the end reality always determines the outcome with only the one escape to the next persona, as we can see at the end of the movie when Pete (Fred's alternate persona) has become Fred again and is being chased by the police, reality seeping in, starts to 'morph' again and this way initiates the start of a new 'loop'. Ultimate hell I'd say.

In Fred's 'fugue' existence Pete is the ideal made flesh for a man like Fred, who no longer wants to suffer from impotence caused by suspicions of infidelity on his wife's part. Pete doesn't have a wife, but dumps his girlfriend in favor of a mistress, femme fatale Alice, 'stolen' from underworld figure Mr. Eddie, known by Pete as a regular of the garage where he works as a mechanic. As Pete, Fred seems to have a firm grip on the reigns of his life, but that's only on the surface. Pete, as it turns out, is being completely manipulated by Alice and Mr. Eddie, Dick Laurent in Fred's reality who he suspected of the affair with his wife Renee, the blond version of Alice, is now the victim and threatening potential doom on Pete's and Alice's relationship and just as present between them as Laurent was in Fred's mind in his relationship with Renee. The only one not fooled by Fred's game with fantasy and reality is the so-called 'Mystery Man', a unique performance by Robert Blake, who, as a kind of Mephistopheles knows all about Fred's dark impulses, symbolically recording all his actions on video (also a comment about the relationship between the artist and his art, but that's a different discussion). As in the Faust legend of old he only goes where he's invited and he embodies the inescapability of Fred's doomed fate, the nexus where fantasy and reality touch. It's no coincidence that the metamorphosis from one persona into the next takes place in his cabin.

I do consider 'Lost Highway' to be the, hopefully temporary, pinnacle in Lynch' work and those that are willing to travel along this road of mystery, violence and sensuality, I wish them a similar spellbound experience that I have had so many times on this road to perdition.
November 6, 2008

A bad movie that everyone should see once.

The movie starts out with a man (Bill Pullman) that suspects his wife (Patricia Arqhardtospell) of cheating on him. He finds video after video proving that it is happening. After a bit into the movie, she ends up dead and the man ends up in jail.

In jail he has a strange dream the night before he disappears and is replaced by another man entirely! It is assumed that he transforms, it is not shown. The 19 year old that replaces him (Getty) is released and the original man is never mentioned again. There are hints though that Bill Pullman's character really exists.

There is a tie in between the two characters that is not seen until near the end. It is almost as if the man that wrote the 'Lost Highway' book wrote 2 books and smashed them together. 2 different men, with 2 different lives that exchange lives for a week or so in time.

The 19 year old is a mechanic working for a mobster Mr. Eddie (Loggia) who is really Dick Durant. Mr. Eddie's wife (Patricia Arqhardtospell) has an affair with the 19 year old and looks very similar to Bill Pullman's wife. Not just because they are played by the same actress, but because they are supposed to be ties between Bill Pullman and Getty.

The style of this movie seems to be a series of artistic shots that would be better off as photography. Shot after shot has 5 seconds of a person standing doing nothing. Then they do something, and stay there for 5 more seconds from a different angle. This movie is very easy to fall asleep to until the 45 minutes into the film when the character Peter Doyle comes into play.

It is an intentionally strange movie that is dark, sometimes crazy and heart pounding and other times eerie. Everyone should watch this movie just once for those reasons. The soundtrack is stellar and it is the best ad for this movie there can ever be. September 24, 2008

Limps across the finish line.

Parts of Lost Highway are David Lynch's best work, in my opinion -- namely, the first half-hour or so. It is a brilliant satire of Los Angeles. The David Bowie song couldn't be better. Lynch's style has never been better.

Where things go horribly wrong is when the film veers in a totally absurdist direction by completely breaking the fourth wall and creating a dual narrative filled with doppelgangers and parallel structure. Now, while this is a promising idea, it means as a screenwriter your task is going to be exceptionally difficult to make a compelling story and have your audience experience a sense of drama that only this structure can provide. Yet Lynch has absolutely no interest in this and is not up for the challenge. Lost Highway only works as a David Lynch tone-poem, like two hours of half-baked ideas masquerading as a film. It's sophomoric and the parallel structure only serves as a gimmick.

But what is particularly irritating is that Lynch is not happy just letting plot take a backseat -- this film is nothing but plot and more plot; don't look for compelling characters. The performances are either completely over-the-top (Robert Loggia, Robert Blake) or uniformly dull (Balthazar Getty). I have no idea what Lynch was thinking in his direction of Patricia Arquette, but as the femme fatale at the center of this movie she gives one of the worst film performances in history. I understand...it's all postmodern, right? Well, this is a woman that has apparently driven a man into fits of homicidal rage, mental illness, schizophrenia, what have you. Oh but I guess conveniently one could make the argument that her mannerisms are all just reflections of the protagonist's dementia...right? Lost Highway's fans are notorious for arguments such as that one.

When Lynch has the chance to really create a pivotal scene, in which the Patricia Arquette character is reintroduced with blonde hair, he pulls the ultimate hipster cop-out and downs out the soundtrack with a Lou Reed song. It's beyond cheesy.

And then Lynch has the nerve to make it out that what we have watched is just one brilliant cyclical narrative, which is quite simply annoying and makes no sense even within the film's internal logic. Lost Highway makes a mockery of film noir. No amount of "Rammstein" cranked on the soundtrack can smother that fact. August 20, 2008

This is Elegant Dark Art

Yes, this film has Logic & a Plot!
It is not the familiar Logic and No familiar plot, nonetheless - it is a dark & elegant piece of art.
Here a witch-man played by Robert Blake curses and stalks a young monotonous couple to shake up their life - similar to the dumpster-witch in Mulholland Drive. (Witch herein is used in the popular sense, not the true respected sense).
Upon playing mind-games with the couple - Blake's character discovers where the plot should really take place - in an abandoned wooden hut in the middle of the desert, however to get to the plot - the mechanic, the cars and the jazz-playing couple need to get onto ... LOST HIGHWAY.
AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME! July 22, 2008

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