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David Lynch's Lost Highway was greeted not with a bang but with a whimper. Although many people found it difficult to follow or obtuse, it is
surprisingly devoid of subplot or outside intrigue. The horror aspects are
partly visceral but mainly psychological. Lynch relies upon the intelligence
of the viewer, assuming that they have a sufficient grasp of film language
to understand the implicit clues that unravel the plot. If you accept what
is being shown at face value, the tale becomes simplistic. It is the denial
of normality that gives the film its edge. There is absolutely no indication
of when the film is set - the only hint is in Lynch's assertion that Lost Highway is a '21st Century' film.
The plot concerns itself with a couple, Fred and Renee Madison (Bill Pullman
and Patricia Arquette), who keep finding video tapes on their doorstep. This
event is not in itself improbable, but the tapes slowly pry into their
lives. What makes the tapes so sinister is that they are at once believable
and yet unreal, as neither of the Madisons are aware that the filming is
taking place. Then Fred finds a video of him murdering his wife and,
convicted of her murder, ends up on death row. There, he inexplicably morphs
into a young mechanic named Pete Dayton. When Pete is released, his and
Fred's paths begin to cross in a surreal, suspenseful web of intrigue,
orchestrated by a shady gangster boss named Dick Laurent (Robert Loggia)
If examined chronologically, the film seeks to confuse but has an inherent
logic. When, right at the very beginning, Fred hears that 'Dick Laurent is
dead', it is a message from himself in the future, despite the rigidly
linear nature of the events. In fact all the main characters have a split
identity - porn king Mr Eddie is Dick Laurent, Pete is Fred and Renee is
porn star Alice. We focus on the Pete/Fred character because it is through
his confused perspective that we view the film. But are things any less strange
to Alice/Renee and Dick/Mr Eddie?
Mr Eddie is clearly the bad guy of the piece and a continuation of Lynch's
tradition to feature sexually deranged psychopaths in the sinister opposite
role. He is not dissimilar to Mr Reindeer in Wild At Heart, relishing in the
control he has over women. Mr Reindeer enjoyed lingerie-clad topless women
and the occasional massage, while the Mr Eddie prefers to be fellated in
public by girls forced to strip at gunpoint. Not a nice chap. Musically, his
theme is evocative of Touch of Evil (1958) or any of the seedier films of the 1950s.
Indeed, Lynch has pulled out all the stops in the soundtrack to Lost
Highway. The director waited many years to use This Mortal Coil's 'Song To The Siren', and he puts it through its paces by treating it as a motif caught fleetingly throughout the film and used extensively at the climax. Responsible for the rest of the soundtrack are Badalamenti (who provides some truly screeching saxophones) ex-Magazine bass player Adamson, producer Trent Reznor (famed for his work with Nine Inch Nails) and Marilyn Manson. The metal-industrial nihilism of Rammstein adds an uncomfortable but
overblown edge.
By all accounts Lost Highway was a very musical production and Lynch had spent time researching the music beforehand. When shooting, he could play the selected pieces through his earphones on each take, enabling him to capture and assess the scene's atmosphere instantly. The excellent sound is not just the result of the score of course - the film rumbles as only a Lynch film can, with moments of eerie quiet giving way to monumentally loud rushes of sound. If you see this in the cinema insist that they turn up the volume to ear bleeding levels and live with the consequences later.
Lost Highway is reminiscent in its style and ambiguity of Maya Deren's masterful experimental film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), of Alan Parker's Angel Heart (1987) in its portrayal of ambiguous characters and Michael Haneke's Funny Games (1997) for the manipulation of audience expectations, although none can really be cited as direct influences. This is a film that is well ahead of its time and, like Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart, it will be interesting to see which films and genres use the motifs that Lost Highway has developed.
By Michelle Le Blanc and Colin Odell
Michelle Le Blanc and Colin Odell are the authors of The Pocket Essential David Lynch. Copies are available from thebigbookshop.com. More information about The Pocket Essential David Lynch is available from the Pocket Essentials web site
Reader comments about Lost Highway
pulsewidth (pulsewidth_nospam@aptamer.com) writes:
My favorite Lynch film. Amazingly crafted, very challenging, and quite freaky.
Derek Baldwin (DJBNJB@aol.com) writes:
I'm still not sure about this Rorschach test of a film after so long and so many viewings. I admire it, it is very scarey, wonderful use of camera and sonics. But it is ever such hard-going at times and the whole second part is marred by how bad Balthazar Getty is.
Was he possibly chosen for his charmless and wooden style so as to emphasise that much of the second part of the film is a reimagining on the part of Fred? (Or is it?)
Or did he buy his role in the film one wonders.
The moebius-strip structure is cleverly constructed and if you can suspend disbelief sufficiently then the film as a whole makes some kind of sense. There are the usual Lynchian signatures: bugs, electricity and lights flickering. The garage scenes don't work even as light relief and were clearly make-work for Jack Nance and Richard Pryor. Nothing wrong with that necessarily but the whole thing could've benefitted from 20 minutes or so deleted. Pullman is good and so is Robert Loggia and several of the lesser roles are well-performed, nice to see Gary Busey for instance. The opening and closing sequences are fabulous and where else but in a Lynch film might you see a credit at the end for a "Bug Wrangler"?
James (Email address withheld) writes:
Lost Highway is a superbly original film, although a real head banger at times. Hardly anything we see on the screen is objective reality, but instead the psychosis of a man, who cannot come to terms with what has happened.
Here Lynch develops the themes already present in Eraserhead and Blue Velvet: it is far more fascinating to explore the subjectivity of a character's trauma than it is to see what actually happens. We are more wary of the subjectivity in Eraserhead, because we are probably willing to see wierdness and arthouselow budgets as going hand in hand.
The trick to understanding Lynch films is realising that although his budgets have got bigger, his core passions have not really changed.
The problem for most people is that the whole idea of seeing something which has not and could not happen is seen as being audacious by the writer; however think of Jacob's Ladder, or The Usual Suspects. These films are not nearly as challenging as Lost Highway, but are somewhere towards the notion of the camera representing one individual's 'take'on events.
Lynch's sternest critics are those who crave the already over-used and stale formulae of car chases and tacky murders.
But Lynch is very economical with objective reality. He treats his audience with respect, and does not condescend to the cliches and banalities of most film writers. For example, if you look at the degree of compression in the final 'real' third of Mulholland Drive, it demonstrates Lynch's passions perfectly.We do not need to see Camilla die, nor do we need to know exactly how she died as both are superflous to the point of the film: the inner turmoil and fantasy of a lost and desperate character, who has committed an irrevocable act born of jealousy and unrequited love.
Interestingly, as inpenetrable as Mulholland Drive may be on first viewing, it is nevertheless a simplification of some of the central themes in Lost Highway; being that a person has committed a heinous crime and fantasisies to try and escape their actions. Yet, whereas Mulholland Drive divides neatly into fantasy and reality, Lost Highway deals with Fred Madison's spiral through convenient memory loss through to re-remmembered pseudo-reality on to out and out fantasy bact to re-remembered reality. Perhaps Lynch realised Lost Highwaywas just too complicated.
svarteskogen (svarteskogen@yahoo.com) writes:
Sublime,fascinating, one of the best movies i`ve ever seen.
If you are looking for answers to the question"what exactely happened there?",u probably never find out. But anyways, it is so beautiful. Here is how i see things:
Fred and Pete, Alice and Renee, are deiffrent people, different couples. But they have so many things and events in common, so that in the end, they melt together.
This is how I see why that picture with both Renee and Alice changes in the end. They became one. This people share the same drama and somehow they meet, the time changes its real dimenssions and things start to happen beyond reality.
The mistery man must be the death itself. He came invited by Fred , who wanted his wife dead. Pete also invited him, by making out with "the big man"`s woman. Dead is in the air around all this people, and u can feel it will come sooner or later.
In his geniality, Lynch created a special world, with special people, where anything cant be normal.Just have to let yourself carried away within this world and enjoy.
PSYLOCKE (betsy_braddock@hotmail.com) writes:
My favorite Movie.
Sensational, amazing, increible, the best 4eve.
An emotional shock..
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