Lost Highway

Horrorphile

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Horrorphile - November 2007

Lost Highway

November 13th 2007 23:41

… have me!” Splintering from the mind’s eye, crossing the median strip of the mainstream, down the off-ramp of self-indulgence, swerving onto the twisted path of the lost highway, plunging headlong into the noir whirlpool of the 21st century … this is the last exit to Lynchland.

Cinema’s favourite American auteur, master of the bizarre, duke of the surreal, and magician of the fluid nightmare, David Lynch, made one the of the most hypnotic and potent films of the 90s: Lost Highway (1997): a psychogenic fugue that penetrates and shatters conventional film language, causing massive ripples and undulating disturbances that ricochet through the madness of reality.

Bill Pullman as anxious Fred

The chemical dream bubble is based on a novel by Barry Gifford, whom co-wrote the screenplay with Lynch. Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), a free-jazz saxophonist, suspects his wife Renee (Patricia Arquette) of cheating on him, which results in him being arrested and charged of murdering her, in mysterious circumstances.

Whilst on death row he inexplicably morphs into a young man, Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty), is released from prison, and proceeds to live an entirely different life. However Fred’s wife apparently returns in the enigmatic guise of Alice (Patricia Arquette), who is dating the dangerous boss Dick Laurent aka Mr Eddy (Robert Loggia). Pete finds himself inexorably drawn into Alice’s dark web.

Patricia Arquette as Fred's duplicitous wife Renee

And as events begin to get weirder and weirder a Mystery Man (Robert Blake) enters the picture, adding nightmare fuel to the psycho fire. Where does the lost highway lead …?

Lost Highway Natasha Gregson Wagner and Balthazar Getty

Pete (Balthazar Getty) and girlfriend Sheila (Natasha Gregson Wagner)

David Lynch has always polarised movie audiences. It’s in his nature: auteur extreme. Lost Highway, as slick and gorgeous as it is, is his most Lynchian since the monochromatic outlandishness of Eraserhead (1976). Even Blue Velvet seems positively conventional when compared to Lost Highway (Lynch would continue the non-linear thread with Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006). Lost Highway was his first film in five years (after the flawed Fire Walk With Me), and it catapulted him back to the number one spot on fave cult director lists.

Lost Highway is a mesmerising cinema experience which demands repeat viewings, and then a few more. I’ve seen it numerous times, and yet, still struggle to comprehend what is actually going on. I admire Lynch for confronting and dis-regarding conventional narrative rules. We’re so conditioned to movie plot formulas and the safe way of telling a story, that the art of cinema becomes dangerously pedestrian. Lynch is one of the only “mainstream” directors who challenges the status quo, and does it so eloquently.

Lost Highway Balthazar Getty and Robert Loggia

Pete meets the edgy Mr Eddy (Robert Loggia)

By breaking rules, inventing new ones, and specifically experimenting with narrative structure Lynch addresses the audio-visual medium of cinema as it should be: an art form. There’s an argument that states commercial movies have to be made to “entertain”, to be accessible to the broader audience, but that’s bullshit. Do you understand every novel you’ve ever read? Do you understand every photograph you’ve ever seen in a magazine? Do you understand the arrangement or lyrics of every pop song you’ve ever heard on the radio?

Patricia Arquette as Renee's doppelganger Alice

Maybe Lynch is chuckling to himself? Perhaps it is impossible to decipher all of Lost Highway's riddles. But there’s definitely enough dramatic edge, aural intrigue, sardonic humour, floating menace, deviant mystery, perverse sensuality, all wrapped in a velvet lining, to satisfy those of an adventurous persuasion. Lost Highway is a kinky movie, no doubt about that. Once you’ve let the echoes reverberate through your head for a few days after viewing the movie then you’ll begin to truly appreciate the film’s supernatural grip. It’s a mindfuck that sweet talks you before the deepest thrust.

Robert Blake as Mystery Man

Lynch is obsessed with texture and tension, darker moods laced with muscavado, exotic sensations that lilt and swing like a big band on acid. Lynch has always had a hands-on approach with the sound and music in his films, Lost Highway is no exception. Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor was employed to concoct electronic drones and subsonic sounds. Lynch regular Angelo Badalamenti did the dreamy score, while songs feature from art-rock luminaries David Bowie and Lou Reed, cult industrial-popsters Rammstein and Marilyn Manson, and even Smashing Pumpkins.

With the sounds, music and all that neo-gothic imagery, Lynch creates a machine metaphor of artificial reality. Lost Highway is an erotic and grotesque labyrinth of temporal dream-states and psychological dysfunction, the narrative rhythms and reasoning bound by an ontological dream-fabric that frequently borders on abstract expressionism.

Lost Highway Balthazar Getty and Patricia Arquette

Alice has Pete, but he'll never have her

Lost Highway is Lynch’s darkest film outside of Eraserhead, although not as impenetrable as Inland Empire, nor as self-referential as Mulholland Drive, but it is a synthesis of many of his other movies. It’s spooky and violent, sexual and deranged, but what makes it so compelling is the sheer force of imagination at work; the purely cinematic expression.

... on the lost highway ...

If you like your film cocktail spiked with doppelgangers, hardbodies, femme fatales, gangsters, fused with morality and pornography, slipping and sliding along the slippery slope of pleasure and pain, and sifting to a spectacular soundtrack, then Lost Highway is the game you need to play.

Like a flawed diamond Lost Highway doesn’t rest on its laurels, but its arrogant and narcissistic none-the-less. “Finding Hell may be a theme in all my work,” suggests Lynch adding that “It’s dangerous to say what a picture is. If things get too specific, the dream stops …”, so without wanting to pontificate any further on this film’s multi-layers I shall button up and move on, leaving the door ajar, and the neon-light flickering, and depart the scene of the crime, before the succubus can whisper in my ear, “You will never …

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

2 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Damo

November 14th 2007 03:00

For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics

good review.
I have a love hate relationship with lynch.
I like his style but not all his films.

Comment by Bryn

November 14th 2007 04:12

Horrorphile

Damo, I don't like everything he's done either, sometimes its more about the parts than the sum. His style definitely rocks. Sometimes the kitsch element can be grating ... Would love to seen the original three hour cut of Blue Velvet!! And the three hour cut of Dune on the big screen! Twin Peaks was the best thing that ever happened to free-to-air televisison, well one of them. My top five Lynch films would be: 1. Lost Highway 2. Eraserhead 3. Blue Velvet 4. Mulholland Drive 5. The Elephant Man.

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