Lost Highway (1997) Reviews

• An intense experience

  mst-21999-06-21

  Clearly, as with most of David Lynch's films, Lost Highway is not for everyone. It is, as Lynch intended it to be, a film realization of a dream. In this regard, it is comparable, in terms of artistry and raw intensity to Kurosawa's _Dreams_. Indeed, in terms of sensory experience - cinematography and sound, for example - Kurosawa and Lynch have few rivals. However, the comparison falls away rather quickly in consideration of the film's content. Lost Highway is really no dream, but a nightmare. Let's face it, like it or not, everything Lynch does is intentional. This film has inspired polarized reviews here on IMDB. Those looking for a plot-heavy movie that they do not necessarily have to pay attention to tend to despise it. Those who are open to allowing this manipulative, intensely disturbing and thought-provoking film to carry them into its own parcel of hell love it. This is, in my opinion, what good art can do. Like a dream, Lost Highway has as many plots as it does viewers with their own individual interpretations and perspectives. It forces itself upon you with a vengeance, but simultaneously encourages the kind of disengagement you experience when you are conscious that you are dreaming. I recommend Lost Highway highly. See it with intelligent, open-minded friends who like to talk about film experiences. And expect that the conversation will keep you up way past your bed time.

• For those, who try to understand the Movie

  knockpasheemore2004-08-13

  First of all let me say, that it is not as serious, if you don't get the movies of David Lynch at once (or even never). Lynch is not a film maker who tries to make movies with a problem-solving message, but an artist. Moreover he started as a painter and so he tries to create an atmosphere more than to develop a story. Most viewers will have realized that "Lost Highway" is a story about a schizophrenic murderer (even Lynch mentioned it). But that is not the complete clue to the movie. Cause everyone is aware of Fred's metamorphosis (although no one seems to really care about). So his mutation seems to be real and till the end no one proves the opposite! But "Lost Highway" is not a common movie about schizophrenia like "Beautiful Mind" or "Das weiße Rauschen" (Which is a must-see, too!). INSANITY IS NOT THE SUBJECT, BUT THE NARRATIVE PRINCIPLE OF THE MOVIE! In other words: The movie is not a presentation of mental sickness, but a complete sick presentation, which means that the subjective perception of the protagonist becomes the objective reality! You'll find this way of telling a story quite often in surrealistic literature (i.e Franz Kafka's "Die Verwandlung" engl.: "Metamorphosis" - just note the title!!). All Lynch-Movies refer to mental illness or the state of dreaming: No character ever seems to care about the illogical and irrational twists of the plot(just like in dreams), the landscapes are unrealistic and change appearance or size and the story takes place at deserted areas (forests, claustrophobic rooms, industrial areas, desserts) far away from civilization or reality! Insanity - Sanity/ Evil - Good/ Reality - Fiction are no longer categories one can rely on. The protagonists see their surroundings and environment always threatening, but they never question it! They act with such a matter of course, that one has to ask whether it is ignorance, naiveté or self-deception. Perhaps you don't have to ask yourself how far you are able to UNDERSTAND the message. Perhaps you have to ask yourself how far you are willing to ACCEPT the message. Be aware, that once you started seeing the world at a different way you will follow that white rabbit right the way in his burrow...

• You'll never have me - but we can try

  cdimdb2005-10-08

  Just watched this for the first time, and enjoyed it immensely. Some here have suggested that there's no 'real' story at all. I don't agree: Lynch doesn't work like that - no matter how bizarre and reticulated, there's a story there, all right, but you have to dig for it. 'Mulholland Drive' informs this film considerably. Having deconstructed that one to my satisfaction, I have a clearer view of how Lynch does things; how he shows us the elements, the language he uses, and what he leaves out for us to discover. So, then - *SPOILERS*, if I'm right: As with MD, there's a big clue in the first few seconds: Fred is shown in close-up, looking thoroughly wrecked, smoking a cigarette unsteadily. There's a buzzing sound, and light sweeps across his face and the room. *The sound is one you'll become familiar with later, in the jailhouse.* Fred looks up, warily. Major premise: I believe this scene shows Fred, in the last moments of his life, having his last cigarette before they come to take him to the chair. This may, in fact, be the only 'real' scene in the film, with everything else being Fred's distorted recollection, and the rest a psychotic break fantasy he constructs to escape from his grim situation. As the door to his cell opens, Fred rejects the awfulness of reality, and transforms the buzz into the sound of his door intercom, and at this point we go into his personal flashback as the story continues. The acting and dialogue is often stilted and unrealistic in this flashback. What we're seeing is Fred's recollection, which - as he himself says - is not necessarily the way it actually happened. His relationship with Renee is tense and unreal, with lots of suppressed rage. Cleverly, the undercurrents are conveyed mostly by the background sounds - listed in the credits as 'Ominous drones' - and these provide the significance that the dialogue alone would lack. At the party scene several events take place: his suspicions about Renee and the impossibly sleazy - because he's seen through Fred's eyes - lounge-lizard Andy are effectively confirmed (for him). And he meets the 'Mystery Man', a devil-figure who tells Fred "You invited me (into your home). It is not my custom to go where I'm not wanted". I suspect that this figure is Fred's attempt to unload his guilt onto someone else: a 'devil who made him do it' - don't you have to invite the devil into your house? Perhaps he's the personification of Fred's insanity, or his jealousy. Or all of the above - all the dark influences in Fred's life and head. As the flashback continues, we see the progression up to the point where he finally does murder Renee, horribly. Again he attempts to reject the reality by showing it all on video, but reality intrudes and a few seconds are shown of him 'really' sitting among the dismembered parts of his wife. His subsequent trial and sentencing are skipped over - they're a blur to Fred - and he winds up on Death Row. Facing execution, and unable to tolerate his real state, Fred then creates a fantasy in which he escapes his fate by miraculously turning into another person - an innocent: young, enjoying a simple life, good at his simple job; with groovy, understanding parents and a pliable girlfriend. The scenes around Fred's miraculous replacement are classic Lynch fantasy-made-real: the dialogue is ludicrous; the events comic-book. We see the same in the fantasy world of the central character in MD. Although safe in this new fantastical environment, Fred/Peter is unable to resist being drawn back into danger, initially via his unlikely relationship with the - again comic-book - gangster boss, Mr. Eddy. This gangster character is a one-dimensional, violent crazy man who recalls the fantasy mafia types invented by the central character in MD to 'explain' her bad break. Even so, Peter's life will remain peaceful if he avoids any dealings with Eddy outside of the grease-monkey relationship. But Fred's paranoia demands danger, and Peter begins an even less plausible and obviously perilous association with Fred's new incarnation of Renee: the pure-hearted damsel in distress that is Alice. Except that, once again, Peter's life is contorted by Fred's paranoia, and Alice slowly metamorphoses into a spiteful, greedy psychotic who leads Peter further into danger. (I looked for the 'Eye of the Duck' peripeteiac scene that Lynch always puts into his films, and one of the candidates is, I think, the moment where Alice points the gun at him after raiding 'Andy's' house. The tableau is held long enough to allow you to contemplate all that could happen if she shoots Peter and takes off. But that's not possible in a Fred/Peter fantasy, so we continue, with the point about her ruthlessness made.) What else? The storyline continues as might be expected, with Alice now in total control. The cabin we've seen before just prior to Fred's metamorphosis. Alice disappears. The Mystery Man returns, and so does Mr. Eddy and Fred. All of this in a fight, during which the devil-figure hands him a knife that allows him to defeat Eddy/Dick Laurent (as we have discovered), and finally everything turns to crap as Fred heads back onto the highway with retribution on his tail. Things look hopeless, and the escape fantasy has brought him back to the point where he came in. And then Fred begins another metamorphosis, which we never see completed, and the film ends. Is this another fantasy escape, or his death in the Chair? I don't know how much of this is correct. Perhaps one day someone will tie Mr. Lynch to a rack, put electrodes on his nuts, and extract the line-by-line details of his wonderful creations. Until then we must wonder and worry. And marvel.

• Lynch's most bizarre movie to date....[Possible explanation, only for those who have seen the film]

  tmensamaster-22002-11-11

  David Lynch is known for his art films; films that defy the rules and rubricks a movie should follow. Of course, Lynch isn't one to follow any kind of Hollywood Rule. His films always have a general sense of the surreal, of emotions only understandable to the characters and actions that defy comprehension. They always have lurid eroticism or at least one character with a sexual perversion. And, for the most part, his films are incomprehensible to a mainstream audience. 'Lost Highway' has just been defined for you, though not explained. Perhaps the film is not meant to be explainable, perhaps it is just an abstract work meant to involve us and toy with our emotions until we forget it right after we leave. But the film is memorable so that cannot be the reason. Maybe Lynch is just working out personal demons and only he is meant to benefit from doing the film. I'll explain what I mean. 'Fred Madison' [Bill Pullman] is a sax player who performs at the local club. He and his wife 'Renee' [Patricia Arquette] live in a funky Lynchian house that seems designed specifically to disturb the audience. Their marriage and sex life is not going well. One day, 'Renee' finds a videotape on the doorstep. When they play it, it is almost like a promotional video for their house, moving down every hallway before entering the bedroom where 'Fred' and 'Renee' are shown sleeping. The tape abruptly shorts out to snow. 'Fred' and 'Renee' are obviously quite bothered by this. They call the police, who don't really impact the situation in any way. Later, at a party, 'Fred' meets an ingratiating pasty-faced man [Robert Blake] at a party who calmly explains ''We've met before, haven't we'' and then goes on to explain they met at 'Fred's house and that the man is ''There right now, phone me''. He does seem to be at both ends of the line. 'Fred' immediately grabs 'Renee and they leave to go home. This leads to one of the most tense and terrifying sequences I have ever viewed on a piece of celluloid since Hitchcock. Since we know Lynch is directing, we know anything could happen......And does. I have not given away anything. In fact, the events I have described might have never happened. In fact, any event or character that enters the film may or may not have happened. The film exists in it's own queer dimension. Lynch shots the film like a noir, with 'Renee' as the femme fatale. The colors are pitch-dark and lush which helps structure the film into what it is, a psychological nightmare. It manipulates our emotions to a shocking extent and we don't know how Lynch is doing it because nothing in the movie makes sense. Lynch himself uses the phrase 'psychogenic fugue' when describing the movie as he says the hero is 'inventing a fantasy because his real life is so screwed up.' Patricia Arquette is more blatant when describing the film; 'Fred Madison is a f@#$ed up guy who invents a fantasy because his real life is so f%$#ed up. But Fred is so f%$#ed up that his fantasy falls apart...'' Makes sense to me. It would explain the bizarre events and would explain the ending. Fred is so angry and so paranoid that he has a fit in his car, twisting and whipping his head around in circles because his fantasy has gone wrong and collapsed. The film reveals clues that support this explanation. At one point, the pasty-faced man says of Renee ''Her name is Alice, if she told you her name was Renee, she was lying. And you, who the f$#@ ARE YOU!'' This suggests that Renee has used him and that 'Fred' doesn't even know who he is. If you were inventing a fantasy about yourself and you wanted to create a given persona, isn't it possible that you could forget who you were in the first place? Some people have suggested that the 'Mystery Man' [Robert Blake] is a manifestation of 'Fred's' illness. But then why does it seem that the 'Mystery Man' is trying to help 'Fred'? Perhaps 'Fred' has created the 'Mystery Man' in the hopes that this being will solve the mystery for him, to egg him on until he saves himself. And the mob boss 'Mr Eddy' [Robert Loggia] is the real villain: cold, calculating, abusive and spontaneously violent, just like a virus. And 'Renee/Alice' is just one of the virus' cohorts, reproduced from the DNA of the virus to spread the illness and incapacitate the victim. Or perhaps the most likely explanation; It is a Lynchian fantasy designed to screw the mainstream audience and entertain open moviegoers.This makes the most sense. People will always want to explain this film, to dig up it's secrets. Maybe the secrets will never be uncovered. Maybe there are no secrets and it is just a Lynch film calculated to please his fans. Any way you see it, it will never be solved. I wish you good luck if you try to solve the film in its entirety,... But you will certainly have fun doing it.

• Dark, Violent, Surreal, Beautiful, Hallucinatory Masterpiece

  gogoschka-12018-06-04

  Buckle your seat belts: this film is quite the ride. As so often with David Lynch's movies, 'Lost Highway' doesn't bother with a traditional narrative and follows its own, dreamlike (or nightmarish) logic. It is a wild, expressionist work of art, and while it starts on a slow, brooding note, the film soon explodes into a crazy, violent trip that hooks you competely and doesn't let up. My advice to people unfamiliar with Lynch's work is this: just enjoy the experience and let yourself be immersed. While it is fun to analyze Lynch's movies, especially his most surreal ones, they're not mysteries that require resolution in order to be enjoyed. As for the filmmaking itself, the pacing is fantastic throughout, the cinematography outstanding and the cast of character actors like Bill Pullman, Robert Loggia and Patricia Arquette simply a joy to watch (especially Loggia gets to shine in a wonderfully over-the-top part). Another aspect that should not go unmentioned is the music. The orginal score by Angeolo Badalamenti (who is to Lynch what John Williams is to Spielberg) is hauntgingly beautiful, but equally important is the amazing soundtrack - featuring greats like David Bowie, Lou Reed, Rammstein, Marilyn Manson, Trent Reznor and more - which fits and enhances the images on screen perfectly. As far as I'm concerned, this is Lynch at his best. 'Lost Highway' is a dark, violent, surreal, beautiful, hallucinatory masterpiece: 10 stars out of 10. Favorite films: IMDb.com/list/mkjOKvqlSBs/ Favorite TV-Shows reviewed: imdb.com/list/ls075552387/ Lesser-Known Masterpieces: imdb.com/list/ls070242495/ Favorite Low-Budget and B-Movies: imdb.com/list/ls054808375/