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Friday, June 28, 2024

Lost Highway (1997)

France / USA, 134 minutes
Director: David Lynch
Writers: David Lynch, Barry Gifford
Photography: Peter Deming
Music: Angelo Badalamenti, David Bowie, Rammstein, Marilyn Manson
Editor: Mary Sweeney
Cast: Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Robert Blake, Robert Loggia, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Richard Pryor, Gary Busey, Jack Nance, Marilyn Manson, Henry Rollins

I don’t like director and cowriter David Lynch’s Lost Highway as much as Blue Velvet or Mulholland Dr., but I like it more than Inland Empire, which came nearly 10 years later. They have much the same basic problem for me. They start with profoundly intriguing premises which are later swamped by inexplicable turns in the movie. Lost Highway cracks in half nearly an hour in and becomes another story entirely, though obscure connecting points—such as Patricia Arquette appearing in both as different characters—make the viewer feel tantalizingly close to making sense of it. In previous viewings I have tried to make them work together. This time I tried to let go and just enjoy the parade of great moments that go rolling by in the second part.

The first part involves jazz saxophonist (and boy does he blow) (I mean that in the good sense of “blow,” the way Bruce Springsteen meant it in instructions to Clarence Clemons), Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), and his disaffected wife who might be cheating on him, Renee (Arquette). They’ve got a nice mansion in Los Angeles and lately unmarked packages with unmarked videotapes have begun to appear on their doorstep. When they play them, they show images of their home. Renee assumes it’s some kind of realtor promotion, but a second tape shows the camera operator entering their home and taking shots of them sleeping in their bed. This is soon explained (I should use scare quotes: “explained”) in one of Lynch’s single greatest scenes.


It takes place at a party full of sparkling Los Angeles scenesters (the Hollywood people David Lynch doesn’t love—who would be further roasted in his next major picture, Mulholland Dr.). Fred and Renee are putting in their time there, connections and networking and all that, but Fred is already anxious to leave. They separate to mingle. Fred is approached by a strange man (Robert Blake, his faced caked with white powder, credited as “Mystery Man”). He is one part Ben (Dean Stockwell) from Blue Velvet and four parts Bob (Frank Silva) from the Twin Peaks franchise. He introduces himself to Fred by saying they’ve met before. Fred doesn’t know him, asks where they met. At your house, says the strange guy. “As a matter of fact, I’m there right now. At your house.” He insists Fred call home. Sure enough, the guy answers: “I told you I was here.”

While I have mixed feelings about Lost Highway, this unnerving scene always hits me as one of Lynch’s best, rivaling, for example, Ben’s lip-synch of Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” in Blue Velvet, forever redefining the song. There’s something about Blake’s odd demeanor that makes us resist him as a supernatural being walking this earth and inhabiting Fred’s life, although that’s exactly what he (or it) seems to be. The scene is also funny because Fred is resisting the same idea, of course, treating it as some kind of vaguely rude and possibly intrusive magic trick that this guy pulls at parties. Fred is also suspicious and instinctively hostile. He wants to know how the guy did it, like anyone does when a magic trick is successfully pulled on them. The scene is brief, but riveting, and amazing.

It's not long afterward that Renee is murdered (abruptly, for the most part off camera) and Fred is convicted of the crime and sent to death row. It makes little sense according to what we know of Fred and Renee, but perhaps this is where we realize we don’t know that much about them. Then, in prison one day, at about 51:30 into the picture, Fred is no longer in his cell. He has been replaced by Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty) and we are into an entirely different narrative thread, suffused with James Dean and biker outlaw fantasies enlivened by the ‘70s TV style of Robert Loggia, as debonair heavy gangster Mr. Eddy (and Dick Laurent off camera over in the first half of the movie). Mr. Eddy enters into fugue states and can be pretty scary even though he’s always Robert Loggia.

In my forays into Lost Highway I tend to spend time getting used to the second story and feeling resentful about trying to figure out how they connect. The first one seemed to be going in such interesting directions. Is this some kind of William Burroughs cut-up exercise? Near the end of the movie, Pete Dayton disappears and appears to be replaced by Fred Madison again, which helps very little. This time with Lost Highway I didn’t even try that hard—just, what've ya got here anyway? I liked it more for its little crescendos of mood—a demonstration of Mr. Eddy’s rage, a dangerous affair between Pete and Mr. Eddy’s girlfriend Alice (Arquette again). Alice particularly is deeply steeped in film noir signifiers, a classic femme fatale. Always thinking, scheming up the worst ideas. In this case, it’s robbing an associate of Mr. Eddy and using the money to run away. Do you think it has even a prayer of not going wrong? Spoilers.

The lost highway itself, shot at night from the lower windshield in a speeding car, is an image that recurs frequently in Lost Highway. It feels like the view of a driver fighting sleep. Perhaps the way to take this movie is as exactly that—a highway at night where we are lost. Things burn down in the desert, backwards. “Mystery Man” is seen hovering over various scenes of mayhem. At this point I’m going with Bob-like demon to explain him. Lost Highway pivots from one intriguing, confusing story to the next and back again. It’s not going to help us find anything. But the things we see before we can find our way to being found again—we may never forget them.

1 comment:

  1. "I mean that in the good sense of “blow,” the way Bruce Springsteen meant it in instructions to Clarence Clemons." Gay icons, apparently, although no mention in Andrew Holleran's Dancer from the Dance.

    "He is one part Ben (Dean Stockwell) from Blue Velvet and four parts Bob (Frank Silva) from the Twin Peaks franchise." Scary!

    I need to see this one. Mulholland Drive had that two-part or more, disjointed, cut-up feel too.

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