Early on in David Lynch’s Lost Highway, saxophonist Fred Madison
(Bill Pullman) and Renee Madison (Patricia Arquette) begin receiving mysterious
videotapes on their doorstep which appear to show their home being invaded
while they’re sleeping. After detectives
are called to investigate, Fred is asked if he owns a video camera and remarks
he hates cameras because he ‘likes to remember things his own way’ and ‘not
necessarily the way they happened’. This
is the key to unlocking the labyrinthine twists and turns taken in the surreal
neo-noir narrative David Lynch’s dark, erotic and deeply disturbing thriller
about memory, identity, pornography, mafia, psychogenic fugue and the
unexpected capability celebrity has for murder.
Far more radical than
anything in Lynch’s oeuvre up to this point, Lost Highway remains one of Lynch’s most compelling character
studies for how it portrays in our worst moments of despair our psychological attempts
to erase our past and generate new lives for ourselves and the ways everyone on
some level leads a double life. Co-written
by Wild at Heart novelist Barry
Gifford and clearly inspired by the fallout of the O.J. Simpson trial, Lost Highway takes Lynch’s favorite
recurring motif of a black highway at night with yellow stripes careening
towards the camera to new thematic heights, suggesting an endless road to
nowhere shrouded in near total darkness as a kind of modern Hell. Think of the image concluding Luis Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie in
hyper drive, depicting the cast of characters trapped in a Hell of their making
in the form of wandering amid an endless highway leading towards oblivion.
The first of what would
become a new narrative structure for Lynch, where linearity no longer applied
and openness to interpretation is everything, Lost Highway also marks the director’s first attempt to tap into
the gothic industrial music scene. At
the height of Nine Inch Nails’ popularity, Lynch contacted frontman Trent
Reznor to compose some original music for the film (including The Perfect Drug) and ultimately wound
up producing the immensely successful soundtrack album featuring highlights by
David Bowie, Rammstein, Smashing Pumpkins, Lou Reed and Marilyn Manson (who
also cameos in the film alongside Twiggy Ramirez). If anything, the soundtrack album outsold the
movie it was affiliated with.
As always, Angelo
Badalamenti provides a truly atmospheric ambient soundscape consisting of
mellow jazz to Penderecki inspired strings that strike terror in the
listener. This was also, prior to Lynch’s
abstaining from mixing his films in surround sound, the first time the master
of sound design mixed in Dolby Digital 5.1, providing a sonic experience that
is all but entirely lost hearing it only on a small TV screen. While most home theater aficionados will play
the latest Michael Bay film to show off their sound system, I find myself
always popping in Lost Highway for
the otherworldly sound engineering and the volume range which seems to go from
dead silence to high pitched screams without warning in an instant.
Next of course are the
visuals which are the epicenter of Lynch’s focus. Shot in 2.35:1 widescreen by Mulholland Drive cinematographer Peter
Deming, the film has an eerie soft focus to it that has never been properly
duplicated on home video. This is a film
with a lot of deep black levels and near total darkness save for moments that
are abruptly blindingly bright with saturated colors. It is so beautiful to look at that some shots
of desert sunsets exist purely for our viewing pleasure. This was also the first time Lynch began
anamorphically distorting the image with scenes that seem to warp and stretch
the screen proportions unnaturally, a technique he would revisit once more in Mulholland Drive. It’s an uncanny cinematographic technique not
seen since Robert Wise’s The Andromeda
Strain and very rarely seen anywhere else.
It goes without saying,
whether you come away understanding Lynch’s meditation on psychogenic fugue,
the performances across the board are undeniably outstanding. Bill Pullman gives the performance of his
career as the tense and increasingly jealous Fred Madison, providing the blueprint
for what would become the character James Sunderland in Silent Hill 2. Patricia
Arquette also has a great deal of heavy lifting to do and she pulls it off
spectacularly, playing two completely different characters who may or may not
be the same person and going the full distance in terms of sex and nudity with
confidence and gusto.
Also fantastic is Robert
Loggia as the ruthless gangster Mr. Eddy, who in a standout scene where he rams
a tailgater off the road and goes on a rage filled rant that would make Dennis
Hopper’s Frank Booth from Blue Velvet cower
in fear. It’s a sequence where, like the
greatest of Lynch’s comic foul mouthed episodes, you’re not sure how to
react. Do you laugh or recoil? Is it funny or awful? This deliberate contradiction can be found in
all of Lynch’s work, where from one second to the next the tone is uncertain if
not drastically shifting extremes. If
nothing else, it’s one of the most memorable moments in the film and calls into
question why Loggia didn’t get more critical recognition for it. Lynch also doesn't shy away from plugging in unlikely cameos including the last role for Richard Pryor, Jack Nance and also leaving room for Henry Rollins and Gary Busey.
Ironically, the film maybe
hit closer to home than many were expecting. Take for instance the pale faced eyebrow shaven mystery man dressed in
black played by Robert Blake (in his final performance in film), a kind of
surrogate BOB from Twin Peaks keeping
a watchful eye on all the lost souls trapped in the endless highway. One of the central themes of Lost Highway involves a man charged with
the murder of his wife despite lacking any recollection of committing the
act. It is not without a cruel sense of
irony that years later Blake himself would be charged with the same crime,
throwing an even darker shadow over the proceedings and making the mystery man
that much more sinister and frightening.
For some viewers, the film
plays somewhat like Kubrick’s Full Metal
Jacket due to the drastic shift in tone and structure as it reaches the
second act and those unaccustomed to Lynch will find the transition
jarring. I also, even now despite my
adulation for Lynch, still don’t know where the character of Pete Dayton
(Balthazar Getty) fits into the proceedings.
While his thick black leather jacket recalls the greaser regalia adorned
by James Hurley from Twin Peaks, Pete’s
chapter in the film tends to meander.
Despite what some still feel is a shaky second act, it all comes
together full circle so well with such an unforgettable final punch that you
find yourself disregarding the shortcomings surrounding Pete Dayton’s place in
the film.
In the end, approaching any
Lynch film requires the use of all of your senses as a filmgoer even though it
is unlikely you will come away with a final answer to it all. For my money, it’s the study of a guilty man’s
mind wrestling with himself trying to make sense of the crimes he may or may
not have committed. While this doesn’t
achieve the monumental power of Twin
Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, you could look at Lost Highway as a younger brother to that film given Lynch himself
seemed to suggest both films took place in the same universe.
If anything, Lost Highway takes you closer into a self-deluding mindset than any
other film I’m aware of save for Lynch’s last two features. As with any great film from a master
filmmaker such as Lynch, you’re inclined to revisit it again and again as you
begin to think you’re closer to putting your finger on what makes a mind like
Fred Madison’s tick. Like the opening
and closing David Bowie track I’m
Deranged says, you’ll feel the same sense of bewilderment and vague,
uncertain sense of closure well after the end credits have rolled.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki