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Movie of the Week #6 - Lost Highway (1997)
So we have a month with movies from the 1990s and we are starting off with Lost Highway directed by David Lynch from 1997.
Are you familiar with other works by David Lynch and how does this compare? Does it have a certain "90s feel" to it? Feel free to add any thoughts, opinions, reflections, analysis or whatever comments related to this film.
The rest of the schedule is:
- 11th of December: Edward Scissorhands
- 18th of December: The Talented Mr. Ripley
- 25th of December: Home Alone
I only know Lynch from the first season of Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive and The Straight Story. In terms of weirdness, this one definitely wins. It challenges the usual way of construction a movie in terms of weird acting, circular narrative, things that seemingly make little logical sense and switching main character half way. I can totally understand if many people will turn this off halfway through.
The very stiff unnatural acting threw me off at first. I know Lynch is capable of getting very convincing performances from actors, so there must be deliberate. I am guessing it relates to what Fred says about him wanting to remember things like he wants to, not how they actually happened. Whether that is meant to be interpreted as everything is just Fred psychotic nightmare I have no idea, but it successfully gives the first a very creepy and unsettling atmosphere.
What held it for me was a fascination on "what the hell is going on". Movies where unexplained weird stuff just happens balances on a knifes edge between urging you to give up or keep watching to see what happens next. It fell in the latter for me. I was constantly surprised by the shift and turns and unexpected plot developments. Like when Mr. Eddy takes Pete on a drive, it is kinda frames as some gangsterstuff is going to happen. It sort of does, but I definitely didn't expect it to be in the form of violent lesson in tailgating and speed limits. Later it suddenly becomes quite gory when a man gets his head split by a coffee table and then Rammstein starts playing!
It seems to me like some Lynch fans love to dissect and analyze his films into pieces to try and extract hidden meanings from them. There are plenty of "explained" type videos on Youtube and the Wikipedia article is interesting to read, but I mostly agree with Lynch in that there are no correct interpretation of his films and they should be watched and see where intuition takes you. This film explored similar territory as Mulholland Drive with memory loss and dreams mixed with reality. I do think Mulholland Drive is more accessible and I liked that more, because while Lost Highway was fascinating with all the weird creepy stuff that happens and it is impossible to know where it goes next, it is emotional cold. I cannot relate or resonate to it in any personal way.
I'm also not super familiar with Lynch. I've seen Eraserhead, Mullholland Drive, and The Straight Story. I really should get around to watching Elephant Man since I have a feeling that's gonna be one of my favorites from him. I've never seen Twin Peaks and I've never really had the urge to watch it.
Out of all the ones I've seen, The Straight Story is actually my favorite of his. For as well known as he is for making weird movies he made a pretty excellent straight-forward drama.
I liked this. I like Lynch's ability to create an atmosphere. I had a similar thing with Mullholland Drive where I didn't know what was going on early in the film. But I was captivated by the mood and the feeling of uneasiness.
I would say I'm moderately good at analyzing stuff. I was an English major (at least it was my second major) but I usually just like reading a lot of different interpretations and seeing which one fits. So I agree with the interpretation that states that the second half of the movie is Pullman's character creating a fake scenario in his head where he's a young guy who has a lot of pull with women. And that the mystery man is his conscious. I think there's a lot of good textual evidence for this, like the lightning representing the electrical chair. And I think Patricia Arquette playing both characters is meta-textual evidence. He's trying to grasp or reason the reason he killed his wife.
By the way, I love the way Lynch frames his women in his films. And Arquette was so gorgeous here and gorgeously shot.
Lynch is an interesting filmmaker. Because he has explicitly said he does not care about movies really. He's not a film buff and doesn't really watch movies. He's an artist and uses film like he would use paint. That's why I think he's so good at atmosphere.
Yes that interpretation seems to make most sense and this movie is also one of the few movies where Lynch have actually said "something" about what it is about, and it should to some degree be inspired by the OJ Simpson murdercase. However, I am personally not generally a fan of "it is all a dream" type of movies, because in dreams you can just make anything go. There are also the circular elements where the narrative becomes sort of like a closed timeloop where he speaks to himself in the end, that makes the dream thing a bit more complicated. Like when he is creating this narrative for himself? Does it also include the first half.
Anyways I don't feel like it is a type of movie that needs a full explanation for everything. Like you say, it is about atmosphere. Lynch is clearly just enjoying combining different elements from different genres as he sees fits. The noir aesthetics is pretty apparent and so is the "femme fatale" trope. He does the same in Twin Peaks where he toys with the viewers expectations for what a murder mystery or soap opera is supposed to be. Some scenes in this movie shares the supernatural eerie atmosphere of Twin Peaks and even X-Files to an extent.
This is not my cup of tea but I can see why people love this movie.