DIRECTOR
David Lynch
SCREENWRITERS
David Lynch
Barry Gifford
PRODUCERS
Deepak Nayar
Tom Sternberg
Mary Sweeney
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Peter Deming
MUSIC
Angelo Badalamenti
EDITOR
Mary Sweeney
CAST
Bill Pullman (Fred Madison)
Patricia Arquette (Renee/Alice)
Balthazar Getty (Pete Dayton)
Robert Blake (Mystery Man)
Natasha Gregson Wagner (Sheila)
Richard Pryor (Arnie)
Jack Nance (Phil)
Henry Rollins (Guard Henry)
Giovanni Ribisi (Steve 'V')
Gary Busey (Bill Dayton)
Robert Loggia (Mr. Eddy)
Marilyn Manson (Porno Star #1)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 135m
U.S. release: February 21, 1997
Video availability: VHS
Other David
Lynch films
reviewed on this website:
- Dune
- Mulholland
Drive
- The
Straight Story
- Twin
Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
- Wild
at Heart
|
In
Lost Highway, the new film by David Lynch, we get to know
an L.A. jazz hipster named Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), who suspects
his wife Renee (Patricia Arquette) of cheating on him. Renee
is murdered -- cut into pieces -- and a confused Fred is tried
and convicted. In his cell, Fred (who's been having headaches)
somehow changes into a young mechanic named Pete Dayton (Balthazar
Getty) -- and we're into a whole other story.
Or are we? Pete, who fixes cars for mobster Mr. Eddy (Robert
Loggia), falls for Mr. Eddy's moll Alice -- played by Patricia
Arquette again. There's also a Mystery Man (a ghastly Robert
Blake) who can be in two places at once and seems to function
as a monitor/puppetmaster, like the lever-pulling Man in the
Planet in Lynch's seminal Eraserhead.
The movie demands patience and attention, and some viewers may
not feel it's a fair trade. In Blue
Velvet and Twin
Peaks, Lynch set up a mystery and then sprinkled surreal
oddities onto it. Lost Highway is all oddities,
and the mystery is the film itself.
Most Lynch fans, I think, will much prefer the first half, and
not only because Balthazar Getty is sullenly inexpressive and
annoyingly "cool" -- a rebel without a pulse. The Fred
section is doomy and deliberately paced, heavy with voluptuous
erotic dread; the languid nothingness sucks you in. The Pete
section is noisy and overwrought, with occasional bursts of thrash
metal and freakish violence, such as death by coffee table --
which seems meant to be funnier than it is. (It's staged poorly,
or maybe it was trimmed to avoid an NC-17 rating.)
Yet even the weak second half offers distinctively Lynchian pleasures.
When Alice is forced to strip at gunpoint, our response is divided
between moral disgust and detached appreciation of Lynch's pristine
composition of the shot (the cinematography, by Peter Deming,
is superb throughout). When Mr. Eddy assaults a tailgater, it's
the movie's comic high point, but we also feel sorry for the
poor pistol-whipped victim. Lynch was a wizard at this comic-horror
stuff years before Quentin Tarantino cut off that cop's Blue
Velvet ear in Reservoir
Dogs.
Lost Highway is a movie about divisions, so it's fitting
that we come away from it with mixed feelings. Some may prefer
the faster, more lurid Pete section and find Fred's half boring.
Lynch himself seems split between artist and entertainer. In
the climax, a chaotic seizure in which the literal and the symbolic
collide, Lynch is a capital-A Artist who can't, or won't, bring
the movie together in any satisfying way. He expects us
to do it. Lynch is courting audience hostility here in a way
he hasn't since Eraserhead, which at least was wacko from
the start. Lost Highway begins conventionally and then
takes a hard left. The defiant strangeness reminded me of Alex
Cox's career-ending doodles Straight to Hell and Walker
(both of which I liked).
I enjoyed much of Lost Highway, though I hesitate to recommend
it to the uninitiated. It's classic Lynch -- a metaphysical horror
movie about the dark mysteries of sex. I was enthralled even
when I was baffled. Yet many Lynch fans may find it depressing.
Lost Highway is mesmerizing yet cold and remote -- an
exotic fish we can't touch. Instead of connecting with us, David
Lynch now wants to withdraw into his brilliant void, and he doesn't
care whether we go with him. |
