Lost Highway (1997)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Lost Highway (1997) – D. Lynch

If we are to rank David Lynch’s films, then Lost Highway falls somewhere in the middle of his oeuvre – if we are being generous, then in the top half below the masterworks of Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Dr (2001) and not quite as rich or scary as Inland Empire (2006).  (It has been too long since I’ve seen Eraserhead, 1977).  Indeed, the art direction and dream/nightmare imagery here are on par with the best Lynch has offered – but the plot and the mystery (wherein saxophonist Bill Pullman somehow morphs into Balthazar Getty) may leave slightly not enough to hang your hat on, despite the movie eking its way toward a too long run-time.    Patricia Arquette plays a dual role.  First, she is the wife of Pullman, possibly cheating on him and possibly murdered by him.  Then, she is the moll of gangster Mr. Eddy/Dick Laurent (Robert Loggia) who starts an illicit affair with Getty (shades of Wild at Heart, 1990, but less icky than that film), spending half the movie naked, exploited by Mr Eddy and probably Lynch as well (onscreen not off).  By the film’s conclusion, we may come to believe that Pullman and Getty have been housed in the same person seeing that Pullman finally does emerge to reclaim the narrative in the film’s waning moments.  Perhaps the most “straightforward” analysis here (if such a thing is even possible with Lynch) is that Pullman has made a Faustian bargain with the Devil (Robert Blake with his eyebrows shaved off is very Mephistophelean) in order to avoid punishment for murdering his wife, with his soul entering another’s body in a sort of fugue state; perhaps that bargain also involved Arquette being granted new life or this could be the Devil’s sly joke, a fly in the ointment which is meant to disrupt the smoothness of the plans.  At least that’s what I’ve got this morning – no doubt there are other interpretations.  However, Lynch remains resistant to such cogitating (and perhaps it is best not to even try), instead he hits us in the subconscious with images (from his subconscious?) and music (from This Mortal Coil to Lou Reed to Nine Inch Nails, though not Hank Williams’ relevant title track) that evoke schematic shades of primitive, psychological, sociological, and cinematic knowledge, hanging together serendipitously…or not.