Lost Highway

Having already done reviews of two other David Lynch movies, it would almost be improper of me not to review Lynch's other major brainbuster: Lost Highway. Rumored to have been inspired by the O.J. Simpson trial, Lost Highway examines the overpowering guilt and internal torment of one man, his inability to cope with the horrible acts he's committed. Dubbed by Lynch himself as a filmic realization of a nightmare, or as examining a mental state called the "psychogenic fugue", Lost Highway continues to leave me baffled every time I see it.

Lost Highway is often compared to Mulholland Dr., insofar as both films largely take place inside the mind of one character. What separates Lost Highway from Mulholland Dr., though, is that there's far less of a clear differentiation between tangible reality and realized stream of conscious, which constantly leaves the viewer wondering, is the entire movie all taking place inside someone's head?

The "someone" in question is Fred Madison, a jazz musician played by Bill Pullman. He lives a rather abstract, detached life in a minimalist house with his wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette). Their marriage is equally as distant and detached, and little hints are dropped that Renee may in fact he cheating on Fred—hints such as her not answering the phone after one of Fred's gigs at a local jazz club, or of seeing her walk through the crowd with a certain male friend during another gig. It's enough to leave Fred uneasy while not totally pushing him off the deep end . . . yet.

Let me backtrack for a moment to the film's opening, which hooks you right away. The opening credits unfold over a David Bowie soundtrack, while we see a road's yellow median strip in the dark of night flying past at high speed. A very clever gimmick that sets the mood perfectly (even if only reflecting the film's title). We then move onto a close-up of Fred's face in the darkness, illuminated only by the burning end of a cigarette. His face seems almost lost in deep thought, but interrupted by the front-door buzzer that delivers the following cryptic message: "Dick Laurant is dead." I don't know about you, but that's enough to get me hooked!

Moving back to Fred and Renee, one morning Renee finds an envelope on their doorstep, containing a videotape. When she and Fred sit down to view it, it shows only a camcorder shot of the front of their house. Unsure what to make of this, they quietly dismiss the tape . . . until more start showing up on their doorstep, each one progressively longer—until one such tape shows them in bed together. In a panic, they call the police, who can't find any evidence of a break-in, but agree to keep a watchful eye on the house nevertheless. Fred admits that he doesn't own a camcorder, because he likes to remember things his own way—which is to say, how his mind recollects every event, as opposed to the way they happened in reality. When I first watched Lost Highway, I made sure to remember that bit of information, for somehow I just knew it would be of paramount importance to the movie.

Shortly thereafter, Fred and Renee attend a party hosted by Renee's friend Andy, who comes across as being a bit shady and a bit too friendly with Renee. Given Fred's unease about her faithfulness, his discomfort is pretty palpable whenever he's in Andy's presense. But when Andy has a moment alone at the bar, he encounters a very pale, almost pasty-faced man (subsequently known as the "Mystery Man", and played by Robert Blake) who engages Fred in a rather creepy, bizarre conversation. (This is actually my favorite scene in the whole movie.)



After this, relations with Fred and Renee begin to grow even more distant. They barely talk to each other, their sex life borders on uncomfortable, and Fred's constant fears of her infidelity begin to chip away on his sanity—though he and Renee never actually speak about it. And as Fred retreats deeper and deeper into his fears and insecurities, the scenes themselves grow darker and darker, sometimes more symbolic than an actual recording of events. Take, for example, when Fred walks through the house one night before they both go to bed. Renee is in the bathroom getting cleaned up, and Fred finds himself walking down a dark hallway, almost as if called, invited into the darkness. Smoke starts to issue from an adjoining room. This could all be interpreted as Fred completely losing himself in the darkest recesses of his mind, his anger burning him up with each passing minute—for the next morning, he finds another videotape on his doorstep . . . and this one shows Fred covered in blood, standing over the mutilated body of Renee. At this point, Fred realizes that Renee isn't even in the house. He calls to her . . . only to be punched in the face by one of the detectives from earlier, who shouts to him, "Sit down, killer!"

Fred is then jailed and sentenced to death for Renee's murder, and in jail, he begins to waste away in guilt and torment, wondering just why he did what he did. The scenes of Fred in jail . . . I think these are genuinely real scenes, possibly the only ones in the entire movie. I believe that everything else before and after takes places inside Fred's mind, either as a recollection or as a justification for what he did. Having said that, I believe that the entire first half of the film, from the door-buzzer opening to Fred's getting punched by the detective, were Fred's fractured memories of what led up to this point—recollections of how he chooses to remember events, rather than how they actually happened. And maybe the Mystery Man is someone that Fred created in his subconsious, someone whom he can pin Renee's death on—if he retreats far enough into a state of denial. (Think of Mystery Man's dialogue, "You invited me in. It is not my custom to go where I am not wanted.")

And as Fred begins to physically deteriorate in jail, suffering from chronic insomnia, terrible headaches, various hallucinations (I loved the backwards footage of the burning cabin in the desert), and moments where Fred is thrashing about on his bunk as if being cooked alive (possibly symbolizing Fred's death sentence in the electric chair), a doctor gives him some sleeping pills . . . and I think the second half of the film, from here forward, is actually either a dream or a fantasy sequence, whichever you prefer—but nevertheless an alternate reality that Fred created in his mind, a reality in which he could be reborn . . . and sadly, also a reality that features all the key players of his actual life.

For the next morning, a guard comes to Fred's jail cell to find that the prisoner inside isn't Fred! It's a young man named Pete Dayton (played by Balthazar Getty), who's isn't quite with the program when he's first encountered by the guard. Pete is eventually released into the custody of his family. Gary Busey plays his ex-biker father who takes him home, and you almost have the sense that Pete is someone returning home from the hospital, or who's just been gone for a long time. For everywhere Pete looks, it's almost like he's trying to reacclimate himself to his surroundings. And everywhere he goes, all the people he sees, everyone is reacting to him with joy. The common reaction is, "Pete's back!" And so, now that Pete's "back", he (Fred?) can start anew (as someone else?). Pete hooks back up with his (smokin' hot) girlfriend Sheila, goes back to work for Arnie (Richard Pryor, in his final film role) at the auto repair shop—and renews his friendship with Mr. Eddy, the local mobster played by none other than Robert Loggia.

It should be noted, for the record, that detectives are keeping a tail on Pete, since they're eager to know just what happened to Fred Madison, and when they see Mr. Eddy pull into Arnie's garage, their reaction is unexpected. For when one detective asks the other if he recognizes Mr. Eddy—though not mentioning Mr. Eddy by name—he says, "Yeah . . . Laurant!" (Think back to the opening scene of the film.)

But something unexpected happens now that Pete is starting his life over: traces of Fred Madison's life permeate through, starting with a jazz solo that Pete hears on the radio—for it's the same jazz solo that Fred was playing at the beginning of the movie. And worse yet, Mr. Eddy brings his young girlfriend to the garage one day, a girl named Alice Wakefield . . . who looks almost identical to Renee, but with blond hair. Her advances on Pete could almost be interpreted as Fred's desire for himself and Renee to start over, but her connection to Mr. Eddy brings certain ugly realities back to the forefront—realities that will ultimately destroy Fred's fantasy of Pete Dayton's world:

• Alice, like Renee, is betrothed to another man while falling for Pete
• Alice, like Renee, doesn't have any relationship loyalties, because even though she loves Pete, she still offers herself sexually to Mr. Eddy and to Andy
• Alice makes reference to a lifestyle in the porn industry, indicating that that's how she first became acquainted with Mr. Eddy

The Mystery Man also makes an appearance in this sequence. As Mr. Eddy slowly becomes aware of Pete's affair with Alice, he makes a very unsettling phone call to Pete, essentially threatening him without actually saying so . . . and then handing the phone to the Mystery Man, who damn near rehases his earlier conversation with Fred Madison verbatim with Pete. Only the Mystery Man adds another bit of dialogue to this conversation—an explanation about how a condemned man in the Far East finally meets his end. (A possible reference to Fred's upcoming execution?)

Pete's trip to Andy's house serves two purposes: 1) to clearly define Alice's role in Mr. Eddy's little porn world, and 2) to show us the earliest traces of the Lost Highway Hotel, which I'll get to later. After Pete accidentally kills Andy (which had to hurt), he and Alice run to the desert to escape from Mr. Eddy . . . where we witness the final destruction of the Pete Dayton dream/fantasy with Alice/Renee's post-love proclamation, "You'll never have me." That's reality striking the final blow that Renee is dead, that she cheated on Fred and didn't love him, that he (Fred) killed her, and that she's now out of his life forever. For after this, it isn't Pete who rises up from the ground—it's Fred Madison. And who else should make an appearance in the desert but the Mystery Man, who not so subtly reminds Fred that the girl isn't Alice; it's Renee. And with that, we see Fred making a hasty retreat into the desert, flying down a lonely highway late at night in purest darkness.

At this point in the movie, this I think is where the audience finally sees how things really happened, though in a way that still requires some suspension of belief, because while we see the face of Fred Madison in the ensuing scenes, I don't believe that it actually is Fred Madison. Instead, I think it's the real Pete Dayton we're seeing.

But getting back to the notion that the scenes that follow are in fact reality, I shall now give you my own interpretation of things, which is . . .

. . . in reality, I believe that Renee was cheating on Fred with Andy and Dick Laurant, because many years ago she had been involved in the porn industry with them, and I believe that the story Alice tells Pete about her origins in said industry were actually Renee's. So Fred has Pete Dayton and his partner—the Mystery Man—kill both of these men (as evidenced by the detective's claim of, "Pete Dayton's prints are all over this place" at Andy's house), while Fred himself kills Renee. When we cut back to the Lost Highway Hotel, we see Renee (not Alice) making love to Dick Laurant (not Mr. Eddy, but still played by Robert Loggia). The visions that Pete Dayton has at Andy's house of the hotel room numbers, which I spoke about earlier, may signify Pete Dayton's encountering Dick Laurant at the Lost Highway Hotel. And I believe that it was Pete who uttered the film's opening line into the door buzzer from outside, "Dick Laurant is dead."

In the final analysis, and despite my above interpretation, I believe that Lost Highway is a film that isn't meant to be deciphered or figured out. It's not supposed to make sense, because what we're seeing is the stream of conscious of one person—and as in real life, what makes perfect sense to you won't make the least bit of sense to others. Thus, why Lost Highway doesn't completely make sense to its audience, no matter how much you try to make it cohesive and sensible. Nevertheless, I give it a 10 out of 10 for being among the best of David Lynch's mind-trips, right next to Inland Empire and Mulholland Dr.