In the two decades since Eraserhead, David Lynch has established himself as American cinema's premier surrealist, our own Wizard of Weird. Although his first two Hollywood projects--The Elephant Man (1980) and Dune (1984)--had little room for the sort of spooky shit at which he excels, his style found its greatest synthesis with traditional narrative in Blue Velvet (1986), still his masterpiece.
After Blue Velvet, one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the decade, Lynch might have anticipated having an easier time getting his projects before the camera. But at least two scripts, Ronnie Rocket and One Saliva Bubble (not the world's most commercial title), have been on-again, off-again for years.
Improbably, it was television and Twin Peaks that brought him his widest audience--if only for eight months. Despite the show's quick decline and the popular failure of Hotel Room and On the Air (his two subsequent shows), Twin Peaks' influence has outlasted its run: TP begat Northern Exposure and The X-Files, which respectively begat Picket Fences and Millennium, and on and on.
Both Wild at Heart (1990) and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) disappointed many of the Lynch faithful. The latter was unavoidably compromised by the problems of reassembling the TV cast; and, for all its wacko elements, the former felt like a potboiler: It had the director's trademark themes and stylistic flash, but it had as much unity as a vaudeville show. Sure, it was funny, it was intriguing; but, like his two other adaptations of pre-existing works, it was Lynch applying his particular style to a story that never seemed to have sprung from his very soul the way Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks had.
Happily, in Lost Highway, Lynch's first feature in five years, the director seems to be tapping into his twisted subconscious more directly than he has in a decade. His most thoroughly surreal work since Eraserhead, this two-hour-plus fever dream is more of one piece than Fire Walk With Me and less desperate and joky than Wild at Heart.
A plot synopsis of Lost Highway is difficult because it's not about plot--it barely has a plot--and it's tough to describe what makes the film such a riveting, baffling experience without giving away all the good parts. But here goes.
The movie opens with the flare of a match, followed by headlights speeding down a nocturnal road, an image that is repeated several times. We meet Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), a well-to-do sax player who lives in the Hollywood Hills (my guess) with his wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette with red hair). He gets a message that Dick Laurent is dead--unfortunately, Fred doesn't know a Dick Laurent. And he barely cares, since he's more concerned with the possibility that his wife might be having an affair.
One day, the couple find a videocassette on their doorstep. After a few seconds' footage of the front of their house, it fritzes out to static. The tape has some connection to a bizarre character, referred to in the cast list as Mystery Man. When Fred meets the demonic, grinning, pasty-faced Mystery Man at a party given by Andy (Michael Massee), a slimy friend of Renee, he recognizes him from an earlier hallucination or dream. Mystery Man looks like a diminutive Klaus Nomi impersonator or a refugee from Carnival of Souls, but is played by an unrecognizable Robert Blake--Baretta, looking totally different without his cockatoo. He is ominously identified as "a friend of Dick Laurent." He knows things about--and reveals things to--Fred that are impossible to know.
More tapes arrive and two cops show up to investigate.
Pretty soon, a conflict emerges over what more accurately depicts reality, Fred's memory or the videos. Suffice it to say that Fred gets blamed for a crime that seems to exist only on tape: We never see the act or its aftermath directly. His mental condition deteriorates to the point that one morning he wakes up and he's someone else--Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty), a young auto mechanic from Van Nuys, California.
For the rest of the movie, Lynch drops lots of hints about just what the hell is going on here while refusing to allow one consistent explanation. It seems like the start of a new story, but then not, as Robert Loggia delivers a choice role as a gangster named Mr. Eddie--who may be Dick Laurent.
And soon the story gets more complicated, with even more inconsistencies.
In terms of Hollywood narrative values, Lost Highway makes Blue Velvet and even Wild at Heart look positively conventional. And it lacks the air of sensational expose that formed Blue Velvet's subtext. It might be possible to come up with a class analysis--Fred is a professional, Pete's working-class--but it's hard to imagine anything more beside the point. Lost Highway is like a long dream story: Characters have two faces or names or both; some seem to have no existence for long stretches, while others are in two places at once; people who are supposed to be dead turn up alive; random moments are inexplicably charged with awe or terror. The interweaving of repeated images, words and events is almost as rich as in Blue Velvet, but not nearly as neat.
