User Reviews

Just watched this for the first time, and enjoyed it immensely. Some here have suggested that there's no 'real' story at all. I don't agree: Lynch doesn't work like that - no matter how bizarre and reticulated, there's a story there, all right, but you have to dig for it.

'Mulholland Drive' informs this film considerably. Having deconstructed that one to my satisfaction, I have a clearer view of how Lynch does things; how he shows us the elements, the language he uses, and what he leaves out for us to discover. So, then - *SPOILERS*, if I'm right:

As with MD, there's a big clue in the first few seconds: Fred is shown in close-up, looking thoroughly wrecked, smoking a cigarette unsteadily. There's a buzzing sound, and light sweeps across his face and the room. *The sound is one you'll become familiar with later, in the jailhouse.* Fred looks up, warily.

Major premise: I believe this scene shows Fred, in the last moments of his life, having his last cigarette before they come to take him to the chair. This may, in fact, be the only 'real' scene in the film, with everything else being Fred's distorted recollection, and the rest a psychotic break fantasy he constructs to escape from his grim situation.

As the door to his cell opens, Fred rejects the awfulness of reality, and transforms the buzz into the sound of his door intercom, and at this point we go into his personal flashback as the story continues.

The acting and dialogue is often stilted and unrealistic in this flashback. What we're seeing is Fred's recollection, which - as he himself says - is not necessarily the way it actually happened. His relationship with Renee is tense and unreal, with lots of suppressed rage. Cleverly, the undercurrents are conveyed mostly by the background sounds - listed in the credits as 'Ominous drones' - and these provide the significance that the dialogue alone would lack.

At the party scene several events take place: his suspicions about Renee and the impossibly sleazy - because he's seen through Fred's eyes - lounge-lizard Andy are effectively confirmed (for him). And he meets the 'Mystery Man', a devil-figure who tells Fred "You invited me (into your home). It is not my custom to go where I'm not wanted". I suspect that this figure is Fred's attempt to unload his guilt onto someone else: a 'devil who made him do it' - don't you have to invite the devil into your house? Perhaps he's the personification of Fred's insanity, or his jealousy. Or all of the above - all the dark influences in Fred's life and head.

As the flashback continues, we see the progression up to the point where he finally does murder Renee, horribly. Again he attempts to reject the reality by showing it all on video, but reality intrudes and a few seconds are shown of him 'really' sitting among the dismembered parts of his wife. His subsequent trial and sentencing are skipped over - they're a blur to Fred - and he winds up on Death Row.

Facing execution, and unable to tolerate his real state, Fred then creates a fantasy in which he escapes his fate by miraculously turning into another person - an innocent: young, enjoying a simple life, good at his simple job; with groovy, understanding parents and a pliable girlfriend.

The scenes around Fred's miraculous replacement are classic Lynch fantasy-made-real: the dialogue is ludicrous; the events comic-book. We see the same in the fantasy world of the central character in MD.

Although safe in this new fantastical environment, Fred/Peter is unable to resist being drawn back into danger, initially via his unlikely relationship with the - again comic-book - gangster boss, Mr. Eddy. This gangster character is a one-dimensional, violent crazy man who recalls the fantasy mafia types invented by the central character in MD to 'explain' her bad break.

Even so, Peter's life will remain peaceful if he avoids any dealings with Eddy outside of the grease-monkey relationship. But Fred's paranoia demands danger, and Peter begins an even less plausible and obviously perilous association with Fred's new incarnation of Renee: the pure-hearted damsel in distress that is Alice.

Except that, once again, Peter's life is contorted by Fred's paranoia, and Alice slowly metamorphoses into a spiteful, greedy psychotic who leads Peter further into danger.

(I looked for the 'Eye of the Duck' peripeteiac scene that Lynch always puts into his films, and one of the candidates is, I think, the moment where Alice points the gun at him after raiding 'Andy's' house. The tableau is held long enough to allow you to contemplate all that could happen if she shoots Peter and takes off. But that's not possible in a Fred/Peter fantasy, so we continue, with the point about her ruthlessness made.)

What else? The storyline continues as might be expected, with Alice now in total control. The cabin we've seen before just prior to Fred's metamorphosis. Alice disappears. The Mystery Man returns, and so does Mr. Eddy and Fred. All of this in a fight, during which the devil-figure hands him a knife that allows him to defeat Eddy/Dick Laurent (as we have discovered), and finally everything turns to crap as Fred heads back onto the highway with retribution on his tail. Things look hopeless, and the escape fantasy has brought him back to the point where he came in.

And then Fred begins another metamorphosis, which we never see completed, and the film ends. Is this another fantasy escape, or his death in the Chair?

I don't know how much of this is correct. Perhaps one day someone will tie Mr. Lynch to a rack, put electrodes on his nuts, and extract the line-by-line details of his wonderful creations. Until then we must wonder and worry. And marvel.

(Don't read this unless you want it explained). Fred found out that his Wife had done adult films in the past. She promised him she wouldn't do it again. He can't handle it. He's super stressed out about it and can only feel release through playing jazz and having frenetic sex with his Wife. His behavior freaks her out.

She starts to reconnect with her friendships she had neglected due to her marriage. One of them is a former adult film producer/star with whom she had worked years before. Fred sees her talking to him at the party. Their somewhat over friendly behavior gets Fred really angry. They return home with Fred still seething. His Wife tells him that Dick Laurent wants her to go back to her adult film career. His hatred for her past life explodes in a moment of rage when he murders Her in their bedroom. This is the Woman he loves and married. How dare She dirty them both? He gets arrested and thrown in Jail.

While in jail he reminisces about when he met her when He was younger (as Balthazar Getty), more carefree and when She was still pure in his mind. This is why we see two version of his Wife, One pure and clean the other dark and dirty. The fantasy image he wants to hold onto vs the dirty whore. He has fantasies of killing Dick Laurent too, but he can't because he is in jail. His mind finally cracks and he goes crazy, his mind wanting to only remember the good things, but the truth of the horror of his actions keep invading his thoughts. This is what the Mystery Man is. Truth. The truth about his guilt. This is why he follows Fred whever he goes. Because the Truth of our bad actions will always haunt us. Just like the intrusive video tapes. It could be argued then that the whole movie is Fred sitting in jail stewing in insane grief and guilt, yearning to escape and run free ... down The Lost Highway.

'I like to remember things my own way. Not necessarily the way they happened.'

These are the words of Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), a man with an unfair share of problems. He lives in a deadly quiet neighbourhood, in a dark, oddly designed house. He works as a jazz musician in a nightclub and suspects his beautiful wife Renee (Patricia Arquette) of cheating on him. But, without knowing it, he's caught in an infinite, time-travelling, paradox conundrum. Confused? It gets even more complex.

Someone is leaving sinister video tapes on their doorstep. At first it only shows the exterior of their house. But the subsequent tapes reveal a little more and more.

At a party hosted by one of his wife's sleazy 'friends' a mystery man appears out of the crowd and tries to convince Fred that they've met before. Not quite aware of the true nature of the nightmare he's falling into, Fred dismisses this man as crazy and promptly leaves the awful party. At home, Fred disappears into the shadows of the labyrinthine hallway and isn't seen again til next morning.

The last videotape reveals Fred brutally murdering and dismembering Renee. Only he cannot remember doing it. Caught by the cops and sent to prison awaiting the chair, Fred begins to suffer agonising headaches. Then, one night, in solitary confinement, he goes through a psycho-genetic fugue and transforms into a completely different person.

Next morning the guards and warden are freaked to discover Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty), a 24-year old mechanic, in Fred Madison's cell. With no choice but to let him go, Pete goes back to his parents house while closely tailed by the cops. Something has happened to Pete a few days earlier and his parents are keeping their mouths shut. They can barely comprehend it themselves and it appears that Pete is involved in the same nightmare plot as Fred Madison was.

A powerful gangster named Dick Laurent/Mr. Eddy (Robert Loggia)has a fondness for Pete and his ability to fix any car. But when he swings by the garage with his new floozy Alice Wakefield (Patricia Arquette again) he falls instantly in love with the woman, despite having 'femme fatal' practically tattooed, in bold, on her forehead.

Pete and Alice begin a relationship of nothing but aggressive shagging. And slowly, but surely, a world of mystery unlike anything you've ever seen is so vividly realised that you are practically pulled right into the film itself. The atmosphere is so thick that it'll flood over into your living room.

David Lynch's direction is honed to perfection. The cinematography is flawless and expertly framed. Lynch is a master of space and sound and the world of Lost Highway is at once beautiful and downright evil. He uses sly editing tricks to keep you paying the utmost attention and even if you don't take your eyes off the screen for a slit second it will still takes dozens of viewings to even begin solving it.

The ingenuity of Lost Highway is that it can be interpreted in so many ways but there is always one piece of the puzzle that Lynch has deliberately warped or hammered out of shape so that it doesn't fit and negates any theory you may have. You could spend hours (and I have) painstakingly trying to make sense of it all and you can some close to the answer but be so far from the truth.

Be it a dream or reality, a trip down the Lost Highway is one you seriously need to take. Though you might not come back.

First of all let me say, that it is not as serious, if you don't get the movies of David Lynch at once (or even never). Lynch is not a film maker who tries to make movies with a problem-solving message, but an artist. Moreover he started as a painter and so he tries to create an atmosphere more than to develop a story.

Most viewers will have realized that "Lost Highway" is a story about a schizophrenic murderer (even Lynch mentioned it). But that is not the complete clue to the movie. Cause everyone is aware of Fred's metamorphosis (although no one seems to really care about). So his mutation seems to be real and till the end no one proves the opposite! But "Lost Highway" is not a common movie about schizophrenia like "Beautiful Mind" or "Das weiße Rauschen" (Which is a must-see, too!). INSANITY IS NOT THE SUBJECT, BUT THE NARRATIVE PRINCIPLE OF THE MOVIE! In other words: The movie is not a presentation of mental sickness, but a complete sick presentation, which means that the subjective perception of the protagonist becomes the objective reality! You'll find this way of telling a story quite often in surrealistic literature (i.e Franz Kafka's "Die Verwandlung" engl.: "Metamorphosis" - just note the title!!).

All Lynch-Movies refer to mental illness or the state of dreaming: No character ever seems to care about the illogical and irrational twists of the plot(just like in dreams), the landscapes are unrealistic and change appearance or size and the story takes place at deserted areas (forests, claustrophobic rooms, industrial areas, desserts) far away from civilization or reality!

Insanity - Sanity/ Evil - Good/ Reality - Fiction are no longer categories one can rely on. The protagonists see their surroundings and environment always threatening, but they never question it! They act with such a matter of course, that one has to ask whether it is ignorance, naiveté or self-deception. Perhaps you don't have to ask yourself how far you are able to UNDERSTAND the message. Perhaps you have to ask yourself how far you are willing to ACCEPT the message. Be aware, that once you started seeing the world at a different way you will follow that white rabbit right the way in his burrow...

As much as I keep thinking about the content of 'Lost Highway', every time I watch it I'm so captivated by its style and atmosphere that I never really analyze what makes it work technically, nor do I have much of a desire to dissect it. Even so I know that it is a film-experience that very much feels unlike any other, with pretty simple frame compositions that focus on faces in front of monochrome walls or black nothingness and on intricate empty spaces alike, visually beautiful because the images are impactful, and a sound design that never lets up with what almost feels like wall-to-wall music.

So with 'Lost Highway' we have a wife killer who for legal purposes isn't named O.J. Simpson but Fred Madison. As he's awaiting execution in his prison cell he's plagued by guilt, crippling headaches and a lack of sleep so he receives a sleeping pill that doesn't appear to be too successful at helping him fall asleep but it certainly helps him to go places.

Fred takes a trip to wish fulfillment land where he is Pete, an attractive young lad with "half-biker, half-Beaver suburban parents" (thanks Donald Lyons) who don't forbid him to go out with his druggy friends at night but actually encourage him to do so. He's popular at work and talented at what he does. He has an influential friend who sticks up for him (preferably with a gun up somebody's butt) and a girlfriend who he is able to fully sexually please. And the sun is shining on him and on his next door neighbor's idyllic garden that unmistakably belongs to the poor guy who keeled over at the beginning of 'Blue Velvet' although except for the little family dog nobody seems to be at home.

Skip to "This Magic Moment" as Pete hooks up with Alice, his criminally influential friend's girlfriend who conveniently is the blonde spitting image of Renee, Fred's dead wife. After some fun times in cheap motel rooms Pete starts to question Alice's sincerity about really carrying about him, she comes off as calculating as she seemingly out of nowhere comes up with a murder plot that requires Pete's assistance with him getting to do the dirty job. It recalls the plot of 'Double Indemnity' while a lot of minor things ooze of 'Vertigo', from the dame's blonde doppelgänger to a floating head in a dream to policemen tailing an unfaithful guy as he "gets more pussy than a toilet seat", but those small similarities add up.

As the frame shakes and quakes from time to time and the image loses focus for a moment while the volume of the droning on the soundtrack fluctuates the dream gradually turns into a nightmare and the irony of it all is that Fred's fantasy-self eventually is the cause of his predicament for Pete ends up in the position of the guy who Fred's wife cheats on. After his elaborate trip of denial Fred probably understands this "other guy" better than ever but instead of this knowledge bringing about a catharsis it more and more makes his dream resemble the nightmare that his life has become.

This "loss of control" is where the highway from the opaque movie title comes into play. The two credit sequences show the view from a car as it drives on a highway at night while David Bowie sings "cruise me, blonde - cruise me, babe" sounding like he's falling into an abyss as he lets everybody know "I'm deranged". As much as this image is associated with Lynch's film this particular highway actually is only seen once as part of the story. It's when Pete and Alice drive out into the desert after she got him to kill Andy for some money. Now she tells Pete that they have to meet a friend of hers who lives in a 'Kiss Me Deadly' cabin in the desert. He wouldn't know what else to do and of course he loves her so he goes along with it. But Alice is taking him for the proverbial ride.

Fred thought he couldn't keep his wife in his own bed because he was a lousy lay, which was devastating enough for him to go mental on her and to cover their shared bedroom floor with her body parts like he was making his own little home movie adaption of the Black Dahlia case. But when Alice says to the stud Pete while having sex "You'll never have me" he makes a banally simple realization, a truth so basic that he can only hope to escape it by leaving wish fulfillment land behind and entering the world of his memories, the past as he remembers it, not necessarily how it happened. That truth is that woman isn't only flesh and bone and smooth skin but also soul, and unless maybe her name is Beyoncé woman isn't a thing that can be owned, not even if you like it and you put a ring on it.

As the fantasy-bubble bursts and Pete turns into Fred again without a change of location his mysterious friend already awaits him to put the Betacam on him once more provoking him to face facts by insisting to say to the camera what his "fücking name" is. But not all hope is lost quite yet, Fred still has enough delusion left in him to refabricate his memory making himself believe that he's prosecuted for taking revenge on the bastard who screwed his wife and making himself the sinister-voiced unknown who tells him that "Dick Laurent is dead" before the whole thing ever even started, a message that really tells him that it was all predestined to happen, that he's a victim of his own fate with him having no choice in the matter, that maybe Fred never even existed for he all along was a movie character stuck inside a film noir.

Someone said that Lynch has said that Fred was a schizophrenic murderer. Well yes, he either killed or had Dick Laurent killed. I don't believe he killed his wife. We see the evil mobster Mr.Eddy showing snuff films in his house where someone apparently is murdered in it on the TV screen. Which seems to represent true images. Why not just porno, of course it makes Eddy look more menacing but is that necessary? Showing the snuff film is not an accident, it is necessary to the plot. We see Arquette with the mobster watching the snuff film on the TV late in the film. She makes films for a guy she knows kills people on film, she is embracing him and letting him have his way with her We never actually see Fred murder his wife. In fact Fred in the video before he is punched by the police Fred clearly has no weapon in his hand and is in shock. Why leave the weapon out of the video if Fred killed his wife? Given the people she was in with why isn't it a possibility that unbeknownst to her she was put in a snuff film, murdered, and then brought back to her house so as to frame the murder on Fred? Fred comes home sees the body and could have very well been forced to play in the gore by whoever was behind the camera. Tape ends up with the police, case closed.

As far as Fred as a man he is obviously not a big time musician, he is playing in a small club. The house he and his wife share is a multi-million dollar house there is no way Fred could afford that kind of house on what he makes.

So he marries a woman who has a multi-million dollar house and doesn't know what she does for a living?(heck it might even be Eddys house that would explain the horrible vibe in the house) No way. The laugh they share at the beginning of the film when Arquette says she is going to 'read' when he is out tells us all. So out of the window goes the explanation that Fred and his happy wife were plodding along and suddenly he discovers she is in porno and kills his wife, Andy, and Eddy. He had to have known she was in porno and aligned with Andy and Eddy, million dollar houses don't grow on trees.

That also explains why the satanic character in the film tells Fred: 'You invited me into your house, it is not my custom to go where I'm not wanted'. He invited evil into his house by living with the knowledge that his wife was a professional whore, and associated with wholly evil men. This analysis is also backed up by the fact that Fred sees the mystery man/satanic character briefly imposed on his wife's face. This sends a clear message and clearly explains how he got 'into the house' it was through Fred's wife and her evil conduct.

Fred lived with his wife day in and day out with some childish notion he could 'save' her from her degraded life.(which is represented by the way the naieve Pete character treats her) When it was in fact her choice to live it, and in fact Fred benefited greatly from that life materially. He had cars, million dollar house, nice clothes, status. So really his romantic notion to save his wife was self-deception. Fred liked the life his wife's evil afforded him.

However at some point he found out that his wife was in snuff films where people got killed. Instead of at this point realizing the total and complete degradation of his wife and leaving her. He hangs onto his fantasy image of his wife being forced into participating. Blames Laurent, and has him killed.

Killing Laurent sets up the horrific chain of events. Laurents partner in crime, the sleazy guy at the party finds out about Fred's hit on Laurent. Which is shown in the film at the party, we see the instant where it becomes known to the sleazy guy that Fred had something to do with the death of Laurent.

The sleazy guy is the one responsible for the videotapes that get the police involved. If hes not why have the long setup with the series of videotapes? He is the one who kills Freds wife to set Fred up. They probably even force Fred to play in the gore while they tape it as an added punishment.

The film is incredible it really shows the type of person that lives a life like Fred. Fred is utterly human, and I think anyone who tries to write him off as 'mentally ill' would have trouble doing so. After watching the film one must admit there's a little bit of Fred in all of us.(some more than others :)