this movie freaks me out.
i feel like you could apply almost any adjective to this movie. Terrifying, bleak, uncomfortable, hilarious, etc. its hard to talk about, hard to make sense of, and did i mention hard to talk about? i definitely don't feel qualified to try, so here's a great Ebert quote that sums this movie up nicely.
"David Lynch's "Lost Highway'' is like kissing a mirror: You like what you see, but it's not much fun, and kind of cold. It's a shaggy ghost story, an exercise in style, a film made with a certain breezy contempt for audiences. I've seen it twice, hoping to make sense of it. There is no sense to be made of it. To try is to miss the point. What you see is all you get." -Roger Ebert
UPDATE: NOV 27TH 2021
Balthazar Getty and Robert Blake should really switch names. when i look at Mystery man, i would have never guessed his name was Robert.
this movie is about two separate but intersecting stories, one about a jazz musician (Bill Pullman), tortured by the notion that his wife is having an affair, who suddenly finds himself accused of her murder. The other is a young mechanic (Balthazar Getty) drawn into a web of deceit by a temptress who is cheating on her gangster boyfriend. or at least that's what the blurb google gives you about this movie.
confused? no sweat, i have come up with a much better way to explain it all. or most of it.
a jazz musician is tortured by the notion that his wife is having an affair, the boredom he feels in his marriage, and the anger of never being able to satisfy his wife. he wakes up one morning to find that he has torn her to pieces, and soon finds himself on death row. to distance himself from that trauma, he creates a fantasy version of his life where he is a young mechanic drawn into a web of deceit by a temptress who is cheating on her gangster boyfriend. throughout his fantasy, he is confronted by what he has done in the form of a mysterious stranger with mysterious videotapes.
so now that we all understand the plot, lets talk about how well it was all executed.
pacing wise this movies opening is rather slow, but it holds onto a constant feeling of dread David Lynch has always been able to capture perfectly. you feel as if something horrible could happen at any moment, and the whole movie is a perfect example of showing instead of telling. the dialogue is very minimal, but with every line you learn ten new things about the characters and how they all fit together. the fact that this is a movie about a murderous saxophone player has always struck me as funny, but this movie never fails to freak me out. i have said in the past that Twin Peaks is the most frightening TV show i have ever seen, and the brief glimpse of the murder we get in this movie make this the most effective kill in horror.
The kill is made even more effective by the way it affects Fred, and full credit to Bill Pullman for being so believably traumatized. i'm a big fan of his behind bars performance, but the first time i watched this movie i was totally lost at this point. Fred has some sweaty and screaming hallucinations, and suddenly it felt like i had changed the channel to a totally different movie. i'm dead serious when i tell you that the first time i watched this, i thought he had been abducted by Aliens.
i mean i guess have Gary Busey as your Dad is kind of the same thing...
at this point the movie loses that sense of dread from the first half, and at this point i have no idea what to expect anymore. what i do know is i love Robert Loggia as this movies Mob boss. its full of wonderfully Lynch dark humor that only adds to the confusion of what this second half is going to be. and it turns out the second half of this movie is a fairly standard forbidden romance thriller. its not bad, its not great, its just feels far more basic than Lynch's other movies. it has an ending that is worth waiting for, but until then you will definitely be waiting for more of Lynch's signature strangeness.
by the time the credits roll, you get the feeling that you have watched one movie you really loved, and another that was just... fine. a little more Bill Pullman and a lot less Balthazar Getty would do this movie wonders.
7/10 (but a solid 10/10 for the first hour)
Comments