Movie Review: Lost Highway
Living for the Odd Moments Along Lynch's 'Highway'
By KENNETH TURAN TIMES FILM CRITIC
No one has ever needed to tell David Lynch to stop
making sense. From "Eraserhead" through "Twin Peaks:
Fire Walk With Me," his films have focused on the creepy
illogic of nightmare, on mocking reason and celebrating the
dream state. With this director, what you get is what you
see.
"Lost Highway," troublesome but also the director's most
accomplished work since "Blue Velvet" a decade ago,
takes this tendency even further. Beautifully made but
emotionally empty, it exists only for the sensation of its
provocative moments. Garnished with sex and violence, it
alternates scenes that exquisitely marry sound and image
with moments that seem to come from a metaphysical stag
film.
Working with co-screenwriter Barry Gifford (who wrote
the novel Lynch's "Wild at Heart" was based on), the
director has taken traditional film noir elements--gangsters,
youthful hunks, jazz musicians, unattainable women and
implacable fate--and tossed them into a conceptual
Mixmaster. The result is one weirded-out movie that plays
as if it were coming and going at the same time.
Though "Lost Highway" presents enough traditional
mysteries to mimic the shape of something that might make
sense, it has no intention of offering anything like solutions.
This film answers no questions, solves no riddles and treats
questions of traditional logic as if they came from a different
universe.
In fact, "Lost Highway" is set up around the theme of
parallel worlds, around the notion of people switching
places and shapes and doubling back on themselves
through alternate universes in a way that can be neither
argued with nor explained.
Introduced first are Hollywood Hills residents Fred
Madison (Bill Pullman) and his wife, Renee (Patricia
Arquette). He's a tenor sax player who hangs at the Luna
Lounge; she's a dark-haired stunner who seems to have no
occupation except to look sexually provocative.
*
The Madisons don't seem to have the happiest of
marriages, and they're not made any cheerier by the arrival
on their doorstep of a series of increasingly explicit videos
of unknown origin that have been mysteriously taken inside
their house. The police don't know what it means, and
neither will you.
Making things worse for Fred is a chance meeting at a
party thrown by one of Renee's kinky friends with someone
known simply as Mystery Man. Disconcertingly played by
Robert Blake as a living death's head with a laugh like the
Shadow, Mystery Man has no trouble living up to his name.
Able to be in several places at the same time, he's
unnerving, intriguing and completely opaque.
If all this weren't strange enough, midway through "Lost
Highway" Fred gets these killer headaches and abruptly
turns into another person. That would be Pete Dayton
(Balthazar Getty), a handsome young garage mechanic
from the Valley with Gary Busey for a father, Natasha
Gregson Wagner for a girlfriend and Richard Pryor for a
boss.
Pete's best client is the wealthy Mr. Eddy (Robert
Loggia), an aging gangster who, in the film's wackiest
scene, displays a startling passion for road courtesy when
he acts on his credo that "tailgating is one thing I cannot
tolerate."
Mr. Eddy's best girl is Alice Wakefield, who is not only
as blond as Renee Madison was dark, she is also played
by Arquette. When, in a sizzling melding of vocals and
picture, Alice gives Pete the come-hitherest of looks as Lou
Reed's version of "This Magic Moment" hits the soundtrack,
it's clear that Pete will have the same kind of trouble with
her that doppleganger Fred had with Renee.
More in its imagery than in its baroque plotting, "Lost
Highway" is best at creating a sense of unease. Working
with cinematographer Peter Deming and longtime
composing collaborator Angelo Badalamenti, Lynch has
put together some thoroughly spooky situations. In the
hands of this crew, even something as straightforward as a
ringing phone in an empty room can create the feeling that
the most awful thing is about to happen.
Less successful, though sometimes effective, is the
film's stylized use of dialogue. Lynch favors a flat,
uninflected acting style and likes having throwaway lines
like "Who the hell owns that dog?" read as if they were
pregnant with meaning. It takes a strong performer to make
an impression under those conditions and, aside from
Blake, only Arquette's uncompromisingly sensual presence
has the force to do so.
But though it can seem intriguing at any given moment,
those moments have a tendency to get ultra-violent and
sexually exploitative. Plus, it's difficult to sustain Lynch's
kind of showy nihilism for 2 hours and 15 minutes, no matter
how much skill is involved. "I like to remember things my
own way, how I remember them, not how they actually
happened," says Fred Madison, speaking for a director not
shy about amusing himself with on-screen games and not
really worried if an audience wants to come along for the
ride or not.
Lost Highway, 1997. R, for bizarre violence and sexual
content, and for strong language. Natasha Gregson
Wagner Sheila Bill Pullman as Fred Madison. Patricia
Arquette as Renee Madison/Alice Wakefield. Balthazar
Getty as Pete Dayton. Robert Blake as Mystery Man.
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