Lost Highway (1997)

My previous familiarity with David Lynch was actually pretty diverse: The Elephant Man (very good), Blue Velvet (gruesome but admirable), The Straight Story (surprisingly tame and a bit dull), and Dune (bad enough to delay my reading of the book as well as further viewings of Lynch). Lost Highway sounded more bizarre than any of those, more along the lines of another David. Thus, I was both intimidated and intrigued to try it.

The plot is hard to summarize without spoilers, because it takes a while for things to get underway, but I'll go as far as the Netflix jacket: In L.A., night club saxophonist Fred (Bill Pullman) starts to receive strange messages by intercom, phone, or videotape, some of them quite creepy if not seemingly impossible. Then his likely adulterous wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette), gets brutally murdered. Fred doesn't see who did it, but all available evidence points to him, and he gets convicted. Then his story really takes a turn: He metamorphoses into young mechanic Pete (Balthazar Getty).

Pete has his own criminal history, but since he's not wanted for anything right now, the authorities release him, albeit keeping tabs on him from afar in case he really knows something about how he swapped places with Fred. Pete's parents (Gary Busey and Lucy Butler) and preexisting girlfriend (Natasha Gregson Wagner) accept that he's had some kind of dissociative fugue and hope he'll get back on his feet soon. When Pete "returns" to his job, which he apparently does know how to do, he soon meets a friendly crime lord, Mr. Eddy (Robert Loggia), and his moll, Alice (also Patricia Arquette, albeit with different hair). As you might guess from the latter casting, Pete and Alice are drawn to each other despite both their current attachments. Just because he's no longer on death row doesn't mean he won't play with fire. And since Mr. Eddy won't stay in the dark or tolerate their trysts, Alice urges Pete to commit more crimes in the hopes of a happy ending. But his paranormal experiences aren't over.

I did not find Fred/Pete very likable. Infidelity aside, something about his demeanor suggests abusiveness. Maybe I'm unduly biased against his pauses and mumbles, which aren't entirely restricted to him; I turned up the volume much higher than usual and still had trouble with a few words. Ultimately, none of the major characters are especially likable, tho at least we have a better idea of where he's come from.

My favorite character -- indeed, the highlight as far as I'm concerned -- is an anonymous, bug-eyed, pale-faced stranger identified only as the Mystery Man (Robert Blake). He gets only so much screen time, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had a hand in every eerie event. We know he can be in two places at once. What we don't know is why he does what he does. My best guess: It's fun for him to screw around with random people. In that sense, he might as well be Lynch's own avatar.

At its best, LH is Kubrickian, reminiscent of The Shining and, to a lesser extent, 2001: A Space Odyssey. At its worse, its artistry gets swallowed up by schizoid meaninglessness and gratuitousness. There is no making sense of the gestalt. Prepare for scattered graphic violence and plenty of sex rendered unsexy with ominous music. Oh, and a few scenes needlessly unsafe for epileptic viewers.

I'm OK with having watched it, but it doesn't exactly make me want to put Mulholland Drive or Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me on my queue at long last. And forget about Eraserhead. Lynch appears to be done with anything other than shorts, and that's fine by me.