Review of Lost Highway (1997) by Iowa B — 15 Aug 2015

Fantiasy and duality have always played a major role in David Lynch's films and while you can say the same thing about many other directors and films, in David Lynch's films they seem to have a far more complex role.

Lost Highway is no exception tot he rule. At its core, this film is a neo noir with a surreal twist abd few horror touches. The story, in itself, is rather simple and, if you're paying attention, you can put the pieces together pretty fast. Really, it's not rocket science, I can promise you this.

What makes the film fascinating is not the "why's", but the "how"'s. What stands out is the organic way in which the fantasy layer is depicted. In "Lost Highway", fantasy is not only consisting in simple decorative elements, but goes hand in hand with reality, forming what will be the final whole.

While the story, as I said before, isn't much, quite on the contrary, it is rather ordinary, the way Lynch chooses to develop it is really something. To some, it may seem random, but it isn't. It is actually very meticulously constructed and Lynch uses a wide range of methods in doing so.

The fantasy elements talk about the protagonist, but also talk about the real story. The escapade is treated like a different layer of reality by avoiding the array of cinematic cliches being used to work with multi-layered narratives.

"Lost Highway" works very well like a combination between music and painting. Music, because it has a particular way of progression and painting because surreal extras are being used to hint real events. The rhythm and progression are visible in "the Pete Dayton story" especially, in the way it goes from neo-noir to the surreal beyond, only to revisit familiar frames and places, by the end.

This part, the Pete Dayton one, that is, is also very well constructed organically. In the first scenes, there is almost a sense of birth, even the wound on Peter's head to that.

While the film deals with to different stories that don't fully match, when put side by side, it never feels abrupt, quite on the contrary, "Lost Highway" flows and a better way to understand it, perhaps, is to follow its tracks.

This being said, I am giving this 4 out of 5, because there are still some things that could have been better executed.