Review of Lost Highway (1997) by Ellie D — 31 Mar 2012

I'm a fan of David Lynch, and eventhough I've only seen a small amount of his works, I think his cinematic skills are unmatched by most filmakers... That being said, Lost Highway is 2 hours and 15 minutes of my life that I will sadly never get back...

I'll do my best to explain the story, but for all the text that's going to go here, there's actually very little to explain... It starts off with a man, Bill Pullman, and his wife, Patricia Arquette. He thinks she's cheating on him, and maybe she is. They start recieving strange packages containing video tapes of them sleeping. The final tape reveals that the man has murdered his possibly adulterous wife, he goes to jail and is sentenced to death. That's mostly it for Bill Pullman's side of the story, though he comes back in an hour. Oh, and somewhere in that mishmash of events Robert Blake shows up with a cell phone and a magic trick. He's spooky, but really pretty lifeless.

The second half the film follows a young man, Balthazar Getty, who falls in love with a mobsters (Robert Logia) pornographic girlfriend, again Patricia Arquette, the two of them devise a plan to get rich and escape the city.

Balthazar Getty turns into Bill Pullman, brunnette Patricia Arquette turns into blonde Patricia Arquette, Robert Logia the mobster turns into Robert Logia the guy that may or may not be a mobster, and Robert Blake continues to be creepy.

If ANY of what I've just written makes sense to you than you're doing good... The story kind of makes sense on paper, on screen however it's a completely different situation... I'm a fan of surreal films, and I'm a fan of intriguing stories, but this was honestly just too much. I was following it along just fine for the first 42 minutes but quickly became confused. Once the confusion sets in there's no going back, things begin to unravel and your head begins to hurt. Most generally in a film of this nature from any filmmaker, you get to the end for some kind of mindblowing twist that makes everything come together for that "OH! I get it now!" moment, and I watched the entire thing just waiting for that moment... Sadly it never came.

One to Five Scale: 2.

Aside from seeing Patricia Arquette naked and lets face it who doesn't want to see that, aside from straight women and gay men, this film has little redeeming value. Even if you're one that can honestly say you've come to grips with Eraserhead, this one will leave you in the dark on a very lonely road.