Lost Highway - Movie Review

Lost Highway, directed by David Lynch, is a complex narrative intertwining two stories: Fred Madison, who plays saxophone and is charged with murder, and Pete Dayton, who is involved in the affairs of a gangster’s girlfriend. There is no linear narrative in the film, the audience is lost in a world of ghost-like doppelgangers, tapes and transformations. The atmosphere is dark, surrealistic and throughout the movie the characters are trapped in a state of an unpleasant dream.

Main cast – Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette – gives consistent and convincing performances of people lost in their own hallucinations.lığının intensity, and the replacement of reality by a nightmare are shown with a great detail. Especially, Arquette is excellent in a two-part playing provoking the viewers’ interest by her mysterious looks. The remaining characters add to the enigmatic and other-worldly feel of the movie.

Working on the film, David Lynch proved himself to be an absolute genius. That surrealistic imagery and a structure of the narrative is his primary talent; they make the audience doubt the real world. The film score that ranges from Gothic and eerie notes to industrial metal is fully consistent with Lynch’s vision of the world. For it works as an accompaniment that enriches the movies psychological thriller and dark tones of the story.

[All in all, Lost Highway’s cinematography is as visually stunning as it dark and eerie; the use of shadows and light is intense. Surreal camera movements also help place the audience into the paranoid universe of the movie.

Production design paying homage to film noir and elements of gothic horror only strengthen the dreamlike and almost unreal feel of what’s happening. Each set design is a piece which enlightenment the general gloom of the film.

Even the effects are rather symbolic, they successfully fit the story into the film. They are employed deliberately to omogenise the actual and the fictional, and keep the viewers guessing.

The style of cutting is instrumental in maintaining the unstable, non-linear world of a dream. It brings a confused yet engaging rhythm that towards which the audiences are forced to wonder what they are actually watching.

The rhythm of Lost Highway is slow, calculated and maybe even somewhat cerebral given the film’s subject matter – the subconscious. However, the concept of the narrative is rather revealed gradually, which gives the spectators an opportunity to comprehend all nuances.

The drama uses a minimal amount of dialogues, but the ones that are used can be interpreted in many ways. It plays a big role into making the film feel mysterious and tense at the same time.

Despite the film being a study of identity and paranoia with lost highway being an intelligent analysis of human identity and Paranoia lost high way does seem to falter at times due to the abstractness of the narrative. However, Lynch’s approach can prove obscure for some viewers and will take time to jot down and contemplate. It’s a film that lets the viewers into the mysteries, which make one feel both lost and curious afterwards. Actually staying true to Lynch style, it might be appreciated by those who are ready to see the show’s beauty in its absurdist detail.