FILM REVIEW - Lost Highway

Life in a David Lynch movie is one strange occurrence after another. Lost Highway is no exception. There is the Jazz musician who seems to be having a little problem with his jealousy. His wife, has a very complex time concealing her extra curricular activities from the aforesaid muso. On top of this, there’s the young man ,who wakes up one morning in a prison cell previously occupied by the muso for murdering the wife. Was that a dream or an identity crisis? He ends up falling for a blond version of the muso’s wife, and then killing her old lover by colliding his cranium with the edge of a plate glass table. There is also a psychopathic gangster, and a ghost faced man, who seems to know what is going on but never tells anyone. In the end the young man turns back into the muso after being rejected by the blonde. The last we see of him, he’s revisiting his own house and being chased down a darkening highway, his head screaming like a Pope in a Francis Bacon painting. Crazy, or what?

Did I like it? I sure as hell did. It appears to be David Lynch's take on the whole noir genre. Part a homage, and part a surreal and imaginative extension of its dominant moods and characters. It has tension and atmosphere by the bucket load. A peculiar narrative thrust that keeps you engaged even when the story starts to defy logic. Its images are potent and disturbing, without being gratuitous. Lynch produces films with great flair and in the most distinctive style imaginable. He also has the gall ( and the money ! ) to realise these perverse little tales in tinsel town America.

The DVD extras were of neither use nor ornament. Not one, but two interviews with Lynch, which tell you zilch and are mostly just obtuse deflections. Plus, the usual actors fawning and licking the cream off Lynch’s genius, and a ‘Making of’ that looks like its composed of random out takes filmed by a gnome. Just watch the movie OK, leave it at that.