David Lynch's latest mindscramble of a movie, "Lost Highway," starts off quite unlike the rest of the film: there's a jittery shot of headlights zooming into the darkness of a two-lane blacktop, while an equally twitchy jungle-ified David Bowie sings on the soundtrack. Then the film switches into negative gear for its brilliant first half, an exploration of light and shadow and the chill of domesticity. Bill Pullman is the musician, Patricia Arquette is his wife, and someone's been inside their house; at least the videotapes, which keep popping up on their doorstep every morning with the paper, say so. But it's the visual and aural style that's the showcase here: a barely audible hum fills the gaping silences (there's hardly any dialogue), so much that a whisper sounds like a scream. The hallway in the couple's Southern California home is a literal black hole, absent of light, into which Pullman disappears. (And you thought "Seven" was barely lit.) Everything, including their sex, is performed in this "2001"-like somnolent state -- a perfect metaphor for the sleepwalking in their relationship.
Then "Lost Highway" makes a dreadfully wrong turn into real fucked-up shit territory; too bad Lynch had to pick a hackneyed noir subplot to carry it. And all of it replete with Lynch's trademark barely-disguised misogyny, to boot. Pullman, who by the middle of the movie has somehow been convicted of Arquette's murder, suddenly transforms into Balthazar Getty; Arquette then reappears with a blond wig, playing a gangster's moll. (Another transformation occurs near the end, but by that point it's clear that the audience really isn't supposed to figure anything out.) Suffice it to say that we've also seen this before explored better in "Blue Velvet," except that it's all open to more wild-eyed interpretation: is it all a dream? A meditation on reality and memory? A psychotic fugue? No matter. "Lost Highway" is a great half-baked film.
Posted by the wily filipino at November 10, 2002 08:51 PM