Lost Highway (1997)

Lost Highway is a 1997 David Lynch film that received a mixed reception at the time.

It certainly establishes a weird disturbing atmosphere right from the start. Everything is normal, and also somehow wrong. We see a house. Everything is as it should be but it’s oddly disturbing.

We meet jazz musician Fred Madison (Bill Pullman). He has a very attractive wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette). It seems like an ordinary marriage. Then we see them making love. That’s normal but the music on the soundtrack is spectacularly inappropriate. It wouldn’t matter what kind of sex scene this was, whether it was romantic or sleazy or desperate or passionate, this music would be spectacularly inappropriate. Lynch is trying to make us see perfectly ordinary things as weird and unsettling.

They keep getting videotapes in the mail. It seems that somebody has been filming them, inside their own house. This creeps them out, naturally.

Then we see Fred walking into a strange hall of darkness. This is a David Lynch movie. It could be a portal to another reality, or a portal from one dream world to another.

Fred finds himself convicted of murder. He is on Death Row.

The guards get a shock when they check his cell. He has gone. There’s another guy in the call, a guy who should not be there. This guy is a young punk named Pete Dayton, a guy who is pretty harmless. Pete has not done anything. No-one knows how he got into the cell.

So where has Fred gone? Good question. We’re now following Pete’s story.

Pete has a girlfriend, Sheila. They have lots of hot sex.

Pete is mixed up in some ways with an ageing big time gangster, Mr Eddy. Mr Eddy is terrifyingly violent. He could give lessons to Frank Booth. Mr Eddy has a gorgeous young blonde mistress, Alice Wakefield. The sexual sparks are immediately flying between Pete and Alice. They begin a wild sexual affair. If Mr Eddy finds out they’re both dog food.

Shortly thereafter the movie begins to make less sense. It makes less sense every minute.

There’s lots of incredibly brutal violence. I’m not a fan of excessive violence but I’m open-minded about it. If it’s your thing that’s fine. There’s lots of steamy sex. And Lynch does erotic scenes quite well - sexy but a bit edgy.

Lynch indulged in plenty of weirdness in Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart and those films also challenged the viewer to question the reality of reality. But they had some coherence. They engaged the viewer’s interest. There was a reason to keep watching.

Lost Highway is in some ways a step backwards to the incomprehensible weirdness for its own sake of Eraserhead. If you loved Eraserhead you’ll probably love Lost Highway. If like me you hated Eraserhead then you might consider Lost Highway to be 134 minutes of soul-crushing tedium.

There’s lot of spooky surreal crazy stuff but since there’s nothing happening in the movie that we could possibly care about those moments come across as self-indulgence.

We cannot be sure of the identity of any of the characters. They do not seem to have fixed identities. They have no personalities. We do not know why they do any of the things they do. All of which makes this movie exciting to film school types. When talking about the movie they get to use the words subversive and transgressive a lot and that makes them very happy.

Lynch loves bad acting. Given that his films do not take place in the real world and that his characters are probably not real people that perhaps makes some sense. It obviously makes sense to David Lynch. This time he has excelled himself, assembling a cast of breathtakingly bad actors.

The interesting thing about Lost Highway is that as it gets weirder it gets less disturbing. Things disturb us when they threaten our belief in a stable ordered world of reality. But when the movie abandons even the slightest connection to reality we cease to be disturbed because we no longer care.

There is a way of interpreting this movie that makes perfect sense but the trouble is that it can make you cease to care about anything that happens. Of course there are other possible interpretations that avoid that pitfall but to me they’re not as convincing as the simple interpretation.

This is a much bleaker much more nihilistic film than either Blue Velvet or Wild at Heart. Watching it is a gruelling experience. I personally prefer Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart because they don’t take the easy option of embracing despair and nihilism.

I can see plenty of things to admire in Lost Highway but I have to say I did not really enjoy it. It just didn’t grab me. But it’s one of Lynch’s key films and most Lynch fans like it much more than I did and for those reasons it’s recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Wild at Heart (1990) and Blue Velvet (1986) which I personally consider to be Lynch’s two masterpieces.

Dune (1984)

Several attempts have been made to adapt Frank Herbert’s novel Dune to both the big and small screen. David Lynch’s 1984 version remains the most controversial, and the most interesting. Critics hated it and it tanked at the box office.

In my experience it seems that people who loved Frank Herbert’s original novel tend to hate the David Lynch movie, and people who disliked the novel tend to enjoy Lynch’s movie. I personally disliked the novel so I guess it was always likely that I’d enjoy the movie. The novel is a hodge-podge of all the craziest and silliest ideas of the 1960s. Only a madman could turn it into a movie. Luckily David Lynch is indeed a madman.

This is of course High Fantasy, not science fiction. It has antigravity, which is magic. The Bene Gesserit sisterhood are witches. The guild navigators use magic to travel through space. Spice is a magical substance.This far future society is a feudal society. The epic power struggle at the centre of the plot is the kind of power struggle between powerful aristocratic families that is straight out of the Middle Ages. All of the science fiction elements are pure magic.

The futuristic setting is mostly an excuse for the production designers and costume designers to go totally nuts and create a bizarre insane aesthetic. That aesthetic works for me. Maybe Blade Runner is the most visually impressive science fiction movie ever made but in its own deranged way Dune is just as extraordinary. There are hints of ancient Egypt and Minoan Crete but also some Buck Rogers influence. It’s an aesthetic drawn from multiple times and sources but it forms a coherent whole. It’s futuristic and it’s retro.

It’s important to remember that Frank Herbert’s novel was written in 1965. It was heavily influenced by the emerging drug culture, and by the growing interest in the occult, esoteric philosophy, alternative religions and hippie-dippie mysticism. Herbert threw huge amounts of this kind of nonsense into the novel. Lynch at least makes those elements fun.

I don’t think Lynch was particularly interested in finding good actors. He wanted actors with the right vibe. Kyle MacLachlan is not exactly a great actor but playing a young man who doesn’t really understand what is going on is the sort of thing he did well.

Siân Phillips really was a great actress and her specialty was playing dangerous powerful scheming women. As the head Bene Gesserit witch, Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, she’s an absolute joy. Sting has only a bit part. He was presumably given this part so that he could be featured on the posters. He certainly wasn’t cast for his acting ability.

The plot involves a power struggle between House Atreides and House Harkonnen, with the Emperor pulling strings in the background and with the Bene Gesserit pursuing their own agenda.

Paul Atreides (Kyle MacLachlan) has a Destiny. He is some sort of Chosen One. Again, this is pure High Fantasy stuff.

The key to absolute power is control of the spice, found only on a single planet. House Atreides has wrested control of this planet from House Harkonnen. The Baron Harkonnen wants revenge, and wants control of the spice. The Harkonnen will fight to regain control of the planet. The odds seem to be stacked against House Atreides, they have a traitor in their midst, they suffer disaster. Paul can retrieve the situation only by accessing the powers he has as the chosen one. Accessing those powers may kill him but he has no choice. The power struggle is important but the real story is Paul’s attempt to achieve his Destiny.

The Harkonnen are obvious bad guys. That makes the Atreides the good guys. In theory anyway. It is worth pointing out however that Paul is also seeking absolute power. And he’s pretty ruthless. He’s not just a charismatic leader. He is a kind of messiah, foretold by prophecy. If Paul comes out on top that will be a good thing, as long as you accept that it’s a good thing for one man to have absolute power.

There’s a lot of voiceover narration but without it the movie would have needed lengthy expository dialogue scenes. That would have made it more like a straightforward science fiction movie. On balance the voiceover narration is a better fit for this movie. It also gives us more of a sense of characters driven by Destiny.

Lynch seems to have been attracted by the idea of filming Dune specifically because it’s not science fiction. He was not trying to make a science fiction film. The fact that all the pseudoscience is in practice nothing more than magic didn’t bother him at all.

One thing that distinguishes Dune from the average space opera is that it does not deal with a fictional futuristic culture. It deals with four totally separate fictional futuristic cultures. Each of the four planets involved in the story has its own entirely distinctive culture. Which requires an entirely distinctive aesthetic. And each of these cultures really does feel like a coherent culture.

It’s the visuals that stand out. They’re stunning. The production design and the costumes are extraordinary. And this is pre-CGI so the effects really do look cool.

And this a David Lynch movie. If you’re desperately trying to figure out what it actually means then you’re missing the point. That’s like trying to figure out what a dream means, or what an acid trip means, or what it means when you have a high fever and you’re delirious. You just sit back and experience this movie.

This was a Dino De Laurentiis production and one thing you have to say about Dino is that he was willing to back wild crazy projects. Without him there would have been no Barbarella, no Conan the Barbarian, no Flash Gordon. It’s unlikely that anyone else would have let David Lynch loose on a project like Dune, with a huge budget to play with.

Dune is a wild crazy ride but I enjoyed every minute of it. I love this movie. Very highly recommended. And it looks wonderful on Blu-Ray.

Wild at Heart (1990)

Wild at Heart was David Lynch’s next feature film after Blue Velvet. Blue Velvet was not exactly a conventional Hollywood movie. Wild at Heart is much weirder. Lynch had clearly decided that he wasn’t even going to go through the motions of conforming to conventional ideas about movie-making. He was setting off on his own path and if you wanted to follow him that was up to you.

I rewatched Blue Velvet recently and came to the conclusion that if you think you understand that movie that is proof positive that you don’t understand it. In fact if you’re trying to understand it in any kind of rational logical way then you’ve missed the point entirely. That applies even more strongly to Wild at Heart. That does not imply that these movies don’t mean anything. They mean a great deal, but as soon as you think you’ve pinned down the meanings in a neat tidy way those meanings slip away from you. The meanings can change from one viewing to another. Your idea of what Wild at Heart means might differ radically from mine but we can both be right.

It’s amusing to see people describing Wild at Heart as some kind of homage to film noir.

The numerous references scattered throughout the movie to The Wizard of Oz make it clear that this is a movie with zero pretensions to realism. It’s a fantasy movie. In fact it’s a fairy tale movie. Once upon a time a young man named Sailor (Nicolas Cage) fell in love with a beautiful princess named Lula (Laura Dern). Her evil stepmother tried to keep them apart. The evil stepmother is jealous of Lula’s beauty and goodness. The young man has to fight ogres and monsters to prove his love. The young man and the princess are stalked by the Wicked Witch of the West. But although he doesn’t know it the Good Witch of the North is watching over him.

Only in this case the young man is a two-bit loser serving a stretch for manslaughter. The beautiful princess is a crazy chick obsessed with sex. The evil stepmother is Lula’s mother Marietta (Diane Ladd) who wants to have sex with Sailor. The ogres and monsters are assorted gangsters and hoodlums and psychos. But the Wicked Witch of the West really is stalking them. Lula has seen her. And the Good Witch of the North really is keeping an eye on them.

It is pointless to fret about the fact that the characters in David Lynch movies are not believable. They’re not supposed to be. They’re fairy tale characters. It’s pointless to worry about plot incoherence. This is a fantasy story.

It’s also impossible to judge the acting by normal standards. By any conventional standards all of the acting performances are ludicrously atrocious. But they’re just right for a David Lynch movie.

The characters are not stereotypes, but archetypes. While they can be seen as fairy tale archetypes they are also American pop culture archetypes. Or rather they’re blends of various American pop culture archetypes. Sailor is the Rebel, the Outsider. Sailor is also Elvis, another pop culture archetype. Other characters represent Gangster and Hoodlum archetypes. They’re not real people.

There are lots of totally irrelevant scenes that are there because this is David Lynch and he likes adding lots of weird stuff. But the Wizard of Oz references are not irrelevant. They’re the key to the movie. If you can’t believe in fairy tales you cannot possibly enjoy this movie.

You can see some film noir elements in the movie. It also fits into the “couple on the run” sub-genre. But it’s not handled in anything like a film noir style.

This is not quite a surrealist movie although it certainly includes moments with a surrealist tinge.

There is a very Lynchian blending of extreme violence and sweet romanticism. Which is of course what you get in fairy tales. Plenty of ultra-violence, and then the hero and the heroine live happily ever after. The violence really is very extreme. But in spite of that this is a wildly deliriously romantic movie. This is, in its own way, a feelgood movie. It's insanely romantic.

The core of the movie is the love story and it’s a very simple story. Boy meets girl, bad people try to keep them apart but nothing can destroy their love. The only thing that matters for Sailor is his love for Lula. The only thing that matters for Lula is her love for Sailor. Without their love they would be nothing. But if they have their love they don’t need anything else.

It’s worth noting that the ending is the ending that Lynch always believed the movie needed. He was right.

There were a lot of Hollywood movies in the 80s and 90s trying to deal with sex in a grown-up way but the traditional Hollywood approach always has been and always will be that sexual obsession is a terrifying destructive force. I’m finding it hard to think of any Hollywood movie that deals with sexual obsession more positively than Wild at Heart. There’s more to the love between these two people than sex but sex is a very very big part of their love. They want to devour each other’s bodies. The sex scenes are very raw and very intense. But their sexual obsession is portrayed as an entirely positive thing. It’s the wild crazy obsessive sex that makes their love perfect and complete.

Nic Cage is perfect. The fact that Cage, who is obsessed with Elvis, plays a character obsessed with Elvis is another of the movie’s delights. And he gets to sing Love Me Tender to his girl, and yes it is Cage singing. Laura Dern is amazing. At one point she tells us that the world is wild at heart and weird on top. That could describe Laura Dern’s performance. And of course it describes the love between Sailor and Lula. Maybe you have to be wild at heart and weird on top to fully appreciate this movie. If so, count me among the wild at heart. A great movie. Very highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Blue Velvet.

Blue Velvet (1986)

I didn’t like David Lynch’s Blue Velvet the first time I saw it. That was a long time ago, I’m now more accustomed to his work and I’m now much more open to unconventional filmmaking. Also, the first time you watch a movie you focus on the story. When you watch it again you focus on how the story is told. And on the style.

So I figured it was time to give Blue Velvet another shot.

I can now see so many things to admire in this movie. I’m still not entirely sure about it, but that’s the way David Lynch’s movies are. If you think you understand one of his movies that’s a sure sign that you don’t understand it.

I do love that opening sequence. It tells us what we need to know. We have left the real world. We are now in David Lynch’s world. And it does this cleverly and subtly. Everything about the town of Lumberton is wrong. Just slightly wrong, but still wrong. This is like reality, but shifted off-kilter. At first you think Lynch is aiming at satire but that is not his agenda. He’s pulling the ground from underneath us. From now on we cannot assume that anything we see is to be taken at face value.

Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) is a normal high school kid. Like everything else in Lumberton he’s so normal as to be disturbingly abnormal.

He finds an ear. A human ear. In a field. He takes it to the cops, to Detective Williams (George Dickerson). Jeffrey figures he’s stumbled upon a murder.

He meets a sweet girl, Sandy (Laura Dern). She’s so sweet as to be pathological. She’s the daughter of Detective Williams. She has overheard something that suggests that this case has something to do with a nightclub singer named Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini). Jeffrey and Sandy decide to play amateur detective.

The fact that this clue was something Sandy overheard is significant. Jeffrey is playing detective but he’s like someone trying to make sense of a play but he’s only seen a brief brief scenes, and who then ends up becoming part of the play. But he doesn’t know what the play is about, he doesn’t know if it’s a comedy or a tragedy or a romance or a murder mystery. And he doesn’t know if he has walked in in the middle of the first act or the middle of the third act. He doesn’t know if the other characters are heroes or villains.

The audience of course is in the same boat. We don’t know at first what kind of movie this. When we get to the end, we still don’t know. But we’ve had a wild ride.

There’s a definite interest in voyeurism here, but to an even greater extent than in other notable movies about voyeurism this is voyeurism in which everything seen or heard may be totally misinterpreted. To gather evidence he breaks into Dorothy’s apartment and hides in a wardrobe. Sandy is perhaps not quite as innocent as Jeffrey. She wonders if Jeffrey just wants to spy on Dorothy in hopes of seeing her naked. It’s possible that Jeffrey isn’t quite sure of his own motives. We have to suspect that Sandy might be right.

Jeffrey really isn’t prepared for what he sees. He witnesses a sadomasochistic sexual encounter between Dorothy and a very very scary man named Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper). Jeffrey is naïve, good-natured and not too bright and he’s sure he knows what’s going on. Jeffrey thinks Frank is an evil man and Dorothy is being brutalised and abused. He just can’t figure out why Dorothy seems to enjoy it.

Jeffrey is both right and wrong. Frank is a monster. But Dorothy does get off on playing the submissive role in sadomasochistic sex. Jeffrey will discover that when he later has sex with Dorothy. She wants Jeffrey to hurt her. He does hurt her. Now Jeffrey is really disturbed. Jeffrey isn’t equipped to deal with any of this.

The twist is that Dorothy seems to get aroused by the sex but she’s not an entirely willing partner. Maybe Dorothy doesn’t understand her own motivations. Maybe people in general don’t understand their own motivations.

What is really going on in this movie is open to debate. It does seem like Jeffrey has found himself in a different realty, or a different non-reality. It’s as if he’s left Lumberton and now he’s in Frank Booth’s world. But the opening sequence has alerted us to the fact that we, the audience, are already in a different realty, or a different non-reality - the hyper-real shifted reality world of Lumberton. There would seem to be several layers of non-reality happening. It is of course also possible that each of the major characters inhabits his or her own world. Even after he has slept with her Jeffrey cannot comprehend Dorothy’s world. Perhaps he simply cannot enter her world.

Initially I had serious reservations about Dennis Hopper’s performance which veers perilously close to self-parody. This is however a movie you have to think about. If you see Frank as not really a human villain but a monster out of a nightmare (or even a fairy-tale monster) his performance makes more sense. And some of the other bizarre performances start to make sense. Characters in a dream behave according to dream logic.

In fact this movie makes more sense when you stop trying to make sense of it. Surrealism doesn’t obey the conventional rules of storytelling or of characterisation.

There’s quite a bit of black comedy which serves to undercut even further any illusions we have that this is the normal everyday world. Of course it’s also possible that Lynch is suggesting that the everyday world which we believe to be ordered and logical and rational is in fact chaotic, illogical and irrational. We are already in a dream world. All of which helps to explain one of the central mysteries, which is Dorothy’s tendency to behave in such odd unexpected ways.

Blue Velvet impressed me much much more this time around. It’s a perplexing provocative but fascinating movie. David Lynch really found his voice with this film. He found the style and the techniques which he would exploit with such success over the next fifteen year. Blue Velvet is like a dry run for Twin Peaks. Very highly recommended.