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Lost Highway

Lost Highway

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: LOST HIGHWAY ¿ A confused, but brilliant, piece of work
Review: LOST HIGHWAY - A confused, but brilliant, piece of work

"Very bizarre Lynchian story that makes Twin Peaks seem as easy to follow as a Sesame Street episode. Basic plot involves Pullman as a jazz musician who, believing his wife is having an affair, suddenly finds himself the main suspect in her murder."

How true! This movie - seriously! - is an extremely confusing picture. I, personally, never got to the point of the movie before I had to return it. It is like caviar or oysters: an acquired taste. The plots are confusing and mysterious, the characters and confusing and mysterious, and you never know what is going on.

But it sounds, looks, and feels great. The acting by Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette and all the actors is finely done. The cinematography is creepy, and the music keeps the picture from falling in a mess. A big kudos to David Lynch for making this movie without it falling apart.

But there is just one bottom line: If you like a puzzle or confusing, you will love it; if you like immediate satisfaction or some sort of ending, you will be disappointed.

RECOMMEND? No and Yes. See above.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Most amazing piece of movie ever. Not meant to be explained.
Review: I think the people who are desperately trying to make sense of this movie (this character is the alter ego of that character, it is about such-and-so) do not really understand this movie.

I have seen an interview with David Lynch somewhere in which he was talking about creating movies in which the story is not that important. I think he was talking about this one.

There is no real story. There is not truth. It is about angst and confusion. It is about lust. The images are used to convey the FEELING that the movie is about. Do not try to overanalyze this movie. Just experience it for the masterpiece that it truly is.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: lost highway is not a lost title
Review: this movie is great, i don't care what the critics, it is in all actuallity very well done. it may not make all of the sense in the world but is a nice escapist movie. you just get drawn in by the strangeness of it. very enigmatic and a must for any lynch fan.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: This movie is not hard to understand
Review: Fred Madison murders his wife and gets sentenced to death in the electric chair. He loses touch with reality in his prison cell and we see his delusions and schizoaffective disorder played out by his fantasy that he is a 24 year old stud who pleases both his girlfriend and a blond version of his formerly living wife. While his delusion helps him cope by creating the way he would have liked things to be, the inescapable reality is that he still wants his wife. He cannot have her at this point--even if he were able to please her--because she is very dead. He experiences her telling him that he will never have her. Throughout his delusion, we see intense flashes of blue electricity. His delusion culminates in him running from the police in a 1400 horsepower Mercedez-Benz after killing all of the bad guys--he kills one as the 24 year old stud and the other, Mr. Eddie, as himself. With the latter delusional killing, we see that he is feeling more comfortable portraying himself in his delusions--even later appearing at his house, donning a leather jacket, to leave a message for himself that Dick is dead. The "mystery man" exists only as part of his schizophrenic condition. The blue electricity portrayed throughout his delusion is actually the reality of his impending death. In the end, we see him shake and smoke while his brain still pretends he is successfully outrunning the police. As he fries in the chair, his last screams echo into oblivian.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Wow...this is a bad movie!
Review: If you are sane,please do yourself a favor and do not see this movie.This is the most god awful movie I have ever seen in my whole life.It is very long,and seems like two different movies in the same "story".Sounds good,wow two storys,what a value! To bad neither of them make any sense.David Lynch is calling this art!?! Someone needs to beat him with a yellow plastic bat.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: LOST HIGHWAY
Review: In a single word, this movie is: UNBORN.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Perhaps a bit too cryptic? But great music!
Review: LOST HIGHWAY is perhaps the most bizarre film David Lynch has ever directed, and that alone says quite a bit (considering that this is the man who gave us ERASERHEAD). But don't get me wrong. I'm all for films that makes you ponder and wonder about what it was all really about. So why only four stars? Well, first off, perhaps the film does deserve more. It might be more fair to give it a 4.5 instead of an even four. But I simply don't feel that this film matches up to David Lynch's other projects, such as WILD AT HEART and the excellent BLUE VELVET, and this may be the reason why I'm judging this film a bit harsher then what might be justified.

Because LOST HIGHWAY does get your attention (and it deserves it). I've got to give it that much. And if you have a taste for strange erotical and psychological thrillers with a surreal theme to them (did I just make myself sound like a psychopath?), then it's a fair to good chance that you'll enjoy this film. But it seems to me that David Lynch simply tries too hard in being "different" and weird. It's as if he doesn't want you to understand what's going on. As a viewer you'll only get the absolute minimum of information required to solve the enigma. The dialogues, for instance, resembles typical European art films where the characters only say one line to each other every ten minutes or so (ok, it's not that bad, but close). And a lot of elements in the film that seems to be of crucial importance, are just plain weird. And this will quickly seem pretentious and, dare I say, elitist.

Of course, everybody who has seen this film, has their own theory on what the film is about. Here's mine... Bill Pullman stars as Fred Madison. He's a mediocre musician who finds himself in a sort of existential crisis when he discovers that his wife, who's portrayed by Patricia Arquette, has been deceiving him (she's been starring in porn flicks). In a crime of passion, Fred kills his wife and is thus sentenced to death. On death row, Fred Madison decides for himself that this is not the way he wanted his life to end, so he "dreams up" (or rather "escapes into") a fictional fantasy world that he creates. A crucial line of dialogue in the film is when Fred Madison (when asked by a police officer why he doesn't like video cameras) declares: "I like to remember things my own way. Not necessarily the way they happened" So he turns himself into the handsome, young mechanist, Pete Dayton. But even in this fantasy world, Fred Madison can't keep the disappointments of his real life out, and things begin to move towards their end. And I guess that's about as much as I can say without spoiling the surprises. So as I see it, LOST HIGHWAY is a film about escapism. And this does seem to be a favourable theme for David Lynch. ERASERHEAD appears to be about the same thing (finding an escape from your everyday rotten existence).

The music in this film must be mentioned. It's great! David Lynch is widely known for being fanatical about mixing the sound for his films, and it clearly shows that the score is the result of a perfectionist. You could compare it to 2001 - A SPACE ODYSSEY. The musical score (albeit hugely different in mood and tone) possesses the same unparalleled quality. David Bowie contributes with the song I'M DERANGED (taken from his album OUTSIDE) which is used to create a dreamy feeling right at the opening (when we see the headlights of a car driving along a lonely stretch of road at the dead of night (David Lynch appears to have a fetish for roads and cars...)) Both the German industrial band Rammstein and goth-rocker Marilyn Manson (look for a cameo appearance by Marilyn Manson and Twiggy Ramirez in the film) made their fortunes on this film. Trent Reznor (who produced the score) and Nine Inch Nails are also here. And Lou Reed contributes with the amazingly cool song, THIS MAGIC MOMENT. Of course, Angelo Badalamenti is also present to provide his smooth sounding jazz songs. It's truly magnificent!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Alternative Reviews and Realities
Review: That so many people have so many divergent views of the film means, to me, that this is a well-done film, whether everyone appreciates it or not...

Were the scences alternate realities or multiple realities? Were the videotapes flashes of reality and/or dreamed fantasy? Where the people actual persons or characters (re)invinted in the mind of Fred? Was Mystery Man a stanger or evil incarnate that each of the key characters had invited into their lives? Was that the voice of Fred on the intercom at the beginning of the film, as we are lead to believe by the film's end, or was it the voice of Mr Eddy (whom I think of as Mr. Rage). Or all of the above??

This is a very intense and distrubing film, which I needed to see more than once before I could let go and watch the film "unfold," pun intended. It was then that I better appreciated how the use of color, down to the changing shades of nail polish, clued the viewer.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Far from meaningless
Review: I liked Lost Highway when I first saw it. This, in spite of severe reservations (I HATED Blue Velvet). Now, having seen it many times and read the screenplay, I am convinced it is an under-appreciated masterpiece.

The story: Jazz saxophonist Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) has a vague notion that his wife Renee (Patricia Arquette) is cheating on him. Left on his front steps are a series of odd, anonymous surveillance-style videotapes of his house. These tapes become more and more disturbing, as they get further and further INSIDE his house. The last one is a doozy - it shows Fred having just horribly murdered and mutilated his wife. In a jarring series of cuts, we find that he has, somehow without his knowledge, actually committed the crime. He is convicted and sent to Death Row. From there, things get stranger still, defying all logic...

Saying that the plot is meaningless is misleading. While plot is certainly less important to Lost Highway than the skillfully woven mood of dread, it actually does make sense. To understand it, one must make two assumptions:

1) What we are seeing is not literally real, but inside the main character's mind, and

2) that there IS a literal reality that is being represented, albeit through the extreme distortion of a mental breakdown.

Watch Lost Highway and think in terms of dream symbology: if this were a dream of a repressed trauma, what would the dream be telling us about that trauma? Surprisingly, a coherent and fairly consistent symbolic map of the "real" story emerges: in dream interpretation, the house usually represents the dreamer him-/herself. Locked away within it are dark secrets - like the repressed memory of Fred having murdered his wife. But his subconscious mind tries to surface those memories through the symbolic videotapes. Get the idea?

There is a lot more, including Jungian dream characters representing Fred's parents, his Shadow Self, his Anima and Animus. If you've read up on clinical psychology, it helps. But even if you haven't, Lost Highway will still talk to you, if you let it...to your subconscious, which will have no problem understanding the plot, even if the rest of your mind remains confused.

Happy viewing...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: huh?
Review: i think, if one relies on plot too much in this film, it's incomprehensive and bizzare. you see, lost highway is an exercise in style. most of the elements in the film (the idenity switching, the videotapes) are merely interesting ideas on lynch's part. if you can just get the jist of what's going on and follow it, this film is another masterpiece by lynch, right up there with blue velvet and eraserhead. for the love of god, see this film.


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