Lost Highway (UK Import)

"I like to remember things my own way… how I remembered them, not necessarily the way they happened."

The 1990s were a turbulent time for David Lynch. As the decade began, his hit TV show, award-winning movie and dabblings in other media rapidly elevated the director to the status of pop culture icon. "David Lynch" became not just a name but a brand, and the term "Lynchian" sprang forward as a description for just about anything avant-garde, artistically challenging or weird. Sadly, this was a case of too much too soon. Within just a couple of short years, all of his success imploded. 'Twin Peaks' was canceled in its second season, the prequel movie 'Fire Walk With Me' proved to be a critical and box office flop, and Lynch's three other attempted television series (the travelogue Reality show 'American Chronicles', the sitcom 'On the Air' and the HBO anthology 'Hotel Room') all landed dead-on-arrival. By the 1997 premiere of his next feature, 'Lost Highway', Lynch had been relegated back to the fringes of the art film world. Honestly, he probably would have been more comfortable there all along.

Although author Barry Gifford had not been directly involved with the writing or production of Lynch's adaptation of his novella 'Wild at Heart', he liked the movie so much that he struck up a relationship with the filmmaker. They first collaborated on the 'Hotel Room' series and, when that failed, set to work on a new movie screenplay that would explore some of the same themes. Once Lynch encountered the phrase "lost highway" in Gifford's book 'Night People', those two words alone were enough to start his wheels spinning.

Lynch describes 'Lost Highway' as a "psychogenic fugue." The film initially tells the story of saxophone player Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), who may or may not have murdered his wife Renee (Patricia Arquette) one night (he doesn't remember properly) after receiving a series of mysterious videotapes that show him committing the crime in advance. He's convicted (the police have him on tape, after all) and sent to Death Row, where he may or may not morph into young auto mechanic Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty), who had gone missing around the same time due to an inexplicable event. (He doesn't remember properly, either.)

Presuming that Madison has escaped, the authorities release Pete to settle back into his old life, whereupon he finds pieces of Fred's life intruding along the way. One of those pieces is a woman named Alice (Patricia Arquette again), a gangster's moll who belongs to Pete's most generous and most dangerous client, the ill-tempered Mr. Eddie (Robert Loggia). Femme fatale Alice seduces poor sap Pete and lures him into a shady home robbery plan that will allow them to run off together, but of course also puts them in the ill graces of Mr. Eddie.

Oh yes, it might be worth mentioning that both Fred and Pete are haunted by a mysterious devil man in paleface makeup (Robert Blake) who can apparently be two places at once.

'Lost Highway' is as moody and surreal as anything that Lynch has directed, but without the forced weirdness that was so detrimental to 'Wild at Heart'. While the story may seem almost impenetrably convoluted on first viewing, it's in fact one of the most tightly structured narratives that the director has ever worked with. It has almost no extraneous scenes or any of the bizarre non sequiturs that Lynch usually loves. Everything in the film is there for a purpose and builds to a common goal. For as densely layered as its symbolism may be, everything you might need to interpret the movie is found within it if you look hard enough.

That's not to say that the film eschews ambiguity, of course. It's loaded with themes of fractured identity, doppelgangers and false perception of reality. No one is exactly whom they seem to be, nor does anything really happen the way it appears to. Are Fred and Pete the same person? Does Pete exist at all, or is he just the fantasy of an insane man waiting for death? Is the Mystery Man a supernatural figure driving Fred crazy, or is he in fact a physical manifestation of those aspects of his personality that Fred has been trying to suppress? These are among the many questions left open for debate.

As expected from the director, the film also has many outstanding images and set-pieces, including a cabin that explodes in reverse, Fred's violent saxophone solo, Pete's first glimpse of Alice set to Lou Reed's cover of "This Magic Moment," and a love scene in car headlights. Patricia Arquette, in peak physical shape and not afraid to show it off, is a visual highlight as well.

In many ways, 'Lost Highway' is in one of David Lynch's most complex, dazzling, alienating, frustrating and perhaps even brilliant films to date. What it lacks, unfortunately, are the relatable, endearing characters that populate his best works, or any sort of emotional catharsis. This is a chilly, intellectual piece. For that reason, as well as audience skepticism engendered by 'Twin Peaks' burnout, it was greeted with mixed critical reaction and poor box office. However, it's a movie that invites and rewards repeat viewings, where new layers of meaning can be uncovered each time.

The North American distribution rights to 'Lost Highway' currently reside with Universal Studios Home Entertainment, which released the film on DVD in 2008 but has made no indication of any domestic Blu-ray plans. Over in the UK, on the other hand, Universal and a label called IndiVision released the title both individually and as part of a David Lynch box set that also includes new editions of 'Eraserhead', 'Dune', 'Blue Velvet', 'Wild at Heart' and 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me'. Unfortunately, the handsome packaging of the box set is its greatest asset. Most of the Blu-rays in the box are compromised in one way or another, including this one.

The UK disc is locked to Region B playback and will require a compatible Blu-ray player to operate. The disc will not function in a standard American Blu-ray player without a region code modification. Further, the film's video is encoded at a 50 Hz frame rate and the bonus features are encoded in PAL standard-def video, both of which will be incompatible with many American Blu-ray players and HDTVs.

The disc has both chapter stops and a Scene Selections menu. I mention this only because David Lynch has routinely expressed his hatred of chapter stops and has tried to banish them from video editions of some of his other films.