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A true Los Angeles movie—and a dry run for Mulholland Dr., in much the same way Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha was a dry run for RanLost Highway was inspired in part by the O.J. Simpson case. Lynch isn’t interested in celebrity justice, the media, or any of the cultural hoopla surrounding the trial, just in the concept of a killer so steeped in denial that he’s able to escape culpability. The film is a brilliant feature-length manifestation of his subconscious: Fred’s efforts to beat back his guilt and refuse to take responsibility for his actions are a source of constant tension. Fred pretends that he doesn’t know the Mystery Man—and given his powers of suppression, he’s likely telling the truth—but as the man says, “You invited me. It’s not my custom to go where I’m not invited.” The Mystery Man is the devil on his shoulder, and he can’t be swatted away, though not for lack of trying; while locked in a cell, awaiting death by electric chair, Fred succeeds in transforming into another person, which sends the movie careening down an entirely different path.

The gearshift twist into the second two-thirds of Lost Highway brings with it another set of characters—many of them mirror reflections of the ones in the beginning—and echoes that unify the two disparate segments of the movie. Balthazar Getty takes over for Bill Pullman, literally materializing in Fred’s cell as “Pete,” a somewhat dull-witted mechanic who fulfills the standard noir role of dupe supreme. His Veronica Lake is Alice (Patricia Arquette again, with blonde hair this time), the duplicitous moll to Mr. Eddy, a vicious gangster played with teeth-gnashing élan by Robert Loggia. Pete is at least smart enough to know that he courts danger by throwing in with Alice, but he doesn’t have near the discipline to resist her advances. (Lynch makes a strong and repeated case for Arquette’s irresistibility here.) Based on what Mr. Eddy does to people who commit the modest crime of tailgating, he isn’t a man to be cuckolded:

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The second part of Lost Highway isn’t as tight and focused as the first—cameos by Richard Pryor (in his last role) and Jack Nance are there just to up the weird factor, though I like the casting of half-mad Gary Busey as Pete’s father—but it isn’t as off-the-rails as Wild At Heart, Lynch’s other collaboration with writer Barry Gifford. Whenever the film threatens to stray, Lynch keeps bringing it back to the overall puzzle, whether it’s through Arquette’s elusive femme fatale, a reappearance of the Mystery Man, or Pete/Fred’s violent transformation back to the man he truly is. I cannot begin to unpack all these associations and what they mean, though as I wrote earlier, the overall picture isn’t meant to be crystal clear. Lynch structures the film as a giant loop, coming back to the David Bowie song and the “Dick Laurent is dead” message, but it wouldn’t be right to say it’s all neatly squared away in the end. It’s just not that kind of movie.

The epigram above from Fred gives the game away: “I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them, not necessarily the way they happened.” To Lynch, that statement is both a frank assessment of the self-deceptive nature of memory (see also: Memento) and an extreme example of a killer creating an alibi by lying to himself about who he really is and what he’s done. (Lost Highway practically anticipates Simpson’s fake-but-not-really-wink-wink memoir If I Did It, in which he presents a fantasy scenario about a crime he almost certainly committed.) Lynch improved on some of these ideas with Mulholland Dr.—a better film, if only for Naomi Watts’ volcanic lead performance, which far outstrips Pullman and Getty’s glazed-over turns here—but Lost Highway is more cohesive than it might appear at first blush. Like no one else, Lynch goes digging for truths that people don’t know or won’t acknowledge about themselves—within dreams, within the subconscious, within those impossibly dark hallways where we fear to tread.

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Coming Up:
Next Week: [Vacation.]
July 23: Pootie Tang
July 30: Beetlejuice
August 6: Naked