Lost highway

Since his success with “Eraserhead” in the early 1980s, David Lynch has developed a reputation as one of the most creative and experimental film artist’s working in contemporary cinema. “Lost Highway” continues his exploration of the horror film and film noir, in which he uses sound, music and images to convey some of the surreal beauty and terror of dreams. Beginning with a cliched noir story of a jazz musician (Bill Pullman) who is being cheated upon by his femme fatale wife (Patricia Arquette), the film then fiendishly betrays our expectations by having the musician exchange identities with a young auto-mechanic (Balthazar Getty), who is entranced by a gangster’s girlfriend (also played by Arquette). As in his groundbreaking television series, “Twin Peaks”, Lynch is more interested in the logic of dreams than he is in classical narrative. The power of his work is that he is able to maintain an atmosphere of terror and suspense as surely as horror masters such as Hitchcock and Polanski. If “Lost Highway” defies easy categorization, it is a film experience that remains to haunt the viewer, and it is one of the more challenging and consistent of post-modern film works that have attempted to breathe new life into the film noir genre by both celebrating and questioning the conventions of the genre (i.e. is “Lost Highway” satirizing or taking to the limits the “evil” of the femme fatale?). The film includes a disturbing goth soundtrack by artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson (who also appears in the film), David Bowie, Smashing Pumpkins and Lou Reed. The script is co-written by Lynch and long-time collaborator, Barry Gifford. The original music score is by Lynch’s favoured musician, Angelo Badalamenti.