Collaborative Interpretation of Lost Highway

From Lost Highway

Revision as of 01:59, 3 June 2007

Introduction and General Overview

In a note at the beginning of the screenplay, David Lynch described Lost Highway in what reads like a series of taglines:

"A 21st Century Noir Horror Film.
A graphic investigation into parallel identity crises.
A world where time is dangerously out of control.
A terrifying ride down the lost highway."

Lost Highway is a dark and erotic psychological thriller that explores themes of infidelity, jealousy, and violence. It is an example of contemporary film noir combined with surreal images and plot developments.

Linear plot outline in three parts

Lost Highway can be described as having three parts.

1. In the first part, Lost Highway introduces jazz musician Fred Madison and his wife, who are played by Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette. Though no acts of infidelity are shown to the audience, Fred is portrayed as fearing that Renee is cheating on him. And though Fred does not express his sexual anxieties, a tense and uncomfortable sex scene portrays Fred as fearing that Renee does not want him and that he does not satisfy her. The first segment of Lost Highway ends with Fred murdering Renee and mysteriously transforming into another man, Pete Dayton, in his jail cell.


2. In the second part, Pete Dayton, a young auto mechanic played by Balthazar Getty, has a passionate sexual affair with a woman named Alice Wakefield, played by Patricia Arquette. However, Alice is virtually under the possession of a powerful and violent mafia-boss-like man named Dick Laurent, a.k.a. Mr. Eddy, played by Robert Loggia, though Alice and Mr. Eddy are not married. Moreover, Alice is portrayed as a pornographic actress and as using sex for personal gain. The second segment of Lost Highway ends with Alice defying Pete's desire to possess her and Pete transforming back into Fred Madison.


3. In the third, and shortest, part, which may or may not a remembering of earlier events, Fred finds Renee and Dick Laurent together, having sex, at the "Lost Highway" hotel. As well, it is now Renee who is shown in a pornographic film. The film ends with Fred murdering Laurent and driving into the desert in flight from the police.

General overview

One way to present a general overview of Lost Highway, without committing to a single theory of "what really happened," is to say that Lost Highway unfolds and explores the inner workings of Fred Madison's fears and fantasies regarding his wife Renee. Fred’s fantasies and fears are full of contradictions, but they play themselves out in the following ways:

• Fred murders Renee (first portrayed in Fred's dream, prior to the murder)
• he is her virile lover and she cannot get enough of him (as portrayed through Pete Dayton and Alice)
• she is possessed by another man (Mr. Eddy) and she is a whore (as depicted through her relationship to Andy, the pornographic filmmaker)
• he finds her with another man and kills him (this happens twice: Pete finds Alice with Andy, and Fred finds Renee with Laurent)
• she eludes his possession (Pete: "I want you Alice." / Alice: "You’ll never have me.")

Another way to present a general overview of Lost Highway is to say that it is a "metafilm," that is, a film about film. More specifically, Lost Highway uses non-linear narratives to examine multiple facets of a prototypical film scenario: the adulterous wife and the jealous husband.

Published works and film reviews

• The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch's Lost Highway, (ISBN 0295979259) by Slavoj Zizek, 2000.
• Numerous essays and reviews are available at City of Absurdity