Mystery Man

From Lost Highway

"Observations" should remain neutral toward the interpretations developed below.

[edit] Observations

• Fred first sees the Mystery Man immediately after Fred describes his dream to Renee, in which Fred appears to attack Renee.
• At Andy’s party, the Mystery Man tells Fred "We've met before... at your house."
• The Mystery Man is portrayed as being capable of bilocation, being in two places at once: inside Fred's house at the same time that he is at Andy's party.
• When Fred asks "How d'you get inside my house?", the Mystery Man replies "You invited me. It is not my custom to go where I'm not wanted."
• When Fred asks, "Who are you?", the Mystery Man replies with a sinister laugh.
• Referring to the Mystery Man, Fred asks Andy, "Who's the guy on the stairs? The guy in black?" Andy replies, "I don't know his name. He's a friend of Dick Laurent's, I think."
• The Mystery Man inhabits a cabin that burns backwards.
• The Mystery Man appears in Fred's vision of the cabin immediately before Fred transforms into Pete.
• When Mr. Eddy calls Pete on the phone, he introduces the Mystery Man as "a friend of mine."
• The beginning of the Mystery Man's conversation with Pete is identical to his conversation with Fred at Andy's party: "We've met before, haven't we?"/"I don't think so. Where was it you think we met?"/"At your house. Don't you remember?"/"No, no I don't." The Mystery Man's last line in both conversations is also identical: "It's been a pleasure talking to you."
• Alice tells Pete they are going to the Mystery Man’s cabin in order to meet a fence who will take the goods and car stolen from Andy and give them money and passports. The Mystery Man is a fence, or black market go-between, who receives and sells stolen goods on the black market.
• Pete transforms back into Fred at the Mystery Man's cabin.
• The Mystery Man is portrayed as being capable of teleportation: he moves immediately from Andy's car to the cabin porch; without explanation, he appears at the "Lost Highway Hotel" and then appears in the desert when Fred and Laurent struggle.
• The Mystery Man exposes the identities of Pete and Alice as lies: "Her name is Renee! If she told you her name is Alice, she’s lying. And your name?... What the f*ck is your name?"
• The Mystery Man chases Fred carrying a video camera whose staticky, black and white images are the same as those from the videotapes left at Fred and Renee's house.
• The Mystery Man hands Fred a knife during Fred's struggle with Laurent in the desert.
• The Mystery Man shoots Laurent then whispers in Fred's ear. After whispering in Fred's ear, the Mystery Man is gone and the gun is in Fred's hand.

[edit] Interpretations

Mystery Man as surreal devil figure

One interpretation of the Mystery Man is that he is a figure who brings Fred’s repressed fears and desires to their realization (akin to the role sometimes played by the devil). Fred’s desire to sexually satisfy Renee is realized through Pete and Alice. Fred’s fear that he does not possess Renee is realized through Mr. Eddy’s virtual possession of Alice. Fred's jealous fears that Renee is cheating on him and his vengeful desires about catching Renee with another men are realized though Pete's murder of Andy, who had been upstairs with Alice, and the murder of Laurent, who Fred finds with Renee at the "Lost Highway Hotel."

Fred first sees the Mystery Man immediately after Fred describes his dream to Renee, in which Fred appears to attack Renee. In describing his dream, Fred says to Renee "It looked like you, but it wasn’t." Fred describes his dream in this way because he cannot accept that he has a repressed desire to kill Renee. At Andy’s party, when the Mystery Man says "We've met before... at your house... you invited me," he is referring to Fred's dream (which was the Mystery Man’s invitation) and Fred's vision of him after describing the dream (which was their first meeting, at Fred's house).

For the Mystery Man's parallel conversation with Pete, see Scene Analyses: Meeting the Mystery Man.

The Mystery Man is the source of the videotapes that arrive on Fred and Renee's doorstep. The first videotape that films inside the house arrives the morning after Fred describes the dream about attacking Renee and sees the vision of the Mystery Man, the dream that "invited" the Mystery Man into Fred's house.

The first of Fred's repressed desires that is realized is murdering Renee. Fred first becomes conscious of the murder when he watches the videotape the following morning. See Scene Analyses: Fred?, dream, and video tape.

A complementary interpretation is that the Mystery Man enables the realization of Fred's fears and fantasies by means of a swapping of identities and bodies. Fred transforms into Pete immediately after Fred, in his jail cell, has a vision of the Mystery Man at his cabin. In the role body and identity swapping, it was the Mystery Man who was with Pete "the other night" that Pete cannot remember, the man referred to when Pete’s father says "There was a man with you.... I’ve never seen him before in my life." Then, it is at the Mystery Man’s cabin that Pete turns back into Fred. On this interpretation, the Mystery Man enables the transitions between Fred and Pete.

Alice identifies the Mystery Man as a black market "fence." A "fence," in the sense of a physical boundary, separates yet connects two spaces, just as a "fence," in the sense of a black market dealer, serves as an intermediary or bridge between buyers and sellers of stolen goods. Similarly, the Mystery Man can be seen as an intermediary or bridge between the two world of Fred-and-Renee and the world of Pete-and-Alice.

In a manner also similar to how the devil works, Fred's wish fulfillments are deeply flawed, as Pete still desires to possess Alice and Alice rejects his possessive grasp: "You'll never have me." The Mystery Man then reveals the identities of Pete and Alice as lies, and Fred goes to find Renee with Laurent at the "Lost Highway Hotel."

The Mystery Man assists in Fred's murder of the man Fred catches with Renee, first by handing Fred a knife to slit Laurent's throat, then by shooting Laurent, leaving the gun in Fred's hand.