CPF Reviews #5: The Long and Winding Road-An Analysis of "Lost Highway"
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- Опубликовано: 6 июн 2017
- Corn Pone Flicks attempts to unwind the puzzle of one of David Lynch's most befuddling films. If this is blocked in your country, you can see it on Vimeo here: vimeo.com/220583983
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Easily the best and imho most accurate reading of this film I’ve encountered. I’ve come to regard this film as the more “difficult” twin sister to Mulholland Drive, a far more emotional film that nonetheless provides many parallels that provide the key(s) to unlocking its much darker and more oblique predecessor, Lost Highway.
I think the timeline starts at the hotel where Fred finds Laurent with Renee. Fred waits for Renee to leave, pulls Laurent out of the hotel and drags him to the beach house where Fred kills Laurent and burns the beach house down to hide his crime. Fred then goes home and confesses to himself what he's done--so he can promptly let that part of himself that did it flee from his life. Meanwhile, in a fugue state, Fred continues his life with Renee. At the party, what he's done comes back to haunt him and in his confused state he all but lets slip that he's killed Laurent. Once that break occurs, the reality at the beach house and the reality in his attempt to continue with a normal life merge and he snaps and does for Renee, too. Then the Pete narrative plays out as Fred tries to piece together his life and continue to justify and hide from himself his murder of Dick Laurent who is now quit literally a Mister E. (mystery). Fred's internal narrative leads him back to the beach house and the murder of Mr. Laurent, something he can never escape no matter how many times he tries to rewind the smoke back into the building. I think Fred is the night version of Pete. He plays saxophone at night at clubs, but his day job is as a mechanic. The Jack Nance scene makes even more sense if Nance's character is really telling Fred/Pete that he likes Fred/Pete's music. "Hey, don't be ashamed of what you've done" is what Nance is telling his friend when he says "I liked that" after Pete turns off his own playing. Not surprising that Fred/Pete would have a lot of shame over what he's done.
Really interesting comment, thanks - good read mate
I think Pete’s girlfriend Sheila might also be the same person as Rene too only in his fantasy he is the one who cheats while she’s devastated over it meanwhile in reality it was the other way around so he’s remembering selectively.
One of my favorites, because it’s a cinematic dream state that renders its meaning thru riddles and contradictions. I dig your analysis. Thankyou. There are many ways to view this film.
The mystery man is from the Black Lodge.
It is interesting how the main character changes into another character. Almost like a doppelgänger from the Black Lodge. And Lost Highway was released about 5 years after Twin Peaks original series. This sort of shapeshifting has become some what a theme for Lynch films...
@@jjpme92un I don't really think so. Aside from conveying pretty simple concepts through very unconventional and unexpected means, Lynch's every project is a separate idea and hardly share any similarities. You can, however say something to the tune of what you're saying in context of applying Lynch memes.
Mystery Man is the paranoid thoughts, doubts and possibly full-fledged memtal illness, that live inside a person's mind to begin with. The spirits of the Red Room (which is not the Black Lodge btw, it is a waiting room) are different. Bob is the selfish violence and pleasure seeking spirit, brought by degradation of cinematic and television mediums that fed people violence for its own sake and lowbrow entertainment without substance and meaning. He and Man From Another Place sustain on garmonbozia - the essence of human suffering and fear, which comes in form of the side dish from TV dinners. There's a great comprehensive 4-hour video analysis on that topic which I completely agree with. Lost Highway and Twin Peaks are entirely different things with completely different premises. Twin Peaks is a town in the middle of nowhere with charming scenery and people, that suffers from evil influence. The protagonist is an FBI agent with strong morale, sense of esthetic and Buddhist philosophy, who gets into a serious parable and risks his life and very soul to save the people of this small border town. Characters of Lost Highway live in LA, the main one is a troubled musician who suffers from anxiety over his wife's loyalty while losing grasp on reality with his doubts so much so that he can't tell what's real, how, when and in what sequence things happen. So much so that he morphs into a different person entirely, but still gets tangled in the very same turmoil with the very same feelings and people. LOST HIGHWAY is about unfulfillment and chasing the idea of a perfect/better life that only exists in fictional universes, while not valuing what good we have, essentially.
Lynch doesn't make extended universes, because he makes movies about real life, some aspects of which he likes to perceive as magical, which they deserve tbh. He only shot one sci-fi flick to get budget for his own project. He quit Twin Peaks when the original idea was cut short with demands of wrapping up the Laura Palmer's murderer storyline and subsequent delving into mystical fiction with serial killers trying to harvest the evil powers of the Black Lodge. He's not really about that, he's a magical realist who appreciates the beauty of life and our ability to perceive it, but at the same time he's afraid that having everything explained and understood collapses the potential musings on the topic wave function. Which, though is extremely hypothetical, sounds quite logical.
Damn, you can't really talk about Lynch a little.
@@nekoillmystery man could still be from the black lodge if he is a manifestation of negative aspects of the psyche. I don’t think Lynch’s works are so separate yes they have independent stories , unique elements and vibes but Lynch’s use of specific imagery through his career makes me think there is meant to be a vague connection for the viewer as long as it’s organic thinking and not just wanting to relate one work to another for the sake of it.
Great video! Again - late to the party, since I just recently discovered your channel. But I wanted to say that Lost Highway is one of my favorite Lynch films. Despite the bollocking it took from the critics and its commercial failure, I regard it as being on par with Mulholland Drive. And, perhaps surprisingly, I did not find it that confusing. When the Mystery Man first appeared at the party, I started to suspect the film was trafficking in Jungian archetypes. For me, at least, this was confirmed - slam dunk! - by the end of the film. The Mystery Man is Fred's Shadow Self. The girlfriend he has as Pete Dayton is his Anima.
The whole film is happening in Fred's mind. The truth is in there, but it's clothed in dream logic and subconscious symbols. The cabin exploding in reverse is Fred's rage consolidating, crushing down to a singularity like a black hole. We see fire as a symbol of rage earlier when Lynch cuts to the fireplace burning in fast motion, and the smoke drifting in the direction of the bedroom as Fred recounts his dream. The condensed rage focuses on the cabin in the desert, which is - naturally - the home of his Shadow Self. At least - this is my own spin.
Mulholland Dr is Lynch's worst movie. He owes me another film.
Very good synopsis! One of my favorite movies...
Thanks. I'm in the middle of a Twin Peaks retrospective...I hope to have it up by the end of the month.
Recently discovered your channel through a series of Twin Peaks analysis videos and am thoroughly impressed with your talent.
Best analysis of this movie I have seen. Well made, appreciate the effort of this video. Thumbs way up!
Incredibly underrated movie... Love your analysis and ideas toward piecing this together. Thank you for making these videos!
This film always did strike me as a story about one man's Hell.
Damned forever to replay and relive not only the worst event of his life but even bringing his fantasies of hope and escape into literal form as well and to also live those events only to make that hope all the more tantalizing and torturous.
It would explain why he appears tired and strung out in the opening scenes as if he knows it's all starting over again and he's damned forever to forcibly go through these events as if they were happening for the first time leaving him a perpetual state of nightmarish confusion and misunderstanding not knowing how to wake up or perhaps the notion of waking is never allowed.
This is one man's Hell amongst Billions of other Damned souls....
Matt, have you considered doing an analysis of INLAND EMPIRE. I would truly love that.
I have indeed, though that will be the mother of all analyses. It'll take some doing, but I definitely want to do that at some point.
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks This is an amazing breakdown & explaining of Lost Highway for sure thanks for this dude.
But damn id love it for you to try to do a Inland Empire explained & analysis video.
Its the only David Lynch film myself im not too sure about.
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks Welp, down the Rabbits hole.
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks i highly suggest jay dyers analyse on it for some notes
@@terenceoneill5950 Here's an exercise for you: Try explaining the film to yourself or a friend. If you can't explain the general synopsis or idea of the movie, don't bother having someone else tell you their analysis of it. You're lost.
This is maybe the best analysis of the film I have found on RUclips. Fantastic work
Excellent Analysis! Thanks for making this!
I always took the Mistery Man as being the self-conscient and loose side of the main character. He met him in his house because he is him. There are two shadows on the wall signifying that the main character has the desire to give in to his darker needs and let loose by killing renee. Never saw him as the devil to be honest
I think the mystery man is definitely part of Freds mind. Perhaps representing his guilt, or the truth. He's not a real character or person from Fred's life. The video tapes from the mystery man are the truth of what happened. He won't seem to allow Fred to stray too far off from the truth in Fred's twisted unreliable memory. And keeps trying to shatter his fantasy life as Pete that was created in his mind.
The mystery man represents the shadow self at times and also the superego at times
This is the best review/analysis vid I have seen on youtube. Absolutely awesome. Thank you.
That intro had me laughing so loud I woke my roommates up 😂.
Really great analysis. My only point of divergence would be on whether Fred is actually in prison. The depiction of the detective punching him for me is over the top even for LAPD; when I combine that with the lack of any courtroom scene and the weird prison lead me to think Fred is thinking about those things as future consequences. In this interpretation the chase scene at the end is real, and Fred is overwhelmed by the enormity of his actions. But hey, what do I know? Thanks again and hope to see more content soon!
I'll see what I can do...I've been spending the year dead for tax reasons...you understand.
I like to think that the guy who accidentally buzzed David Lynch and told him that Dick Laurent was dead went to the theater a few years after and heard that line in the movie.
This trilogy - Lost Highway, Mullholland Drive, Inland Empire - all deal with film making in some way.
They seem to be Lynch struggling with his own creative process within the corruption of Hollywood.
Lost Highway might be seen as two films, a art-house noir; and a pastiche of a Tarantino movie.
The movie Lynch might struggle to make vs the type of movie Hollywood wants him to make.
The Mystery Man is like a hard ass producer entering Lynch's creative inner world, redirecting the action, the characters, the plot etc.
The miserable impotent middle-aged jazz musician, is replaced by a young handsome virile mechanic. And the brutal slaying of
a cheating wife, turns into Romeo and Juliet killing the old lecher. The fact that Lynch uses the same actress from True Romance might be significant
Ultimately Lynch is saying Hollywood is just pornography and not real art. Pornography becoming a metaphor for the Dream Factory.
But as in the other parts of the trilogy, there are interpolations between film and the human psyche, as if they mirror each other.
As with Goddard, Hollywood tropes merge with reality - with each reflecting the other. As we internalize Hollywood cliches.
The need for Hollywood to sell sex and youth, and simple stories of romance and heroism, reflecting a general suppression of reality and an escape into fantasy.
So rather than just being a critique of Hollywood, it goes deeper into what Hollywood, and film itself reflects about the general human condition.
Plus creative process, is something mystical for Lynch, to fuck around in his creative process is akin to fucking with his soul. So this goes way deeper than most films about art vs commerce.
Some quality analysis here. I'm seeing connections with, most obviously, Le Mepris and a film that would be far more literal about the conflicts and contradictions inherent within the process of Hollywood film-making: Adaptation.
I really enjoyed reading your pamphlet.
Very nice! Great review of a complex film. Thank you.
Funnily, after analyzing Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE, this one seems pretty straightforward.
Level of work you putting in these... Bravo, it will stick for future, quality...
That's the most badass intro for an arthouse movie analysis that I can possibly envision. Instant like.
If you liked that one, you should check out, well, everything else I've done, especially now that I've got a better camera. I always do little intros like that. The Twin Peaks stuff has come out pretty well, for example.
I'm a rollin stone, all alone and lost
For a life of sin I have paid the cost
When I pass by, all the people say
Just another guy on the lost highway
Just a deck of cards and a jug of wine
And a woman's lies makes a life like mine
Oh the day we met, I went astray
I started rolling down that lost highway
I was just a lad, nearly twenty-two
Neither good nor bad, just a kid like you
And now I'm lost, too late to pray
Lord I take a cost, oh the lost highway
Now boys don't start to ramblin' round
On this road of sin are you sorrow bound
Take my advice or you'll curse the day
You started rollin' down that lost highway
I love this! Has an old 1930's traveling hobo kind of spin on it!? That's the universe it put me in and of course that universe is still in the same as that of Twin Peaks!
*LOST HIGHWAY is a fever dream interrupted with a cheese sandwich eaten before bedtime to help digest the rest*
Cool channel and great taste. I'll definitely be watching all of this stuff over the next few weeks.
I showed 'Lost Highway' to my brother after getting it on DVD & his reactions were interesting. I enjoyed it quite a bit as I'm a huge Lynch fan. I enjoy your analysis. Very thought-out & intelligent.
I think the Mystery Man is just a representation of Fred's dark side
Correct! It's his jealousy and rage
Excellent analysis, this is pretty much spot on how I always thought too. Great catch though on the first tape/her reaction and the dick laurent porn tape presentation, that I never picked up on.
Something else wonderful about this film is that there is sooo much symbolism to every scene. You could literally do a shot by shot by shot anaylsis. From the framing of shots, position of characters, colour schemes used, etc. Imagery & visual metaphors every where beyond the 'bare' bones plot (I use the term loosely in this case). I also like how, for instance, the police officers who are present in the second portion of the film can be interpreted as a part of his pysche that was generated. It's been a long time since I watched this, but I recall associating them with his conscience.
I tried to slip in a few of those mise-en-scene bits, such as the shot of Pete looking in a mirror that's a mirror image of an earlier shot of Fred looking in a mirror, and both characters in bed looking up at a circular overhead light. Lynch is probably my favorite director of all time; he can shoot the most normal thing and make it look weird and unsettling (Winkie's diner in Mulholland Drive comes to mind).
This was really, really well done. Good work !
Your analysis is spot on, you took time and effort to structure it instead of trying to everything away by considering every person and event of the second part of the movie a figment of the protagonist's fantasy despite the apparent connections.
Amazing breakdown of the film, really well made
Mystery man represents the idea of killing Renee. The same way Bob in twin peaks represents an idea.
Very insightful ... and helpful! Hell goes round and round.
Nice job. After seeing this movie in the theater when it came out, I basically had no clue as to what I had seen. I had to see it a few more times to begin to get a grasp on the idea presented. Now it is one of my favorite films.
Same basic story on my end.
The best synopsis I've come across!
Awesome. I'd heard or figured out much of this, but you laid it out in a more cohesive way than I ever could. As other suggested, I'd love to watch a video by you on Inland Empire, which almost completely baffles me.
I do intend on doing one someday, but I couldn't say when.
Great analysis. I started with your more recent Twin Peaks stuff and am working my way through your other videos. I watched Lost Highway 10 times in a month when I was 19 and had a hard time puzzling out what the hell was going on. All that stuff about distancing yourself from your own guilt went right over my head. Now I'm in my 30's and the movie doesn't seem as impenetrable as it did back then.
It's also really refreshing to see videos where someone talks about Lynch's work without getting lost up his own butthole for several hours while insisting that his analysis is the only right one.
Why, who could you possibly be referring to?
I really like the way you put things together man, I listen to a lot of theorist and you are my new favorite. I think the Mystery man originally was with Laurant, probably sold his soul to become rich and powerful, then he uses Fred as a mechanism to collect Laurant's soul. The switch to Andy for me happened as a deal for Fred's soul, It happened but only in one reality centered in Fred's mind, Pete's parents always seemed to me as guardian angels for some reason. IDK, it's Lynch, you grab hard to one theory and then find stuff that doesn't fit, maybe that part with the detectives was so that us as viewers couldn't put it all together, make us understand Fred a little more in our own mind.
Matt, your long-form stuff--almost all of it, but particularly as it applies to Lynch--is some of the best media review/analysis content on RUclips; you're probably tired of hearing this by now, BUT: You deserve more subscribers. Good up the great work!
Well, there are far worse things people could keep saying.
Wow what a great video. What a great analysis. What a great channel. This movie really is something, isn't it? It definitely left an unpleasant impression on me when I seen it, and I didn't like it, but now I think it's pretty good and some of his best work.
I love David Lynch. If you watch enough of his films, you will realize this is the most straight forward.
The most straight foward is The Straight Story
Awesome analysis, as always!
Really enjoyed this analysis. Great video.
Thanks. I've done a couple on Twin Peaks recently, as well.
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks How about Mulholland Drive?
I actually don't think Mulholland Drive is all that hard to figure, honestly. I feel like most people got that one pretty well nailed down, with minor variations, a long time ago.
The awesome thing about this film is that is makes it's own kind of sense. Never has a film took me on such a wild trip. Mulholland Dr., Donnie Darko, Memento, and Take Shelter are also honorable mentions.
Loving your analysis of Lynch.
Best analysis out there !
to be fair that sax solo was so shrill anyone with ears would’ve turned it off 😂
As for the scene with the police saying Pete killed Andy. I remember years ago having worked the movie out both with theories of Andy having been a real person or never real at all. I even had constructed the alternative where only Fred/Rene were real (and the cops or ppl in the prison) and that Dick Laurent and Andy both were not. I lean towards they were real. But I think it could be that Rene only cheated on some one or he suspected she was cheating, and never had anything to do with porno. If Pete needed a villain or 'bad guy' to justify any negative actions he would perform, he created one; it also further obscures and distances the reality of the problems he had with Rene.
I'll have to rewatch this again asap to re-assess and re-gain my old insight so that I can better formulate my thoughts. It's been years.
This is sick. Really great stuff.
Thanks. Maybe someday I'll try and tackle Inland Empire.
Please do!
Aha. I just posted a video on this film and wondered if you'd ever covered it, excellent! Really enjoyed this dive into the film, lots of cool pickups and ideas about the way the two sections of the film connect. I only saw it last month so I need to sit with it longer and see it again, but stuff like this gets me amped up to get back to it perhaps a little sooner than I might have before. On initial viewing there were segments and moments that I absolutely loved but the film as a whole didn't quite gel with me. The more I thought about it (even as I was discussing it in my video) I liked it more and more though.
I too felt disconnected by it on first viewing, but came back to it later and loved it. I must say that seeing initially on VHS didn't help; not only does pan-and-scan chop off a lot of image, but some shots were so dark you couldn't see anything. The two shadows crossing the living room were basically invisible. I'll never understand the nostalgia for VHS. It was a truly godawful format.
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks I dunno, I can get into the nostalgia of it myself, but in a documentary I saw a few years ago about VHS collectors, who only watch films on video tapes NOW, seems like taking that a little too far :P I watch the original SW trilogy on film print copies that some very dedicated fans have acquired and scanned, which are in glorious high def but have a lot of scratches and occasional washed out issues with the image... and I kind of love them because they remind me of the scratchy, imperfect versions I grew up on.
But yeah.. VHS quality is probably not conducive to films like Lost Highway I'm sure! At one point though, it was all we had (I don't think I ever even heard of the term Laserdisc until long after that format was dead) and yet now, I get snobby at paltry DVD quality.
I personally find it cool that the box sets of Stranger Things are made to look like series-contemporaneous tape boxes, but if that mimicry had extended to the picture quality, I'd have had issues. Image quality aside, I can't even recall the number of times the tape got physically pinched or crumpled while ejecting, or all the tapes I had to disassemble to repair because the tape snapped off the reel. In nearly two decades, I've never had a DVD actually break or quit working for some reason.
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks Oh yeah, TONS of issues like that with tapes. I remember having to constantly remove the top covering of my VCR to un-tangle tapes that got chewed up occasionally. Those Stranger Things editions look really cool, there's a line of VHS style packaging in the UK for quite a number of studio titles on Blu-ray but I own many of them and don't want to get sucked into double dipping.. I've had plenty of DVDs give me skipping issues over the years, though Blu-ray (with one glaring exception) has never given me anything but smooth sailing.
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks Also, aren't those Stranger Things sets also 4K releases? Haha. Talk about as astronomically far away from VHS quality you could possibly get right now.
We're living inside a dream.
But who is the dreamer?
I think the mystery man is like Bob in Twin Peaks.
Great Analysis.
I have cheated on you CP and it was unsatisfying and disappointing. Other channels analysis usually try to get to deep into the human behavior. The especially young folks are fun to listen to as they try to sound authoritative. It is annoying. You really get Lynch. I appreciate all the work you do producing these videos. I would love to see you make an independent movie!
I have in fact made an independent film...there's a trailer and making-of here on this channel (The film is called Me and My Shadow). The problem now is figuring out distribution.
I find the big giveaway regarding explainer videos is when they try and make things more complicated or difficult...that's usually an attempt at showing off. If the explanation makes the film simpler, you're likely on the right track.
This is the best footage of lost highway that ive seen. I can actually see it. On most viewings its been too dark.
It's from the German blu-ray.
I've come to believe that the scene where Fred is being punched by the cop is the only scene in the movie that shows us "reality".
I'd wager everything seen on the tapes is meant to be real...it's kind of the point as to why he declares his dislike of cameras.
Saw this 3 times the day it came out and at least once a month since... Thank you for this what do you make of Lynch's assertion that Lost Highway takes place in the same universe as Twin Peaks?
I kind of just took it pretty literally.
How did I not notice that pete hates saxophone solos!?!?!?!?
Could it be about cats? Renee is really a cat. I think that's what it represents.
The saxophone playing sounds like wild kittens, and the tapes are left like cat poops on the doorstep. And the strange man is in two places at once, just like how cats sometimes do.
Plus, Fred is sometimes the name of cats. I think it's about cats.
Was this written by a cat? They do seem to think that everything's about them. Your time, your lap, your computer keyboard, your chair...why not Lost Highway, too?
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks You're right, it makes a lot of sense.
Certainly: Alice's Cheshire Cat is the Mystery Man, with his unnatural grin. Sometimes, his grin is all we see. Curiouser and curiouser.
Bowies " im deranged" is part of concept album 1.Outside. The song in this album is sung by killer Minotaur. I guess maybe Lynch choose IT not by a chance
Great intro 😆
Thank u
since cooper went back in time, than bob was never defeated, the holes to the black lodge kept going, so all others lynch movies is different stories of this bad in the world. for example, that homeless man who showed up in muholland drive in that dinner scene, and the guy than die from a heart attack, that sort of homeless guy looked much alike those man from twin peaks, those like the one who went to the radio station and talk about the horse.
Yes, the ghastly figure from MD DOES resemble the woodsmen in TP... that caught my attention, too.
@@fearsexdreamriptorn7374 What
Fred swallow some medicine in prison and he went to sleep in deadrow. Next chapters is only the nightmare dream.
"lost highway is considered one of the most confusing films ever made" bruh Inland Empire
Did that one, too.
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks yeah i watched it, what i mean was Inland Empire makes this movie feel straight forward to me xd
But Lost Highway is still considered ONE OF the most confusing films ever.
There's a problem in that narrative - if you read the script andy and the other 2 girls (raquel and marian) in the pornographic film with renee never knew fred and renee.
It's been a while since I read the script in full, but maybe that's why those scenes aren't in the film. Given we see Renee in a picture with Andy and Dick, and again at the showing of one of Andy's films, I'd say the film clearly indicates the Andy DID know Renee.
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks if we just see the film, we get that idea, of course. But if you read the script, you know for sure that Andy and the other 2 girls of the porn film never knew them. Therefore, the obvious conclusion is that it's all in Fred's mind. The only reality we see is the police station and the prison. The rest is all made up in his head so that he can live with what he did. If renne was such a slut and dealt with those bastards, in his head there is a justification for what he did. They were all sociopathic. Poor Fred. But even if fred and rennee never knew Andy we can still ask why was he in his head. Because Andy and the girls are real and they like to "party".
Really interesting analysis, it seems your take almost everything into the account. But now I'm starting to question if the other guy I watched was wrong, he had a very compelling theory that Lost Highway is David Lynch's response to filmmakers stealing ideas from him. The video called "David Lynch's Lost Highway as a commentary on other directors". Or maybe the film has many layers and it's both the "deal with the Devil" story and "do not steal warning from David" story.
Lynch himself would probably say that it means whatever you take away from it, but to me that one seems to be quite a stretch, positing an entire film as some sort of ego-driven response to alleged theft by others, especially since he's riffed on films like Vertigo and Sunset Boulevard ad nauseum.
I personally like to think that all Lynch films are connected in some way. They might not all take place in the same universe. But I do think that this and Twin Peaks exist in the same one with Mulholland and INLAND taking place in "The Real" world.
I've listened to many of these but none compare to your intro.
Hat's off.
word!
Fred is an unfortunate individual. No matter who he is or what he does, his life is destined to be fucked up... and he can't escape it.
Lost Highway,is where Devil people go when thier on the Run!
Did you know those plants in the house and outside the house and that feature in loads of Lynch's works are called Laurentii.
I didn't, but is there some significance there?
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks Laurens Iowa - Straight Story, Dino de Laurentiis - Dune/Blue Velvet, Laura Palmer - Twin Peaks, Dick Laurent- Lost Highway, Laura Dern - Inland Empire/Blue velvet/Twin Peaks, Piper Laurie - Twin peaks, Laurentii plants in Dorothy Vallens apartment on the radiator, The radiator lady in Eraserhead - Laurel Near, Laurentii plants at Lucky 7 insurance - Twin peaks. I keep an open mind to there being any significance to this pattern recognition, could be something, could be nothing. Just throwing it out there in case it may be of help to any passers by or yourself. :)
I doubt Lynch cast any actors because of their names (or liked that plant because of its name). The Straight Story was based on real events, and Laura Palmer's name came from the famous 1944 film noir "Laura," about a detective investigating the murder of the titular character, who is represented throughout much of the film by her portrait. (It also contained characters named Jacoby, Diane, and Waldo Lydecker, as in Waldo the bird, of the Lydecker animal clinic). I don't see any cohesion to any pattern there.
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks Fair enough. Thanks for the reply. :)
Sounds like Josh Brolin over the intercom
Great reading
Reading?
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks great reading of the film. Your interpretation made the most direct sense of any other LH analysis ive come accross
Ahh, THAT reading.
Great job! Check out our lost highway review.
The biggest mystery is how they do they afford that house?
I have a theory about the tapes. Considering that everything you are seeing in the movie are Fred's fragmented memories, the tapes in his memory representing what really happened are maybe the porn scenes where his wife acted in. Why ? There is a scene on the movie where you can see a photo of his wife during a scene using the exact same heels she always has on the house, maybe he can't delete that image of her on his head. But that image we see is not something that he directly sees on the movie, it is just presented to us the viewers if i recall correctly. So i think someone was sending the tapes to her house maybe for her to see when she was alone or probably someone that tried to blackmail her but failed when Fred saw the tape she had in her hands. And the entire movie revolving around the fact that Fred can't accept what he went through, probably while remembering, he censored the tapes in his mind and convinced himself that it was tapes of someone who was going inside the house while recording and then killed his wife and framed him.
Your take is fine. I just think the Mystery Man is Jealousy. For me i just pretty clear.
I thought his job was that of a musician??
When I finally understand that we are only watching Fred's reality and not what is actually happening, that we are involved in his fantasy , is Fred insane or is he possessed by a demon of. Jealousy and murder He invited him in. ❤️
You reading is economic and is coherent with the film, congratulations. Don´t try to push it too far by trying to give real world logic to the film though. Lynch films are allegorical like Kafka's books. In Lost Highway fantastic elements are present even in the fictional reality parts and mix with it, the film logic can't hold in real world terms. It is like the film's Macguffin, if you press it too hard it collapses.
I saw this theatrically twice in one day. As Lynch movies go, it was surprisingly straightforward. I FELT like I understood it, and certainly connected it with it emotionally.
It is interesting how, after seeing INLAND EMPIRE, that this one no longer felt really confusing at all. I got to see it a local arthouse theater earlier this year, which was the first time I'd seen it theatrically.
Perhaps the Mystery Man is a kind of personification of seeing things in black and white (aren't black and white his colors anyway?), meaning objective vs Fred's subjective. But i don't think we can call him the Truth here.. not sure why though:/
So, it's sort of like Bedazzled (fuck the remake) : be careful what you wish for.
Very zen. Which is appropriate.
I haven't seen it, so I can't say (either version, as I gather from your comment there are two).
Bill Pullman GOAT
"Goat?"
Greatest Of All Time
I really don't speak Internet.
You do know that being american, in your country you are an isolated phenomenon, a beacon of enlightened intelligence because 99.99% of the people who viewed this film in the US said: "Wow, what a piece of crap, eh? I mean what was that about?" whereas in my tiny country of barely 11 million people in western Europe at least 55% of the people who saw this film may have not understood it but at least they said: "Wow, I wonder what he was trying to convey". That's the diff between my country and yours and it's a big diff, dude. PS - the "Eh?" at the end of my first sentence in quotations is more common in the Great White North.
I doubt that...the average person in the US doesn't go to David Lynch films in the first place. Those who do likely know what they're in for.
The "eh" thing is more of a Canadian stereotype than American, though having never been to Canada, I can't say whether or not it's an accurate one. I can say that, sadly, American can be a depressingly stupid country.
Well you're an asshole.
But hey dude...you have given an excellent attempt of conveying the plot compared to the ones I have seen. The thing is that the plot is not meant to have one interpretation but multiple ones, hence "it is not meant to confuse" ... rather to make one think creatively.
Like you yourself said, lack of clarity in a film can easily just turn into "what the hell was that?" Most film-goers like explanations to be clear, and Lynch doesn't make films for that demographic.
Doing INLAND EMPIRE next, provided my computer stops acting up.
"No such simple explanation will suffice here"? The buzzer message was meant for the neighbor? Definitively? Ya ok.
Well, it seemed to be Lynch's conclusion on the matter.
The Black Dahlia ... Is dead.
If the mystery man is the man with the camera, isn't he the director - the one who makes it all happen?
I don't think so. The Mystery Man's camera represents objective truth, whereas Lynch's camera represents a subjective point of view: Fred/Pete's.
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks Thanks for your reply. Might also be relevant that the Mystery Man's camera is a video camera, and Lynch is a _film_ director, who's made clear his love of film specifically. But then how to understand Fred's remark that he doesn't like video, he prefers to remember things his own way? In line with your commnent, this almost sounds like something Lynch, the creator of elaborate mise en scene, not documentary immediacy, might approve. Yet in your interpretation, it's something the film/Lynch, condemns. And then again, there's Lynch's avowed love of mystery as opposed to clear resolution. Why is the Mystery Man called the _Mystery_ Man if he doesn't represent Lynch or a position with which Lynch sympathises, and if he simply represents objective truth?
I don't really know if I have an answer, but I guess what I was getting at was something to the effect that when Lynch talks about certain factors being required to make everything happen, he's talking about making the film itself happen - and what you need for that is an auteur like him to have ideas and then film them, at least for a film like this - and the Mystery Man is the representative of that within the film. And this seems to fit with the Mystery Man's ability to be both at the party and Fred's home: he's the all-seeing eye of the film, which can show us two or more locations roughly contemporaneously.
So in this sense, poor Fred is the product of a sort of auteur demiurge and inhabits, as such, an inherently deterministic world: he's simultaneously a bad guy in denial about his own badness and someone who never had the choice of playing any other role, never had real autonomy at all. And it might be that that allows us to feel pity for him right to the end, even though he's a murderer. He never looks like someone in control. Technically, perhaps, his actions drive the events, but he doesn't look like the one 'making everything happen.' And Lynch's own remarks seem to make clear that he's not.
:-)
abstruse* not obtuse
Well, it's too late to do anything about it, now.
1:14 19:29
If Fred recorded all those videos, then how could he record himself and his wife while sleeping?
He personally couldn't, of course, but he could have had someone else do it for him, such as the Mystery Man.
@@Corn_Pone_Flicks Thanks for responding. It is very interesting.
The mystery man is Fred’s super-ego, the obscene observing force in his subconscious mind. The movie is about the object of desire, the fantasy collapses at the climax, just before he is electrocuted in real life, the alternate life is in the imaginary realm.
Opens and closes with the driving. What if the entire story happens in Fred's imagination while he drives? We can't connect his thoughts. His unreliable narrative as both Fred and Pete, show us we are hearing a story from someone who doesn't know all the details, and hidden connections. When the story focuses on Fred it's his thoughts about himself. When it's Pete, it is his imagined self he conjures. The whole story happens in his imagination, as he drives that lost highway, and his thoughts are deranged.
I think all these analysis of Lost Highway make the same mistake, so to speak. They believe Fred when he says he remembers things his own way, but, as Corn Pore Flicks mentions, some things just don’t fit.
Why shall we believe it’s an organic world which works like the real one? Everyone assumes it’s a realistic world divided into an objective and a subjective pole, but why can’t we read ir more literally once in a while?
Let’s try watching the movie in a more metaphysical and less psychological way, we might see characters crossing dimensions by sinking into darkness, alter-egos mixing their identities, contradicting events coexisting in the same moment as time rewrites itself, the constitution of reality in a post-modern way... It may just make the movie more confusing and less interesting, or it could allow it’s richness to be shown.