I watched this a couple of weeks ago but it’s taken me this long to work out my thoughts about it. Two things are certain: firstly, it is a great, great movie; secondly, I still have absolutely no fucking idea what it’s about.

This is a David Lynch film. You could probably describe it as arthouse but I feel that classification is so pejorative that I wouldn’t call it that. It is surreal, it is expressionist, it is totally off the wall. It also has a cracking soundtrack featuring David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, Trent Reznor, Smashing Pumpkins, Rammstein and, of course, old Lynchian stalwart, Angelo Badalamenti. I could spend more time talking about the soundtrack, which I understand, than the film.

I’m going to be discussing spoilers after the jump so if you want to see this without knowing anything, don’t read any further. It’s worth watching if you like fucked up films that defy conventional structure and narrative and will make you think. It’s worth watching if you liked Wild at Heart or Blue Velvet (or even Donnie Darko or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and want to take it up a notch). It’s definitely worth watching if you’ve taken any hallucinogens (although Tabula Rasa is not culpable for any bad trips you might experience). It’s definitely not worth watching if you like a movie to have an understandable story, a nice clean ending with all the plot points resolved and no questions left unanswered.

Once again, spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned.

Right, the question you might be asking yourself is probably this: Tom, if you haven’t got the faintest idea what this movie is about, how can you call it great? Well Bob, that is a good question. Firstly, I know it’s great because it’s well made. It is a beautiful film - evocative use of shadow and colour, insert-superlative-of-choice-here production design and great cinematography all round. Secondly (do I use lists too much? Probably. Ah well!) I didn’t feel cheated by the story, even though I wasn’t sure what happened. It kinda makes sense but it’s a film that’s going to need multiple viewings to really understand. The fact that I’ve been thinking about it for weeks and wanting to see it again is pretty indicative that, overall, I enjoyed it and think it’s worth watching. Lastly, see reasons 1 and 2.

Lost Highway is film-noir by way of Luis Buñuel - a surreal thriller about a jazz saxophonist, Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), who may or may not have murdered his wife. He’s sentenced to execution but after a few days in jail, starts getting excruiating headaches. The one morning he wakes up as someone else, a twenty-something car mechanic called Peter Dayton (Balthazar Getty) who disappeared in front of his parents and girlfriend a few days before. Dayton gets involved with a gangster’s moll, Alice, who just so happens to be a blonde version of Madison’s murdered wife (both parts played by Patricia Arquette). The gangster in question is played in delicously psychotic manner by the wonderful Robert Loggia in a role which is basically another version of Dennis Hopper’s Frank Booth from Blue Velvet. Alice persuades Dayton to run away with her and it all leads to a not so inevitable conclusion after that.

Make sense? It kinda does in part. If you look at the two seperate stories of Madison and Dayton, they both more or less play out to completion. But it’s the metamorphosis connecting them that is difficult to explain. There’s lots of theories (and no explanation forthcoming from either Lynch or his co writer, Barry Gifford) as to what’s happening but the most popular seems to be that the film represents a psychogenic fugue that Bill Pullman’s character suffers, probably through guilt at having killed his wife. A lot of the interpretation of the film depends on how you define the Mystery Man character - a strange little man who appears from time to time to talk in riddles and be mysterious. It’s been hypothesised that he might be the Devil but one theory that I particularly like (and think makes more sense) is that he’s the anthropormophic personification of Jealousy. It could work.

However, the key to the whole film, I think, comes early on when Fred Madison, speaking to a detective, says “I like to remember things my own way… How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened.” The events that surround Pete Dayton’s involvement with Alice mirror those of Fred and his wife Renee so perhaps they are the events that happened as Madison prefers to recall them - making himself someone else to ease the pain and guilt of what he’s done; after all, a loving husband would never have committed the horrendous crime that he did, in fact, commit.

Actually, now I write that down, it all sounds like so much bollocks. I still don’t know what the hell it’s about but I do know that it’s on my list of films to own and that I will watch it again and again until I have an explanation that I’m happy with.