This is us watching: Lost Highway, in which David Lynch breaks linearity with Rammstein
Miscellaneous / / November 01, 2023
Nothing is clear, but very interesting.
In this series Articles every week I talk about which films and TV series amazed me.
I have never been a fan of David Lynch, and his rabid fans with the pathos of “not everyone will understand” and “cinema is not for everyone” still irritate me today. This doesn't stop me from recognizing the genius of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet. But I only really love Lost Highway.
The plot of the film cannot be retold, and there seems to be nothing to retell - something strange, bright and creepy is happening on the screen. “Lost Highway” absorbs everything that is associated with the mention of David Lynch - the interweaving of imagination and reality, a mysterious crime, doppelgängers, mysterious villains, a femme fatale. And it seems that in “Highway” the director’s standard set is revealed better than in “Mulholland Drive.” Maybe because of the high pace of the story, maybe because of the aggressive musical accompaniment.
This may be Lynch's most daring film in terms of music. The director's eternal companion Angelo Badalamenti did a brilliant job, but the finished tracks are more memorable. The result is a mixture of jazz, David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson and Rammstein - the final scene with the lines "Rammstein, ein Mensch brennt" is simply amazing.
In Lost Highway, Lynch (not for the first or last time) demonstrated his main gift - to feel and evoke irrational horror. He works with incongruity, surrealism and draws the viewer into it so much that by the end the madness seems understandable. True, after watching it, you won’t be able to explain your emotions.
Lynch's films always provoke heated debates about interpretations. Perhaps giving up interpretation and accepting the emptiness of symbols is the best solution to perceiving the picture irrationally. One of the heroes, the Mysterious Man, proves this formula - just read the interpretations to see how disastrous this thing is.
When you watch Lost Highway again, you can see how neatly and slowly the classic linearity inherent in cinema disintegrates. And if the first half of the picture hints that the viewer is about to understand how the events are connected, then the second only rejects possible guesses. This post-modern game is incredibly exciting to watch.
What else does Lifehacker recommend?🧐
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- This is what we are watching: “Taboo” - a series in which Tom Hardy undresses, smears himself with ashes, and goes crazy
- This is what we're watching: "Inherent Vice" - a masterpiece masquerading as a detective story, in which Joaquin Phoenix at least impresses with sideburns