Lost Highway ****

(Regie: David Lynch; Met: Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Ghetty)  
If you see only one movie this year PLEASE let it be David Lynch's latest masterpiece of the macabre Lost Highway, a film so seriously disturbed it makes the grim urban frightscape lof David Fincher's Se7ven look like a carefree trip to la-la-land. Penned in colaboration with Wild At Heart-scribe Barry Gifford (author of notable novels like Night People and Sailor's Holiday), Lost Highway is a perfect summation of the Lynch universe, a catalogue of scares, symbols and strange sounds.
The premise of this psychological "road movie" is not exactly what you would describe as classic plotting. Summarizing seems an impossible task but we'll give it a try anyway: Bill Pullman plays the seriously paranoid jazz-musician Fred Madison who suspects his wife Renee (Patricia Arquette) of all sorts of unsavoury business (including - we later find out - snuff movies, bondage, porno, drugs and the occasional homicide). Fred's paranoia only increases to exponential value when he starts receiving strange video-messages from an unknown intruder who has been busy documenting every nook and corner of Fred's bedroom. The fact that an equally unknown weirdo is whispering cryptic jibberish into Fred's intercom like "Dick Laurent is dead" doesn't help much either. Since this is L.A. there's nothing else to do but call the cops, sit back and wait. In timeworn cop-tradition L.A.'s finest dismiss Fred's complaints as paranoid delusions (which, in fact, they are). Things start to go REALLY bad when Fred meets a mysterious stranger (another one) at a party who tells him that he's actually in Fred's house NOW, as they speak. No one person can be in two different places at the same time, right? Wrong. The "mystery man" hands Fred a cellular phone, connecting him to the perpetrator in his house who is none other than ...the "mystery man" himself. Sounds confusing? So it is.
But be forewarned: the descent into madness and that surreal abyss we fondly refer to as "Lynch country" is only warming up! Expect more magic and mayhem as Fred is locked up for the murder of his wife and starts showing signs of acute schizophrenia. Our hero actually physically transforms into another character (Balthazar Ghetty), who is suffering from his own private delusions in a smalltown that feels like an amalgam of Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. Again, this is only the beginning! Remember that line from Wild at Heart where Lula attests to the fact that this whole world is wild at heart and weird on top? Well, Lynch has actually made a film based upon that one line, an extremely confusing but utterly compelling trip into the chaos that surrounds us all. Film buffs will have a ball looking for clues to Lynch's visual puzzles, hunting for references to most of the master's earlier work.
The rest of the audience can just sit back and let this thundering rollercoaster roll over them. Those of you with an extra pair of eyes might also notice some quality acting from leads Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette (who should get an Oscar nomination- but probably won't - for her glamourously slutty portrayal of a split personality somewhere between Betty Page and Joan Crawford). Those of you with an extra pair of ears might notice the goosebump-inducing soundtrack created by Lynch in collaboration with his musical alter-ego Angelo Badalamenti and the weird but wonderful talents of avant-garde stars Barry Adamson and Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails).
The soundtrack also features excellent tracks from the likes of David Bowie ("I'm deranged", how fitting), Marilyn Manson (psychotic schlagers) and Rammstein (doing one better than the already quite disturbing Einst|rzende Neubauten). Lost Highway is what the movies were invented for: films that are proud to be films and don't ever want to be novels or plays. Don't miss this. You've rarely had it this good.
TOM PAULUS

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