David Lynch’s mysterious cult neo-noir about substitutions, doubles, and the total irrationality of things.
One day saxophonist Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), painfully jealous of his wife Renee (Patricia Arquette) and suspecting that she has a lover, receives a strange call. Later, he starts receiving VHS tapes showing the couple in their home and, eventually, Fred next to Renee’s dismembered body. Fred is accused of his wife’s murder and ends up on death row, but in the morning the police find young car mechanic Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty) in his place.
When working on the script together with author and noir expert Barry Gifford, Lynch was fascinated with O. J. Simpson’s infamous trial. O. J. Simpson was accused of murdering his wife and her lover, but acquitted despite the evidence. Lynch said that he was struck by how unperturbed Simpson looked during the hearings: he seemed not to care much about what was going on. Dissociation of identity, its instability, and the ability to be savagely violent are common themes of the O.J. Simpson case and Lynch’s film. But where social institutions attempt to normalize and explain aspects of reality, Lynch’s films speak of the fundamental irrationality and insolvability of mysteries, even those that have witnesses.
The film will be screened in English with Russian subtitles.
Lost Highway
Director: David Lynch
USA, France, 1997. 134 min.
18+
