Drama · Thriller · Mystery
Lost Highway
American
1997 · Directed by David Lynch · 134 min
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Drama · Thriller · Mystery
American
1997 · Directed by David Lynch · 134 min
Meaning, unpacked
Central idea
The film can be read as a study of a mind escaping a truth it cannot bear, with the movie itself behaving like that mind: swerving, rewriting and doubling back whenever it gets too close to something painful.
Its lasting influence
Its doubled-identity structure prefigured Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire and fed a wave of psychological puzzle films, from Donnie Darko to Enemy, in which a protagonist's mind becomes the film's actual setting.
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Create your free spaceWhat happens
Fred turns back into himself in the desert, kills Mr. Eddy, and speaks into his own home's intercom: Dick Laurent is dead. Police chase him down the highway. The ending suggests the film has circled one event all along.
The last image
Fred's face, caught in headlights on the night highway, twists and shudders as another transformation takes hold.
Three readings
What it says
The ending refuses to resolve because a mind avoiding guilt cannot. Fred's panic shows the escape was never complete, and you leave circling the same question he does.
Or follow an idea from this film
Continue the director
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Lynch's most celebrated film takes the dream-noir approach of Lost Highway and gives it greater emotional force.
Continue the director
Blue Velvet (1986)
The key earlier Lynch film, where small-town surfaces hide violence and perversity, and where his sound and mood style takes shape.
See what influenced it
Vertigo (1958)
The classic of obsession and unstable perception that stands behind much of Lynch's thinking about desire and illusion.
See its influence
Enemy (2014)
A modern thriller built on mood and ambiguity, showing how Lynch's logic of dread has travelled.
Follow the idea
Persona (1966)
Bergman's art-house landmark is another film where the question of who is who matters more than plot.
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