People need to come to terms with the fact there is no mystery in this film. If there was, someone would have announced the revelation in all these 18 years.
shareThis film is a complete dud, from beginning to end!
shareSo you need a traditional mystery? Check out Hitchcock... the structure of most of his films is quite dogmatic although often his films are works of genius. Perhaps Lost Highway is more than just a mystery.
sharePersonally I do not view LH as a mystery at all. The audience KNOWS Fred is guilty of murdering his wife halfway through the movie. The audience just has a hard time figuring out what it all means and what to make of it.
To me it is an utter psychological essay into the workings of the mind of a guilty man who suppresses his guilt. No mystery, but an exploration of the mind.
There is strong evidence to support the idea that the whole "Pete" angle is the fantasy of an impotent, sexually frustrated wife-murderer who casts a young stud who beds multiple women as his idealized self in a "dream" where he suppresses his own guilt. That the woman who leads his idealized younger self to ruin is the same woman Fred is married to, murdered and suspected of being unfaithful is telling.
Furthermore, I've never understood why a large percentage of posters on the boards for Lynch's films feel the need to try to put everything into a tidy little box and literalize everything they see. Films can use images, sounds, scenarios, etc., to suggest meaning without making it literal in the, "This happened because this" and "That means this" senses and so on. If you stop trying to "figure out" everything all the time you may find that you can simply enjoy things more for what they are rather than disliking them for not being what you want them to be.
This is in fact a very, very good movie. That you feel it's a failure because it doesn't conform to your ideas of a "mystery movie" says more about you as a viewer than it does about Lost Highway as a film.
OP - Maybe you watched it in the wrong setting.
Lynch films are dark, sensory experiences and stream of consciousness seeming. Best not to look for literal interpretations. These films exist to stir your gut and make your imagination turn on you.
Watch this film by yourself at 2AM. THEN tell us you don't feel it.
I agree with your thoughts on Lynch's films, but please don't reply to my post unless you intend to respond to it. If you wanted to address the OP you should have clicked the reply button in his initial post. I hate to sound like a know it all, it's just that I receive emails when people respond to my posts and when they aren't actual replies to my posts but rather to someone else it's kind of annoying.
share"There is no mystery in this film. If there was, someone would have announced the revelation in all these 18 years".
So mystery is only mystery when it's demystified or "revealed"? Interesting logic.
"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan