MovieChat Forums > Lost Highway (1997) Discussion > Does the first segment realy depict real...

Does the first segment realy depict reality?

posted 10 years ago by Erniesam
4 replies | jump to latest

First let me state my overall interpretation of this movie briefly. I believe the first segment contains a weak suppression by Fred of his guilt of murdering his wife, while the second segment contains a strong suppression (fueled by the sleeping medication). The middle part in jail is reality. I assume some people may disagree with this. I only state this as to give an impression of where I stand.

Now if one believes the first segment is indeed fantasy, like I do, how can we be certain about the truthfullness of it? We understand Fred creates these fantasies to suppress his feelings of guilt, so why should we believe anything he comes up with? For instance, wouldn't it be logical to assume that Fred makes himself believe that he had reason to kill Renee by making her go cheating on him? We have no evidence Renee actually was cheating on him, let alone she did porn movies. What strikes me is that everything in this first segment pleads for Fred himself: there are lots of excuses for him that would count as extenuating circumstances. Since it is the fantasy of Fred himself we never actually get to know what the real reasons for this murder were since we can assume that Fred tends to be biased towards himself.

So was there realy a Dick Laurent? If so was he indeed a porn director or was he the man Renee cheated with (if at all)? In short: what exactly can we believe in these fantasies of Fred. Everything points toward Renee doing porn, but couldn't this just be Fred's depiction of her cheating? Or maybe even his jealousy bordering on paranoia towards his wife? My view is that we can never be sure about the real reasons behind the murder. Moreover, we cannot trust the narrative of Fred's fantasies so that many questions we might have be left unanswered.

[–] franzkabuki 10 years ago

What can I say... don't believe it's a fantasy, then; why would one assume that, anyways? And what would otherwise be the point of carefully laying out the themes of paranoia, jealousy, impotence and male rage as Lynch is doing there, throwing all of it out in favour of... what, exactly? After all, it's him that made the movie, not some feeble minded Fred Madison gone cuckoo. And I think the first segment works perfectly well as a distorted, abstracted version of the events leading up to murder of Renee. The film's undeniably in synch with Fred's thought/fantasy patterns, but that shouldn't necessarily be taken to mean everything is literally "in his head".

facts are stupid things - Ronald Reagan

[–] Erniesam 10 years ago

I can see your point about the first segment being a distorted, abstracted version of the events leading up to the murder. My problem with it however is that many things seem to be in reverse instead of going to the murder. By this I mean that it seems to me that the beginning of this segment is "far away from the murder" while it goes back in time that takes us back to the murder that already has taken place. For instance: Renee tells the detectives that they do not use the alarm anymore yet several scenes later we see Fred entering the house and turning off the alarm. So this indicates that this segment is moving backwards in time, which means the murder already has taken place and we can view this segment as leading BACKWARDS to the murder. Hence this segment must be fantasy.

[–] raimund-berger 10 years ago

they do not use the alarm anymore yet several scenes later we see Fred entering the house and turning off the alarm

The detective told them to consider using the alarm again, that's why.

Otherwise I agree though. The first segment very much looks like a flashback to the events leading up to the murder, as Fred chooses to "remember" them presumably while being investigated by the cops already. The key scene here obviously is the jump cut from him watching the last tape to being smacked into the face. A cut that could be seen as a jump forward in time but much more likely is a jump out of the flashback, i.e. out of Fred's mind. There's just too much forward knowledge packed into that segment. Like the cops being so investigative about "the other bedroom", meaning the bedroom where they had found Renee's mutilated body of course, among other stuff.

[–] babuandbabu 10 years ago

There was no reality. The whole thing was inside Fred's head. The first sequence was a memory flashback while the second was imagination/dream.

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