Part I

Lost Highway
A Critical Analysis

Did you ever really want to know how someone felt?

What are your options? Well, you could ask them how they feel, and then you can listen to what they say. If you're lucky, you'll be able to get a little more by the way they are acting. If you really wanted to know, you'd probably watch them closely... their facial gestures, eye movements, anything that could give you some more insight into what's going on inside their head. But realistically, can you ever really know exactly what they are feeling? Or what they're thinking? And even if they wrote you a letter explaining how they feel, would you be able to then really understand them?

If you were to film the person, you would be able to watch them over and over. You may be able to pick out more and more subtleties in their gestures, but you still cannot experience these emotions as they do.

In the Lost Highway, David Lynch attempts to evade this human barrier that we've all experienced at one time or another. To accomplish this, he employs symbolism in order to allow his viewers to see something that is normally intangible, such as a feeling or emotion. In the Lost Highway, Lynch's creative use of symbolism allows the audience to actually see the thoughts of a man who has gone insane!

Another problem with trying to determine the way someone else feels, regardless of how they communicate, is that you might tend to try and see their problems from your point of view. In fact, you have virtually no choice... but wouldn't it be nice if you could not only see what they were thinking, but see it from their point of view?

To allow us to enter the mind of a man who killed his wife is David Lynch's challenge in Lost Highway. However, the situation is much more complicated. As we would expect from Lynch, the movie does not attempt to peer into the mind of an every day, ordinary person. Instead, we are invited to experience reality through the eyes of a formidable and grisly murderer.

Certainly we can not see an emotion. It is intangible. Instead, Lynch shows us these emotions by representing them as characters in the movie. Thus, many of the characters in the movie are actually symbolic of emotions. In other words, a seemingly corrupt and evil character may not actually be a person, but instead a symbolic representation of a feeling or emotion that is corrupt in and of itself. Or, this "person" may represent a feeling that Fred sees in an evil light; something that he does not approve of. Whereas there are other characters that might appear in Fred's thoughts that seem to be very attractive to him. In fact, maybe to the point that he becomes obsessed with them. This character, then, might represent a strong feeling of desire, or temptation in Fred. Thus these characters are but marionettes. However instead of strings, their behavior and ultimate destiny are controlled by Fred's distorted and constantly changing emotions.

Be careful though! There is an interesting twist to this. Because we are viewing these "people" through the demented mind of a murderer, we can never know for sure whether they are real people that Fred is remembering or merely symbols that represent his emotions (as described in the paragraph above). It is this that makes Lost Highway as much a visual philosophy as it is story.

Please see the Symbolism in Lost Highway page for details on how I've interpreted these characters.

Most everything we see in Lost Highway is actually shown from the point of view of Fred Madison's deranged mind. Consequently, true reality, as it were, is virtually hidden. The viewer is therefore left to discover the truth, being only given a distorted view of it. To put this in perspective, attempting to figure out what is going on in reality in the movie is like having 20/20 vision, but instead trying to read an eye chart with George Burns' thick glasses (the ones that make his eyes look really big)!!!

You will probably notice that events sometimes appear not to occur in the correct time order. Further, after watching the movie a few times (if you can survive that), you'll probably notice some interesting (and very twisted!) connections between events (especially if you read this page!). Just remember, you're viewing things through the eyes of insanity. You can read more about these odd twists on the Lost Highway Tidbits Page.

Driving the Lost Highway
The Attempt to Escape Reality

"Sometime during the shooting, the unit publicist was
reading up on different types of mental illness, and she hit
upon this thing called "psychogenic fugue." The person
suffering from it creates in their mind a completely new
identity, new friends, new home, new everything - they
forget their past identity. This has reverberations with Lost
Highway, and it's also a musical term. A fugue starts off
one way, takes up on another direction, and then comes
back to the original, so it [relates] to the form of the film."

                                                                                        -David Lynch

The Lost Highway is a story depicted through the mind of a man who can not accept what he has done, and as a result who he is. The brutal murder of his wife is proof that Fred Madison is a seriously deranged man. It is this sort of insanity that allows Fred to not only kill a human being, but then to enter a state of denial as a way to escape reality... or at least try to.

As Fred Madison explains, he hates video cameras because he " likes to remember things [his] own way ... He remembers how he wants to remember, not necessarily how it happened". As a result, Fred must somehow exist in two worlds. Physically, he has no choice but to live in reality. However, in his mind he experiences the world as he wishes to remember it. Because he cannot accept reality, he chooses to live within this "new identity" in his mind... the result of which creates a dual identity. Within this new identity, Fred creates a world that he can control. He thus attempts to recreate his past in a way that he can accept.

Fred's deranged state of mind becomes clear. He is convinced that by choosing to live in this self-made "new identity" he can completely escape reality. Now... wouldn't that be nice? If we could just escape reality whenever we didn't want to deal with the consequences of our mistakes? Ahh.... if only it were that easy!

So what happens to those emotions Fred attempts to leave behind in the real world such as his confusion, pain, anger, guilt, and jealousy (just to name a few)? Well, as would be expected, they inevitably work their way into his conscience mind, thus ultimately affecting him. However, as explained previously, these emotions appear instead as "people" that Fred must deal with in his new identity. The way in which he deals with these people is analogous to how he would deal with the emotions in real life. When it becomes too difficult for Fred to block out reality, his only escape is to create another new identity. Each time, his identity becomes less connected to reality... even to the point that he sees himself as another person entirely!

As you watch the movie, notice how at the start of each new identity life appears ideal; all seems good, and there aren't many problems. Once his emotions start to build up inside of him, Fred must deal with them, symbolically, through the "people" in his new life.  The more difficult emotions as people that are hard for Fred to deal with, and the strong emotions as people who tend to have a lot of power over his life.

As the movie progresses, Fred's desperate, continuing attempts to "avoid" reality only serve to take him increasingly further from reality. As such, the movie becomes increasingly chaotic as it progresses. And although Fred will never break his connection with reality, his views and memories ultimately become so distorted that he becomes lost forever in his world of denial; taking the audience with him.

Ironically, In his attempt to escape his imprisonment in reality, Fred becomes permanently imprisoned in a world of denial... forever driving the Lost Highway in search of an escape that does not exist.

Go on to Room 2 (Symbolism in the Lost Highway)
Go to the "Lost Highway Explained" main page
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