Lost Highway

**Rewatched this today in memory of David Lynch, RIP to one of the best directors of all time.  ** This movie was suprisingly my first Lynch movie, I was so confused but also blown away. I loved the inability to wrap my head around this movie. No matter how hard I thought about it, I couldn't understand it. Today, in honor of the 1 year passing of David Lynch, i rewatched it. And just when I thought it couldn't get any better, IT DID GET EVEN BETTER. I could finally make some sense of the story and see the most of Lynch's pure geniusness.   Based on my experience and interpretation, Lost Highway is about Fred trying to escape the reality of what he’s done. Fred kills Dick Laurent after realizing that his wife, Renee, has been cheating on him with Laurent / Mr. Eddy and is involved in making porn with him. Overcome by jealousy, humiliation, and loss of control, Fred murders Renee and is sentenced to death. Unable to live with the guilt or accept his punishment, Fred falls into a dream reality. In his fantasy, he transforms into Pete Dayton, a younger, more confident version of himselfx and rewrites the story so that he can take the woman (now Alice) away from Dick Laurent / Mr. Eddy. In this world, Fred is no longer weak or powerless; he is desired, sexually capable, and he does to Laurent what Laurent did to him, take away his girl. However, the fantasy begins to collapse when Pete kills Andy. This act mirrors Fred’s original crime, and from that point on the dream begins to shatter. Reality starts to blend back in, and the illusion fractures completely during the moment when Alice tells Pete, “You’ll never have me.” This line marks the end of the fantasy.  Fred can never truly possess her, just as he never could with Renee.As the dream shatters, Pete dissapears and Fred returns to himself, forced to face the truth he has been trying to escape with this dream. In my opinion, the Mystery Man represents Fred’s darkest, but most honest self, the part of him that knows what he did. He is the murderer, the witness, and the camera itself, documenting the crime and refusing to let it be erased. He is everywhere and on every moment ("We met at your house") and cannot be let go.  The film ends in a loop: Fred delivers the message “Dick Laurent is dead,” being stuck into an endless cycle of denial, fantasy, and dispear. Whether this loop happens in his mind or at the moment of his execution doesn’t matter. The punishment is forever and inescapable. This film will forever be one of my favorites; the visuals, the tension, the dialogue, the acting, the music, the incapability to understand everything, it's all perfect. Thank you David Lynch for this masterpiece.