I just ended my personal David Lynch marathon, concluding with the just released DVD of
Lost Highway, something I never did before with that director. With all of his works very fresh in my mind right now, I have to admit that
Lost Highway floored me completely and the most of them all. Not only it's the most gorgeous looking film of all Lynch films, it's also the most fluid, the most seamless. Not a single scene wasted. As much as I love
Mulholland Dr. and
INLAND EMPIRE, I feel they are 15 or 20 minutes too long. As someone who has seen those two films more than 5 times, the first half gets unfortunately duller every viewing - for
Mulholland, the film starts for me when the women meets the corpse and for I
NLAND, when Sue meets the whores. But for
Lost Highway, the buildup is just as slow but it's still so creepy and riveting every time. The directing of
Lost Highway is very wonderfully, brilliantly tight. For those of you whose memories of
Lost Highway have faded, I suggest you to revisit its highway very much.
My recent experience with
Blue Velvet was 360 degree different from my first experience in 1987 when I was still in high school. It has become so ordinary to me now. Very strange to be saying about a film that once destroyed me, also that once I was obsessed with for a long time. That can't be good. (
The Exorcist destroyed me when I was 4 years old and it still does today! )
I never imagined
Lost Highway to affect me emotionally. It was flat to me when I first saw it more than ten years ago but now all I want to do is to cry for Fred! Fred getting fried dissolving into an empty dark road really hit me hard for some reason.
My next favorite is
Fire Walk With Me. God, that film bursts with incredible empathy - so boundless that makes
Mulholland and
INLAND (just as much the story of a woman in trouble as
FWWM) seem more constrained.
Stay tuned for more thoughts.