Lost Highway’s introduction seemed to have a classic peg but was erratic as well. Everything was dark and you could only see what the headlights allowed you to.
At the very beginning of the film there was a sense of distress and trouble. When someone said “Dick Laurent is dead,” I didn’t expect the film to be so blunt from the start, The main protagonist, Fred Madison, gave me the impression of someone who had this weird darkness about him, especially with his psychotic actions throughout the first few scenes.
When the scene cuts to his performance at the jazz disco(?), I remember thinking how intense it was. I play the saxophone, I know how emotional and into the music one could get. But this was the most intense I have ever seen someone play. It was as if his saxophone was an electric guitar at a rock concert. And the way one would play like that.. I mean, you would definitely lose some brain cells or pop a vain.
The way the movie portrayed Fred in terms of cinematography, lighting sound effects, positions, and shadows frame him as a murderer. A mentally unstable character, one you’d want to give the benefit of the doubt to, but sense his overall eeriness. At first, it looks as if he was a murderer r dark person but as the plot unveils it’s as if there was a dark being hovering over him or following him. This darkness, I later gathered was probably the personification of a psychotic mental illness. Especially when this ‘darkness’ suddenly had a face. This creepy pale faced old man, flashed during Fred’s love scene with his wife, and then shows up at the party claiming he was at Fred’s home.
Overall, this movie was creepy, eerie, but interesting, I believe it plays with the subjects on mental health and I enjoyed the film after seeing it more than while it was still playing. It gives you something, well lots of things, to think about and puts an interesting twist in mental health films. And to quote the person who made the most sense in the movie, there’s “some spooky shit,” happening here.
#162210 #LostHighway #SpookyShit
Elements of Screen Arts (2019) 