Highway Found

Twenty-five years later, and I finally have an excellent copy of Lost Highway. Yes, my copy of the new Criterion edition arrived in the mail and it's gorgeous.

The release comes with a 4k edition and a regular blu-ray, both approved by director David Lynch. After years of having only a muddy DVD release, I'm overjoyed to have one of the best films by my favourite living filmmaker in my hands. And it lived up to my expectations.

David Lynch directs the best sex scenes in the history of cinema. No other director I can think of quite manages the balance between maintaining a perspective and refraining from becoming dispassionate. They're beautiful scenes and integral to them is the physical beauty of Patricia Arquette and Natasha Gregson Wagner but the point of them never for a moment feels like pure titillation. You're enamoured with Alice and Sheila because Pete/Fred is. Renee is the distant puzzle right in front of you because that's how she is to Fred.

Alice is the Madeleine and Renee is the Judy, to compare Lost Highway to Vertigo. It's another great film that asks how much one's affection for another has to do with one's private conceptions of the other. Hear the horror in Fred's line, "It wasn't you. It looked like you. But it wasn't." It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and seems a relevant topic in Japan, where I gather many couples marry without getting to know each other very well, something that led to the epidemic of "Corona divorces" after married couples were finally forced to spent time alone together. It's a central theme in Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Pete's love scene with Alice in the desert, covered by the harsh headlights of a car, is so beautiful. Maybe the impossible beauty of a dream. Pete may never truly have Alice, but we all may now have a decent copy of Lost Highway.

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The final fight would prove the stalwart three.
About the men there grew a clamour great.
A horde of limbs escaped the devil tree.
Of shaded air the monster rashly ate.
Discreetly burned, the number changed the air.
The soldiers sat and shared a sugar cake.
Possessed of grim resolve the tellers share.
The knife was never hid for kindness' sake.
Our Twitter's come a waiting room for heads.
The checks were blue before the money came.
The checkered shirt defined the blues and reds.
The rugby grids were cold and all the same.
The desert light creates a promised land.
But then the promise fell as scattered sand.