Written by Filipp Beldushkin
I’m on the highway to hell
Highway to hell “
Chorus of “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC
David Lynch is one of the most celebrated American filmmakers, who entered mass culture primarily with his Twin Peaks TV series. Apart from them, he has also directed ten other films, for one of which (Wild at Heart) David Lynch won Palme d’Or at Cannes, and the other (Mulholland Drive) placed in the top-10 in the 2022 edition of the Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time critics’ poll. Lost Highway (1997) is a film that starts the informal Hollywood trilogy, which is comprised of Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006). They can be considered to be on the more mysterious specter, even when other films by David Lynch are concerned. Before watching Lost Highway, I had already seen some of his films, and while they were engaging and mysterious, they did not blow my mind. Lost Highway is, however, remarkable in that it combines Lynch’s penchant for surrealism, mastery of noir imagery, and adoption of the horror genre.
I am not particularly fond of horror films. They are often done distastefully, even by auteurs (case in point: Radu Jude’s Dracula (2025)). Horror films, by definition of the genre, deal with characters who are connected to the Devil, but directors usually fail to address that in a way the audience can understand and condemn these characters and their behavior. In other words, horror films usually turn into a spectacle of violence in which the audience is invited to revel. Lost Highway is, instead, horrifying largely because we do not really know what is actually going on, as the bodies of the characters change and their doubles appear. What happens in Lost Highway is a big mystery. For that reason, film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the film “two thumbs down”, which Lynch would later tout as “two more great reasons to see” the film. Philosopher Slavoj Žižek has interpreted this film through a psychoanalytic lens (where the shift of bodies is explained by the protagonist’s attempt to escape the fact that he murdered his wife), while the leading actress Patricia Arquette thought of it as a movie about looking at women through the eyes of a misogynist. I generally agree with both of them; however, I think that the film also operates on a deeper plane.
At a party, the protagonist, Fred Madison, encounters a sinister figure called The Mystery Man, who claims to be at Fred’s house at that very moment and proves it by having Fred call his own landline. We later learn that it is The Mystery Man who sets in motion the murders committed by Fred. This unsettling character truly belongs to the entourage of Woland (a.k.a the Devil) in Mikhail Bulgakov’s famous novel The Master and Margarita. Thus, I believe that the Mystery Man in Lost Highway is also the incarnation of the Devil. The “lost” highway is, in my humble opinion, the highway to hell, perfectly in line with the famous AC/DC song.
Fred asks The Mystery Man at the party to leave him alone, yet The Mystery Man replies that Fred asked him to come, and he does not visit someone who does not want it. From a Christian perspective, I think the moral of this film is to make the job for The Mystery Man, a.k.a. the Devil, as hard as possible through actions, words, thoughts, and most importantly, prayers to God and the saints. While David Lynch, being an adherent of Transcendental Meditation, was not really religious (as far as we know), I think there is still a basis for my interpretation of this masterpiece. Either way, I recommend everyone to watch it and figure it out for themselves.