At the start of this year, we lost one of cinema’s most singular visionaries—the incomparable David Lynch. Few filmmakers have come close to matching the feeling that David can so easily evoke in the moving image, though there have been countless, less successful, imitators over the years. While he may not have had mainstream appeal or success, he did maintain a high degree of respect and status among critics and, of course, his loving fans.
With well-known titles ranging from Eraserhead (1977), Twin Peaks (1990-1991, 2017), and Mulholland Drive (2001), Lynch carved out a legacy in the cult world of surrealism and he never looked back. Fans and critics alike have spent endless hours online, and in person, mulling over the smallest details of his films, postulating what meanings might be inferred. David himself offered none.
As a fan of his work myself, I’ve often bounced between different films of his as “my favorite,” which typically matched closely with whichever one I recently watched and maybe understood. I used to tell everyone to watch Mulholland Drive and to watch it at least three times. It felt like a favorite, if only because it continued to mystify me every time I revisited it. But a few years ago, a 4K restoration was made of his film, Lost Highway (1997), and I caught a screening of it with a couple friends at the IFC Center here in NYC. It was my first time seeing the film, despite many years of being a fan of David’s work.
After that first screening, I didn’t know what to think. I certainly enjoyed it—it was full of all the sex and humor and outlandish ideas that color a lot of his work. But I didn’t know what the hell was going on. My friends and I walked over to Washington Square Park after the film and stood there mulling it over together for quite some time. This film, out of all of David’s work, often gets framed as a “puzzle” or “dream logic” that makes it hard to grasp fully. It’s long been treated as one of his most impenetrable works.
A year or two after this initial screening, I ended up buying the Criterion Collection Blu-ray of the film so that I could watch it again at home. For whatever reason, this rewatch felt like the secrets of the universe were revealed to me and everything about the film clicked. I laughed at myself a bit, thinking: “you dummy! It’s really not hard to understand at all! It’s comically straightforward.”
Of course, calling Lost Highway “straightforward” might not sit well with the average viewer. Even among Lynch fans, it’s often cited as one of his most baffling works. It’s full of cryptic transitions, doubled identities, and a narrative that appears to split in two before folding in on itself. That reputation isn’t unearned, but I’d argue it’s also a bit misleading.
To me, the brilliance of the film lies in the fact that it is coherent—it just operates on emotional logic rather than plot logic. The key isn’t to ask “what does it mean?” but “how does it feel?” This is also a helpful tool for approaching most of Lynch’s work in general. It all starts from feeling. Watching it is like entering a closed loop of dread, desire, denial, and guilt. It builds a psychological world, not a literal one. And once you surrender to that, something strange happens: the entire thing begins to make a haunting kind of sense.
It’s a film about what we can’t face. About the elaborate detours we invent to avoid ourselves. But unlike some of Lynch’s other work, Lost Highway doesn’t scatter its clues in the margins. They’re right there in the frame, scene after scene, waiting for you to notice them. You just have to let the film wash over you instead of trying to get ahead of it.
Every film contains its own language—visual and auditory. In Lynch’s world, a hallway can speak louder than dialogue. A blinking light might be a scream. The film is talking and you just have to learn how to listen. The tone of this film is not as chaotic as it may seem on a first viewing. It’s actually quite methodical in its eeriness. From the first frame, you know you’re in Lynch’s world, but you don’t yet know the rules.
A great film generally explains less via character/narrator dialogue and instead conveys meaning and rationality through its images. The first act of a film is typically spent providing the visual language to the viewer so that they may come to understand how subsequent events unfold. This process is done on varying degrees of subtlety. It can feel like subconscious learning or it can feel as blatant as being smacked in the head.
Much of Lynch’s work, and especially Lost Highway, exists in the space of a crushing subtlety but all the pieces are there for comprehension. He uses sensory and emotional language to create a disorientation that feels dreamlike, tense, and charged. The structure of the film is also intentionally circular. It loops and it echoes; it mirrors, doubles, fractures, and gives feedback. Many of the scenes seem to rhyme or repeat with slight changes, similar to déjà vu. It folds in on itself, like a hallway of mirrors where time and identity reflect back distorted.
You might not be able to diagram the film’s plot on a whiteboard after one viewing, but you’ll feel the shape of it in your gut. Start from the premise that David Lynch knows exactly what he’s doing, even if you feel lost. Unlike what has become the trend of recent filmmakers, Lynch is not being weird for the sake of being weird and he’s not trying to shock or purposefully upset his audiences. There is intentionality and the film will feel consistent to you even if you struggle to summarize it.
One of the most striking features of this film, and what is truly a showcase of his artistic talent, is how sound, space, and pacing build unease. The sound design plays a major role in the film and it stretches between ambient sound, abrasive music, and silence. In a similar fashion, Lynch balances the pace of the film between long, slow burns that build dread versus sudden ruptures and explosions. It’s not the jump scares that get you—it’s the silences that stretch just a second too long.
All of this disjointed “narrative” in the film, through the imagery, sound, pacing and structure, completely mirror its emotional subject—a fractured psyche. We don’t just watch someone unravel. We unravel with him. You aren’t confused because the film is messy, you’re disoriented because that’s what the character feels.
I’ve intentionally kept this “review” quite vague because to write out, from the first frame to the last, exactly what is being conveyed I think misses the most important point of watching the film in the first place. It is a kind of journey through madness, a psychological attempt to break free from one’s own consequences, especially around identity, denial, and guilt. That process is not a clean and compact one.
This isn’t a film that can (or should) be understood in a classical linear fashion. That said, I can tell you that the plot of the film could be reduced down to a few simple sentences. It can be that easy to articulate once you let it envelope you. If you still struggle to find its meaning after a few watches, I’d certainly be happy to guide you in a more specific direction. But why take out all the fun of it now? Go sit on your couch, in a dark room, turn the sound up loud, and go for the ride.
Lost Highway has quickly become my true “favorite” David Lynch film. It is the film that I suggest everyone should watch. And they should watch it at least three times. Or however many times it takes for them to “get it.” The exercise here is to push oneself to feel meaning rather than waiting for it to be handed to you. If you can successfully reach that point when watching this film, I think it brings you closer to understanding the power of Art, not just to entertain, but to transcend us into the silent, interior rooms of ourselves that only a film like this could unlock.
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