Film Review | Lost Highway (1997)

There are, in general, two ways to watch a David Lynch film. The first is to see it as a puzzle: something to be worked out, picked apart, theorised about and ultimately solved. This is a dangerous route to take, because if Lynch's films are puzzles then there is almost certainly more than one way to "solve" most of them, and it's almost never clear which (if any) is the way Lynch intended them to be pieced together. The second way to watch Lynch's work is to see them as pure art - leave the intricacies, the conundrums and the enigmas, and just let a surrealist tsunami engulf you.

Reviewing a David Lynch film therefore needs to take in both perspectives, and with Lost Highway there's a lot you can say about both. As a cinematic riddle, this is one of Lynch's most accomplished head-scratchers. The key is to be found in a line Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) says near the start of the film: "I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them, not necessarily the way they happened". Much of Lost Highway is undoubtedly seen from Fred's point of view, which begs the question of exactly how much of what we're seeing is "what actually happened" and how much is purely Fred's perspective. Things get even more complex when Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty) enters the story; how he's linked to Madison is never fully explained by Lynch, allowing each viewer to come to their own conclusions.

As an artistic work, this is up there with Lynch's very best. The director gets the best out of his whole cast; particularly noteworthy are Patricia Arquette in a femmes fatale dual role, and Robert Blake as one of the most genuinely unsettling and chilling characters you're likely to ever encounter on screen. Lynch's bizarre genius is on show throughout the film, with the first truly mind-bending meeting between Pullman and Blake's characters likely to stay with you for a long time to come. As you'd expect from Lynch, his choice of camera angles and cinematography is consistently individual and expertly constructed lending Lost Highway an ethereal and irresistable nightmarish quality.

Lost Highway feels like the natural predecessor to 2001's Mulholland Drive. It's almost like the director was refining here the methods and tone presented in the later work. Despite its many strengths, Lost Highway isn't perfect largely because, despite the clear craft and artistry that has gone into its creation, it is quite regularly almost too obtuse and indecipherable to truly enjoy. There'll undoubtedly be several moments throughout where you'll have to be honest with yourself and admit that, even if you're captivated by Lynch's film, you have very little idea of what's actually going on. But in many ways, that's the beauty of the work of David Lynch: it can leave you completely bewildered and at the same time entirely certain that what you're watching is utterly brilliant.

8/10

Film Review | Blood Simple (1984)

Talk about a "Coen Brothers film" today and many things come to mind - so many in fact that it's difficult to pin down precisely what the ingredients of a film from the minds of Ethan and Joel Coen actually are. Their films will be different experiences for each individual; to my mind, the best Coen Brothers films take any genre that the brothers wish to tackle, shoot it through with a smart story, uncannily authentic characters and wickedly dark humour, and present the whole thing in an offbeat and eccentric style. Blood Simple, the debut feature by Joel and Ethan (credited as director and producer respectively, but in reality sharing the roles intrinsically), contains a great many of these features with varying degrees of success, as well as a handful of flaws rarely seen in the brothers' later works.

Blood Simple is the Coens' take on the neo-noir genre, focusing on the seedy criminal proceedings of a small group of people. This is one of the film's key strengths, as each character is given plenty of opportunity to be fleshed out on screen. The cast are comprehensively strong: Dan Hedaya and M. Emmet Walsh are fantastic as sleazy bar owner Marty and even sleazier private-eye-cum-hitman Visser respectively; Frances McDormand as Marty's unfaithful wife Abby captivates in a mature and expert performance which belies this being her feature debut; only John Getz feels like something of a weak link as Ray, Abby's lover, putting in a performance which never feels up to the standard of the rest of the cast.

The film oozes '80s film noir style, with the Coens never missing an opportunity to have stylish cinematography drip from every frame. The use of camera angles throughout is startlingly individual, and the choices of setting and lighting constantly give the film a satisfying claustrophobic and oppressive feel. The pace of the film is never fast, at some points feeling steady and controlled but at others just feeling intolerably slow, not something which I've ever found to be a problem in the Coen Brothers' later works. The story suffers from the same problem: some scenes benefit from the slow pacing, allowing atmosphere and character to develop, but during others you just wish they'd get on with it. It's a good forty minutes or so into the film before the story actually begins moving forwards.

Ultimately a product of both the time in which it was made and the point in their careers at which the Coen Brothers made it, Blood Simple remains (despite a few missteps) a highly crafted and enjoyable watch. It's a film which indicates the fantastic cinema the pair would create during their career in the thirty or so years following its release, with bold and individual creative and artistic flair throughout that you can't help but be impressed by.

8/10