Lost Highway

"I had a dream about you last night."

Written by Barry Gilford and David Lynch. Directed by David Lynch. 1997.

"I like to remember things my own way," says Fred. "How I remember them, not necessarily the way they happened." Seems that's the key to figuring out the enigma of Lost Highway. You might say Lynch was working out an idea here that he would perfect in Mulholland Dr.: the murder of one's lover and the rationalizing fantasy that follows (only, in Mulholland Dr., the fantasy comes first and the murder is the reveal). Here, instead of killing himself afterward, Bill Pullman ends up in jail, and in jail he breaks from reality, is reborn innocent (complete with new body and identity), and proceeds to reconstruct the pieces of his past in order to justify the murders he's committed -- his wife's and her lover's, a man named Dick Laurent, aka Mr. Eddy. Or is Mr. Eddy, like platinum-blonde Alice, just a fantasy, substituting for Andy (Eddy/Andy), whom Pullman suspected of cheating with his wife at the beginning of the film (it's hinted at that he discovers their infidelity in room 26 of the mysterious Lost Highway Hotel)? Either way, the video camera wielded by creepy Robert Blake is a lot like the little blue box and key in Mulholland Dr. It's the signifier of memory, one that Fred ultimately rejects in favor of his own re-creation. It's creepy as hell.

Also: nobody makes sunshine and breezes as frightening as David Lynch.

Mulholland Dr.

"I had a dream about this place."

Written and directed by David Lynch. 2001.

Mulholland Dr. is a movie about Hollywood. As such, it fits snugly into a category of films that's one of my favorites: the dream factory dreaming of itself. Lynch's major entry into this sub-genre is specifically about achieving some sense of identity in a place that subverts identity on a regular basis, promoting some to stardom and discarding others. For Diane, one of the discarded, it's about wish-fulfillment, dreams come true. Which is, in the end, if not reality, Hollywood. All the rest -- magic keys and scary old people and dimly lit apartments -- are just the trappings of truth.

Magnolia

"The book says, 'We might be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'"

Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. 1999.

Magnolia gets heat for being long, but I don't think so. For me, it's more like spending three hours (or, if you go by the movie's timeline, one rainy day) in the company of interesting and sometimes horrible people (in other words: people). For your consideration: Anderson's adept handling of mise en scene, the camera's movement, the lighting, the editing -- all top notch. Also, the way the rain beads on Officer Jim's uniform. The sequence in Claudia's apartment -- when Jim responds to a "disturbance" -- remains one of the most endearing things I've seen on film.  As for those much-maligned frogs, well, there are foreshadowings throughout the movie, glimpses of signs bearing a tell-tale verse from Exodus (though they're hardly visible on the small screen), and the entire movie builds toward a revelation of this sort: that there is a power at work in the minutiae of life, that yes, strange things do happen all the time, but not without design. So why frogs? I don't know. And I'm not sure I'm meant to. I like that.