After an interminable five-year gap between films, Lynch's latest finally appeared in theaters in early 1997, and the semi-good news for him was that critics didn't pan it outright this time. Notices were mixed though, largely because most viewers weren't really sure how to put the jigsaw pieces together. In a rare instance of clarification, Lynch explained that the OJ Simpson trial was a major inspiration for his and Gifford's mystery and that the film functions as a sort of filmic fugue--a fugue being a piece of music in which one instrument introduces a melodic theme and another develops on that. Suddenly all that nonsense in which a homicidally jealous sax player (Bill Pullman) murders his wife (Patricia Arquette) only to wake up on death row as a younger man (Balthazar Getty) without such legal/moral problems starts to make a lot more sense.
Upon its release, Lost Highway introduced a revolutionary new storytelling device into Lynch's body of work: a character in deep trouble attempts to escape into a fantasy life as a far less troubled person but ultimately fails to keep up the dream. When Lynch went back to this well just four years after Lost Highway, he ran the risk of accusations that he was merely repeating himself (and not for the first time). The thing is, Mulholland Dr. improves on Lost Highway in almost every conceivable way. The acting is not only stronger but features one of the all-time great film performances, thanks to Naomi Watts's shape-shifting. The cold characters of Lost Highway, who are almost impossible to care about even when Getty is playing an ostensibly more appealing version of Pullman's iteration of the main character, are replaced with an irresistible cast (Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller, etc.), which makes the ultimate twist sting much harder. The sleazy, exploitative tone of Lost Highway becomes romantic and sexy. Whereas much of Lost Highway's music is dated to 1997 in the worst way (David Bowie's track is fabulous, but Marilyn Manson and Rammstein? Yuck), Mulholland Dr.'s is elegant and timeless.
In a way, Lynch made Lost Highway irrelevant with Mulholland Dr., but there are still some truly unforgettable sequences in the film, such as Robert Blake's first appearance as the eyebrow-deprived Mystery Man, Robert Loggia's hilarious attack on a reckless driver, the almost unbearably intense finale, and a sequence that tricks us into actually caring about the film's icy characters with its perfect placement of This Mortal Coil's stunning "Song of the Siren".
Lost Highway's trip to hi-def traveled a long road in the U.S., but Kino finally released a no frills blu-ray in 2019. Lynch immediately disowned that disc because it used inferior elements. Considering that he had already hooked up with the Criterion Collection for excellent blu-ray releases of Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, it was clear where his heart lied.
Three years later, Lynch's wishes are finally granted as Lost Highway enters the Criterion Collection. Truth be told, the Kino release didn't look terrible, but the Criterion one is significantly sharper. It is also brighter than Kino's, revealing more details but perhaps feeling a little less faithful to the film's noir spirit.
In contrast to Kino's bare bones disc, Criterion fattens its out with Toby Keeler's 1997 doc Pretty As a Picture: The Art of David Lynch, an excellent overview of Lynch's career up to the point and an unprecedented peek at the artist at work. There are also a couple of other short, period making-of featurettes and a 45 minute, Lost Highway-centric excerpt from the audiobook of Lynch's autobiography Room to Dream read by him and co-author Kristine McKenna. While there are 15 minutes of outtakes from Pretty As a Picture, there are none from the main feature, which is a bit disappointing since some scenes were cut from the final film. A text excerpt from Chris Rodley's interview book Lynch on Lynch rounds out what will likely stand as the definitive Blu-ray release of Lost Highway.
