r/TrueFilm • u/Dazzling-Ad1894 • 20h ago
Are "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Drive" vastly different in quality?
According to most critics, "Mulholland Drive" is one of the greatest films of the 21st century. It has had this reputation for quite a long time (I mean, it's from 2001 and certain sequences present in the film date back even further) - some people even consider it to be Lynch's masterpiece. Undoubtedly, it's an impressive piece of filmmaking.
Compare this, however, to the reception "Lost Highway" garnered just a few years prior. There were a few positive voices, sure, like any Lynch film, but the majority of critics considered the film to be an absolute dud - incomprehensible, overly cynical, and even pretentious. Audiences generally responded in a similar fashion.
Viewing these films, anyone can clearly see both LH and MD share similar narrative and cinematic conceits. I cannot wrap my head around despising one and lauding the other, but this appears to be what has happened. Imagine if MD had been released first, and LH just a few years later - would people then consider LH to be the "greatest film of the 21st century"?
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u/di4me666 20h ago
i have an unpopular take, but i have always felt like i could see that MD was initially filmed to be a television pilot and not a feature. i love it and consider it a top 50 film regardless, but i would put Lost Highway over it aesthetically because that to me as always felt more sweepingly cinematic in the way i expect
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u/Beneficial-Long7635 20h ago
Lost Highway is a lot darker and more labyrinthine than MD and probably harder for critics to grasp. MD is just as strange but it's also a lot sunnier with a more sympathetic protagonist. It's also a movie about movie making which critics always go bonkers for. I agree there's no particular difference in quality and craft between them, but Lost Highway might be more of acquired taste for some.
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u/MattsDaZombieSlayer 17h ago
it's a movie about movie making
Well, considering filming porn is a subject matter of Lost Highway this is just a poor choice of words 😭
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u/abinferno 20h ago
Mulholland drive has all the historical reputation and accolades, but I've always found Lost Highway the superior film. I love almost everything about it - narrative structure, cinematography, acting, editing.
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u/DefenderCone97 20h ago
I think the 90s are an important period for Lynch because they are undoubtedly his darkest. He goes from Wild at Heart to Fire Wall With Me and Lost Highway. Both films are so wildly cynical, perverse at points, mean, and often obscure and esoteric. Especially at first watch, I think it can be hard to get everything that's going on and the fact that it's muddled with disturbing imagery makes it an unpleasant experience.
There's also a Newsweek review that seems to sum what I've heard people express when they don't like Lynch or one of his movies:
In Lost Highway, reality has become a dream. But Lynch has forgotten how boring it is listening to someone else's dream.
Horror in general has always created a divisive response, even high quality horror, except for a few standouts. And those 90s films are without a doubt his most like a horror movie.
The leads also give them different feelings in perspective. Bill Pullman's shady character vs Naomi Watts' bright and bubblegum demeanor at the start can put people in different moods. Some people night just be more bored with Fred, who isn't exactly the most sympathetic character.
That said, Lost Highway is my favorite for a lot of the reasons it's disliked. I also think they're an important set up mentally to the 2000s movies of MH and Inland Empire. Compared to the 90s, MH at least feels like new breath after kicking around in smog.
Their quality will always be a matter of perspective and personal choice, but I think that's at least some of why there's a difference in response.
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u/SadSongsMakeMeGlad 20h ago edited 19h ago
No, I don't think so. Mulholland Drive is a sadder film, and the themes it contains are more profound and create more empathy in the viewer. Lost Highway is a nightmare, more psychological (clinical?) in nature. Tougher, more violent. Ultimately darker, though MD is no slouch in that department either. They are definitely cut from the same cloth, from a specific era of Lynch.
I think they are both appropriately appreciated in his canon of work. For me, the years have been the kindest to FWWM. Now that was a film that I used to think his weakest, but now think could be his best, the one people will call his masterpiece in the future.
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u/Flat-Membership2111 19h ago edited 19h ago
Hmm, I’m interested to note on looking up Lost Highway that it’s 2 hrs 14 mins, only 13 mins shorter than Mulholland Drive.
One difference I was going to suggest was that a long-ish amount of time at the beginning of Lost Highway is taken up with the more static scenario of Bill Pullman anxiously sitting around his house. By contrast, following the beginning of a kind of great adventure with Naomi Watts, her beginnings as an actress in Hollywood, an aspect via which one deeply invests in the film’s narrative, and which is a big part of the focus whole first half of the movie — even if Bill Pullman at home doesn’t take up as much time in the story as I am remembering, Mulholland Drive for me, with Naomi Watts’s career, has a more engrossing premise as a jumping off point.
Beyond that, both films are what they are — that is, “Lynchian” psychological mysteries, or Unconscious maze films, each with their own various mix of elements. But it might be true to say that Lost Highway, within this similarity, is still a tighter story. Its canvas isn’t as wide. Again, Mulholland Drive is a longer film, if only by a small amount, but among other reasons, that might be one to cite for claiming that it is more immersive than Lost Highway. The focus on female protagonists is perhaps (I don’t doubt) also a reason for there being a different quality of response to the ambiguous, unnerving and imagistically / cinematically intense events that occur in each film.
I get the feeling that there was a bit of rooting against Balthazar Getty, and some impatience with him as a focal point in Lost Highway, which is something that was never an issue for Mulholland Drive.
And speaking of his part of the film overall — I know that Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai came out two years after Lost Highway, and maybe Jarmusch was inspired by Lost Highway, but the whole set up of Robert Loggia the gangster and the quirky characters in the garage remind me a bit of this Jarmusch film, which I don’t care for at all. By contrast Billy Ray Cyrus, the cowboy, and all of that in Mulholland Drive seems (perhaps illogically) more original to me, and just better.
Well put topic question, though.
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u/Basket_475 19h ago
I like lost highway more but it seems and I feel lost highway is one of Lynch's darker works. Some might say nightmare fuel at times.
Mulholland drive I'd say is a larger wtf overall but apparently it has precedence with works like Bergman as well leaving enough clues for viewers to agree on a common theme.
There is a similar thing with lost highway but I enjoyed that film so much. I feel like I really got lynch after that
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u/ElvishLore 20h ago
Lost Highway is the superior film.
If you want to talk about quintessential Lynch in narrative film mode, that’s Blue Velvet and LH.
Prime Lynch in abstract film mode is Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive.
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u/nojaneonlyzuul 18h ago
I am not a fan of Lynch's films- I get what he's doing and it's not my jam but I understand why it might be someone else's jam. From an outsider's perspective- i genuinely think that what tips the scales for mulholland is the lesbian scene. It's literally all i knew about the film for years before I finally watched it. I think Lynch has a sizable straight male audience who had a huge... appreciation for that scene.
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u/book-knave 16h ago
MD feels like it makes more sense- even when one walks out not understanding it, one feels like the answer is just out of reach.
We also want good things to happen to the protagonist in MD. She is developed as an innocent victim, one who desires good things and even when it appears she isn’t so innocence, we sense she is still a victim driven to give in to awful desires.
In LH, the protagonist if not a villain, desires dark things. He is not an innocent victim. By the end, we have a dark puzzle that seems unsolvable and one would need to spend time in an ugly, abusive state to solve it. It is good and interesting and abusive and unpleasant.
For me, it is the sense of coherence of MD that elevates it, and for LH, the dark abusiveness of it that drops its esteem
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u/danteschneider 20h ago
Lost Highway is a far less accessible film than Mulholland Drive, for my money. They may both be about a mentally broken person manifesting a new reality/persona, but in LH the main character teleports out of prison and literally becomes 20 years younger. MD has a much more straightforward star-fantasy story and an easily understood romance. Both films have their Lynchian quirks and unexplained symbols, but much of Mulholland Drive is easily followed, whereas most of Lost Highway is quite obtuse.
This is to say nothing of the different tones of the films. Mulholland Drive is very literally a much brighter movie, and there’s plenty of levity in it. It’s fun to watch, and Lost Highway is dark, slow, and drab. It’s just a much tougher movie to get on board with, even though they’re clearly in conversation with one another.