Lost Highway and Subjective Identity

Ed -Do you own a video camera?
Renee Mason - No. Fred hates them.
Fred - I like to remember things my on way.
Ed - What do you mean by that?
Fred -How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened.

It would be fair to say that I am a fairly long-standing fan of the work of David Lynch, a man who might be named by some, the king of American surrealism. Having watched all of Lynch's works except the infamous Lost Highway numerous times (mainly in order to grasp an understanding of them) one begins to notice a trend within his work toward making movies about making movies. A stance which actively encourages viewers of his films to read the film's message against itself. For example, in Inland Empire we have the idea of the cursed Polish production being told through the medium of film itself. Alongside this we have the suffocatingly disorienting confusion between what we believe to be the actual movie script, with the script of the fictional movie, which is being filmed within the film. However, to take a step back, we realise that there is no confusion at all, because Lynch has intended for the script to act in this way. What I'm trying to say is, to gain meaning we must take a step back, out of the layers of film. Mulholland Drive also demonstrated this layering effect with Naomi Watts' character (Betty/Diane) playing the role of an aspiring actor, Justin Theroux's character as a director, and a whole host of peripheral characters working on film sets, where the mark at which we place reality becomes lost. I was, then, fairly unsurprised to find Lost Highway addressing similar issues. After a single viewing I cannot claim to have come anywhere near unravelling the many mysteries and layers of the movie, but one thing I have taken away stems from the quote above. Relatively near to the beginning of the film Fred admits to a police detective that he does not like video cameras, he prefers to "remember things [his] own way" explaining that his own memory of things would therefore not, neccessarily, be synonymous with the general consensus of 'history', and past events - the objective history. Throughout the movie there is a confusion of identities. Our protagonist Fred, somehow transforms into another person, Al, who then acts out what we could (feasibly) assume to be a warped account of his past. Similarly Fred's wife Renee seems to shift her identity, becoming Alice Wakefield, the fancy woman of a kingpin. This masking and switching of identity seems to be linked to the idea of subjective, or personal memory, and the idea that history is not completely unchangeable, but, rather, amorphous and impressionable. Once this transformation of identity takes place, we enter into an unpredictable internal world, where objectivity becomes an obselete and, in fact, impossible stance. Instead characters become for themselves, and for others, who they want them to be. Our own faith in the objectivity of film clashes violently with the subjectivity of the characters, who attempt to sabotage what we would perhaps label the 'rational' in favour of the irrational and internal rule of the mind. We are presented with a clash between the subjectivity of human life, and the objective classification enacted by machine. We find, then, that only when the movie's disconcertingly creepy "Mystery Man" comes along with his camera, does Al, Fred's alter-ego, or adpoted identity begin to falter, the subjective construction of 'reality' crumbles, and objectivity 'history' prevails. Through the medium of the camera Al transforms back into Fred. For me, this moment where through the lens of the video camera things become 'real', presents the only genuine exit from the internal, fictional, world of subjectivity - and promises a re-immersion in a world of the camera, which is once again objective. I guess the movie taught me to perhaps see people through a kind of metaphysical video camera. Where feelings, wishes, desires and the warping and distorting power of the mind is sidelined in favour of an all objective frame of view. Perhaps, by evaluating human relationships through this lense of objectivity one can have a clearer view of things, instead of evaluating things according to subconscious and unplaceable desires which are, perhaps, at work without us realising. Lynch seeks to question us further than this though, about the nature of reality, and the idea that a physical manifestation of a personality may be radically different to the body they inhabit. Similarly we pose ourselves the question of whether there can ever be an objective meaning of objectivity itself, and in essence, whether we can even be sure that there is a shared, and objective view of 'history', and not just a web of subjective realities? But I think I'll leave those big questions for another day, to be answered after another viewing. Nevertheless it cannot be denied that Lynch poses these questions very carefully, encouraging us to think about not just our human relationships, but the trust we put in our own perceptions, and our own constructions of 'reality'. I'm sure that on successive viewings more will be illuminated, and the layers of film will reveal themselves. But for now, adieu!_________________________________________________________
THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.