Lost Highway (David Lynch): the meaning of the metamorphosis

‘Lost Highway’ is one of the darkest movie of David Lynch. Like any of his movies, the plot is opened to personal theories and it is enriched in scenes with a hidden meanings. One of the most complex aspect of the movie is the sudden metamorphosis of the main character, Fred. In One moment the main character is in a cell and, a scene later, he is a complete new character, and this last for the next half of the movie.

I will try to give my personal theory regarding this topic, so of course will be heavy SPOILERS.

The metamorphosis scene is fast, chaotic and disturbing, both for the main character and for the viewer. Quick and grotesque images build the path to what will happen next. The main character, a middle aged musician accused of the murder of his wife, is there in the cell, and, after these scenes, a young car mechanic called Peter is now in his place.

The metamorphosis scene is a disturbing succession of several small sequences. Let’s analyse them one by one to have an idea of what is happening.

 

1: the blue light

2: the dark road

3: Peter and the dark road

4: Peter going toward the light

5: the fusion with Peter

6: the pain

7: the hole in the head

 

1. The blue light: before everything, the light will start to blink and turn blue.
2. the lost highway: a car is moving fast in the night. The metamorphosis already started.
3. In one moment, the figure of Peter will be standing in the corner, surrounded by darkness. The perfect match for the metamorphosis is found.
4. The change of Peter. Meanwhile, Peter is with his family and his girlfriend, watching a blue light like if was hypnotised. Everybody is trying to stop him, but he is walking toward the light, like a moth in the night. The metamorphosis is like a bond and the two character are now getting connected.
5. The eyes of Peter are fusing with the blue light, staring at Fred in his cell. Peter is actively fusing with Fred, his eyes are watching inside is mind.
6. The pain. Fred is rolling in pain, with blood on his face, screaming in sufferance. The metamorphosis is a terrible process for the body, a strong and unforgiving experience.
7. The hole. The scene ends with an out of focus close shot of an open wound, probably in the head of Fred. The camera will move inside the hole, symbolising the fusion of Peter and Fred, both in body and mind.

The metamorphosis is gruesome and disturbing, a process of intense pain for the body, which will lost its own identity. But it could be even worse! According to the original script the process would be even more gruesome and disgusting, leaving Fred face as “blank, white mass with eye sockets”.

Here the complete scene from the original screenplay.

INT. PRISON - FRED'S CELL - NIGHT

Fred is still curled on the floor, but spasms begin to rock 
his body.  He goes into convulsions, blood gushes from his 
nostrils.  His head is badly swollen.  Fred vomits repeatedly, 
and drags around in his mess.  Fred turns, straining upwards 
as we've seen him do before.  His face and head are hideously 
deformed.

Fred brings his shaking, tortured hand to his forehead.  He 
pulls his hand down across his face squeezing it as it goes.  
As his hand passes over his face, Fred's features are removed 
leaving a blank, white mass with eye sockets.

We move into the eye sockets and beyond.

 

What is the meaning of the metamorphosis in Lost Highway?

The metamorphosis is a process that brings to a total change of an individual. Sometimes the metamorphosis is necessary to evolve or to become better. A worm that becomes a butterfly is a new reborn individual, now able to fly instead to crawl on the ground. Other times a metamorphosis is the born and the acceptance of a new individual, an evolution toward a set of new behaviours and the developing of a better person.

Let’s now think of what is happening to Fred.

Fred was close to a breakdown caused by his morbid jealousy, which lead to the brutal homicide of his wife.  He was imprisoned for a crime that his mind is not able to accept. Trapped in a confined space, he has no alternative than to face his own crime. But what Fred made is too strong to simply accept it. It is in this moment that his own mind is acting as a defence system, allowing him to avoid to face his crime. This escape mechanism is triggered by the solitude and by the trauma, creating a process such painful and violent.

The metamorphosis of the mind is affecting also the body, but all the process is guided by a perverse jealousy. This is quite evident since the images crossing the mind of Fred before the metamorphosis are the burning house (symbol of rage and passion) and the pale man (embodiment of jealousy). During the metamorphosis, the mind of Fred is travelling through several possibilities, represented by the dark road at night. Between all the multiple bodies and minds in which Fred could be morphed, the final choice is Peter. Why?

Peter is a young man, that do a job based on strength and hates music. He is the total opposite of Fred, and for this reason is a suitable candidate for the escaping metamorphosis. Since the process is anyway guided by the jealousy, the results are not what he was expecting.

The reality of Peter is also the total opposite of the one of Fred. Not only body, behaviour and mind are different, but also their reality. In this new world, Peter is the object of the desire of a woman with the same appearance of the wife of Fred. This time he is “the other”, the lover and the desire of the woman. In this reverse reality, like a joke of the destiny, he is also victim of the jealousy of another man, a dangerous criminal. The mind tried to protect him from the truth, but the joke of the destiny guided by the jealousy is bringing Fred to the other side of the mirror. This time as victim of jealousy. But I will describe more about the representation of the jealousy in a future article, when I will talk about the Pale Man.

At the end of the movie, another gross metamorphosis will take place. Also in this case Fred is trapped. He is followed by many police cars, accused again of terrible crimes. The police is behind him, no way to escape. The mind will try to protect him again by triggering another disturbing metamorphosis. Fred will morph in a deformedcreature, a swollen man without a precise identity going toward another painful metamorphosis. It is happening again.

When trapped at the limit, the mind will try to protect us, but at a high price.

What is the Red Rabbit? (Rabbits – David Lynch)

The Red Rabbit is a mysterious creature featured in Rabbits, a short movie directed by David Lynch. The Red Rabbit is a big, red and disfigured face, visible in the upper left corner of the screen. The creature is half transparent and it speaks in an unknown and mysterious language.

The creature appears without any notice, almost summoned. The mother rabbitis in the room with two candles, standing in the air like a religious ritual. Is she summoning the creature? Is she trying to send it away? The other rabbits are almost frozen, while all the scene is painted in red. The Red Rabbit starts to speak in its weird, monotonous and disturbing language.

But who or what is the Red Rabbit?

As previously explained in a another article in this blog (Waiting for someone that will never come), the meaning of Rabbits is a strong and repressed guiltiness, or just the ignorance, regarding the death of the father of the family, the only character missing. To oversimplify my theory I could just say that the Red Rabbit is the father of the family, or his deceased version. But do not get me wrong, this is a David Lynch movie so the meaning cannot be simply justified by zombies, because the Red Rabbit is more specifically the embodiment of the repressed death of the father. Also worth to notice that the repressed guilt is a common theme in several David Lynch movies, such for example Mulholland Drive.

The Red Rabbit is the ignored truth that tries to speak, to give voice to the death of the father. He speaks, but nobody is able to understand him. Or nobody WANTS to understand him, this is why the language is so incoherent. Because sometime nobody wants to see or listen to the truth. Especially the mother doesn’t want to accept it, that she feels deep in her heart, and also she wants to protect her children from it. For this reason she will always exorcise the Red Rabbit to send it away, to protect her family from the harsh and devastating truth.

The Red Rabbit could look like a horrible and creepy creature, but it can be seen just as a father trying to convince his family to accept his death and to stop to believe in a fake, destructive and artificial hope.

Twin Peaks: the Woodsmen

This new season of Twin Peaks brought new light on old mysteries, while leaving open hundreds of new ones. I will try to avoid crazy speculation and just use more then I can concrete facts but there will be a lot of SPOILERS regarding Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me. I will talk about one specific character, a member of the Black Lodge before almost mute and without any background: the Woodsman.

He first appeared in the Room Above the Convenience Store in the movie Fire Walk With Me. All the names I will use are the original ones used in the original scripts of the movie or in the credits at the end of the episode.

One of them is close to an electrical device producing lights and he is almost devoid of any dialogue. However, there is one strange things about this secondary character. Whoever could do this super secondary role, but David Lynch decided to gave it to a famous actor: Jurgen Prochnow, famous for other roles like in Dune. So, why use a famous actor for such a minor role? Because 25 years after, the Woodsmen are back and now they are one of the most cryptic, creepy and important character of the new Twin Peaks.

Before the episode 3X08, the Woodsmen rarely appeared as dirty and dark figures close to some key characters, like William Hasting, acting as a sort of spies. But in the episode 3X08 all starts to change.

Where to start? Let’s say something: Bob was apparently born from a nuclear explosion in 1945. No jokes, no theories, the date is exactly reported and the scene is very cryptic, in best Lynch style, but also self explanatory. Bob is not so as old as we could imagine, and seems to be younger than “the beginning of time” as reported by is official trading card as birth date.

Before the birth of Bob, the Woodsman is born, or Woodsmen, since they are a multitude. They seem strictly bound to Bob, not only because they born with him but also because they helped him when he was killed in the body of Agent Cooper at the beginning of the episode. The Woodsmen seems to be able to resurrect Bob with a strange ritual involving blood. This event happened twice in the serie, also in the episode 3×17.

But let’s go back in the past. It is 1956, eleven years since the atomic explosion and the birth of Bob. I will avoid theories on what is the frog/cockroach that is born in the desert (maybe Bob?) to focus on the Woodsmen. They are all black and dirty, but this time they are far more creepier and dangerous than the previous season.

There are two main Woodsmen in the new Twin Peaks. One is big and fat, and apparently he is only able to moan and roar like an animal. The other is the most important one and he looks like a creepy and dirty version of Abraham Lincoln.

He also has more lines of dialogues than the other Woodsmen: “Got a light?”. He is scaring everybody in the town asking, with a deep metallic voice, if they have a light for his cigarette. This before becoming violent, assaulting a radio station and smashing the head of two people with his own hands.

While at the radio station, he starts to spread a weird message:

“This is the water and this is the well.

Drink full and descend.

The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within.”

All people listening to this message fall in a sort of sleep or coma. This allows to the frog/cockroach creature to enter in the mouth of a girl sleeping. This is the last duty of the Woodsman, that for now disappears.

We can see the fat Woodsman again when will stealthy crush William Hasting to death, without almost nobody even realize of his presence.

The Woodsmen seems to live in the old gas station, connected to a different level of reality. They also work as a sort of “Keepers of the Thresholds”, protecting the passages to different realities, for example to the Zone, when Gordon was almost caught by a Woodsman when the vortex passage was opening.

The Woodsmen seem to be a sort of minions of the Black Lodge, or of Bob. They are a multitude and they have multiple functions, from controlling people important for Bob to bring him back to life. They also act as a sort of army of the Lodge, attacking and killing humans quickly and without regrets.

Eraserhead Intro: a surreal sex scene

Eraserhead is a pure nightmare centred around the primal fear of becoming a father, more specifically the father of a creature that vaguely remember a baby. The concept of “something wrong is happening” is clearly represented in the first 5 minutes of the movie. A silent introduction symbolizes all the processes of the conception in few minutes, from the sexual act to the birth. From the monstrous aspect of the spermatozoon it is clear that something is not going in the right direction.

Part 1 – Sex: Void but happy the face of the main character is floating around, with a vacuous expression, without any worry. The asteroid is in the background, symbolizing the femininity. The camera starts to zoom inside the surface of the planet, before entering in a mysterious house with a hole in the roof. The sexual act is happening and the protagonist is worried of his own inexperience. Entering the house is the climax of the penetration when all the worries are forgotten.

Part 2 – Deus ex machina: A mysterious man horrible disfigured is sitting in front of a window, with a set of levers close to him. He is waiting for something. He is the man behind the destiny, a bad joke of luck, a bored deus ex machina that decides when something wrong will happen during the conception.

Part 3 – Ejaculation: The face of the protagonist is with the mouth open in a sort of ecstasy. A monstrous creature that looks like an alien spermatozoon crawls from his mouth. This is the moment of the ejaculation, but clearly the spermatozoo is not a standard one, it is a horrible monstrosity.

Part 4 – Fecundation: The horrible man pulls a lever and the deformed spermatozoo starts to move. He then presses a second lever and the creature falls inside a pool of liquid on the surface of the asteroid, the exact moment of the fecundation. The disfigured man guides the moment of the fecundation, deciding the destiny of the spermatozoo, its path and its probabilities of succeed.

Part 5 – Birth: A long tunnel brings to the light. This is the act of the birth. All is concluded with the worried face of the main character. The monstrous spermatozoon will give birth to something not human.

Mulholland Drive: the Cowboy and the Fourth wall

Mulholland Drive is one of my favorite movies, this is sure and obvious. Nobody likes too much weird and too excessive fan-boy theories in general. But what I truly believe is that any movie of David Lynch is a personal experience and sharing interesting theories is the only way to enrich and improve your view.

This time I will talk about the Cowboy, one of the most mysterious characters of Mulholland Drive.

The first time he appears to the director of the movie. In that specific occasion he tells one important thing: “You will see me one more time if you do good. You will see me two more times if you do bad.“

In that moment he is speaking not only to the character, but even directly to the viewer. This is highlighted by the fact that the Cowboy is rarely in the same shot with another character. Even if he is talking with somebody he looks alone, close to speak directly to the camera.

From that point in the movie the cowboy will appear twice.

The first to wake up Betty from the dream. In that episode all is going fine and Betsy is happily waking up. That is the good moment. The viewer is thinking that maybe the movie will lead toward an happy ending.

Sadly we will see the cowboy once more, during the last dinner.

From that point on, all will be bad till the tragic end. Good characters will drastically change in negative ones. The obsession will start to grow.

The cowboy is talking to the viewer about the evolution of the plot of Mulholland Drive. The first time when the ending seems a positive one. The second one when all falls down into a dramatic end.

He is somehow a cryptic storyteller of this dark tale. He is driving the impressions of the viewer about different evolutions of the movie.

A lot of theories could arise from this complex character. There is not a right view inside a David Lynch movie. My view is just another piece of the puzzle.

The meaning of David Lynch’s Rabbits: waiting for someone that will never come

Rabbits is the history of a family of (as you can easily guess) humanoid rabbits. They are all the time in the same room, in front of a television that we cannot see, randomly talking of apparently nonsensical topics.

Mother, son and daughter. Where is the father? From this question starts my theory.

Rabbits is a surreal and in some points quiet creepy satire about the American sitcoms. The time is very slow, all the characters move like robots or broken puppets. Behind the sea of artificial laughs, a sorrow heart is hiding. Nothing in Rabbits is funny or can justify the constant laughing. The general atmosphere is creepy, dense and oppressive. There is a cliff between what the sound is highlighting and what the images are telling.

If the conversation could appear disconnected, corny and random, some specific words are always repeated. The time is an important clue, they are always speaking about what time is and when “something” happened. The son and the daughter are worried about a phone call and when the mother will finally realize “something”.

All the episodes are like a long and never ending wait. It is not a boring wait, or a lazy one, they are waiting in sorrow, scared and worried. The son is always checking if somebody is at the door, while the mother seems to work to not think. They are waiting someone that maybe will never come back at home.

“Were there any calls?”

“There have been no calls today”

Some episodes are soliloquies of a single bunny. These scenes have in common some specific words: broken glass, blood, iron. Something terrible probably happened.

Who is the man with the green coat knocking at the door? He is a policeman probably, wearing a raincoat to not become wet for the heavy rain (the rabbits often talk about the rain).

The policeman is there to bring a bad news: their father is dead. Probably during acar accident due to the rain.

 The rabbits are imprisoned in a sort of limbo of ignorance. They do not want to face the truth of their lost and they continue to wait him. The mother especially is the one that most deleted the event. The son has a secret, as he assessed. He knows about the father but he doesn’t know how to reveal this heavy truth to the mother.

It is a burden impossible to share.

At the end, finally, the mother will accept the truth and will sit with her sons in the couch.

Mulholland Drive: the secrets of Club Silencio

The Club Silencio is one of the most important scene of all the movie. It is a key element, a turning point, a crossroad for all the plot. What happened before is totally different for what will happen after. The transition from dream to reality.

The language of the Club is the Spanish, a different one from the rest of the movie. This linguistic breaking point highlights more directly the narrative change.

“No hay banda, no hay orchestra”. The magician always repeats these sentences, like a religious mantra. This words are a sort of epiphany for Betsy and Rita, the moment where they realize that all is fake. Their reality doesn’t exist, it is fake like a recorded orchestra. All the world of Betsy is collapsing and she is starting to realize that.

The second part of the show is an amazing Flamenco-like singer. Her song is called “Llorando“, translated in “Crying”. All the song is an intensification of pain and sorrow. Betsy and Rita are listening while crying. The pain is the final shock that makes fall in pieces their dreamlike world, and they know. The climax is reached when the singer fall dead on the ground, while the song continues.

The pain is never ending for Betsy and it continues, like the song.

At the end of the concert they will find the Blue Box on a chair. It is the final Truth that will bring them to the reality.

As you can easily see there is a mysterious woman with blue hair in the galleria. At the end of the movie, this woman will say “Silencio”. Blue is the color of the truth in this movie (in opposition with pink, the color of the dream) as the hair of the woman. When the movies ends there is no more need of the Club Silencio, no more need of fake “orchestra” and dreamlike purgatory, no more need of any truth.

At the end there is only silence.

If the Club Silencio is not enough surreal, the fans of Twin Peaks can recognize in the audience Laura Palmer and Ronette Pulanski. Also the red curtains (favorite of Lynch) are present here as in the Black Lodge.

Is there a connection between Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive?

 

Mulholland Drive: the creepy Old Couple

Mulholland Drive is the masterpiece of David Lynch. The plot behind the oniric background is full of heavy symbolisms and alternative interpretations.

SPOILERS INCOMING!

Talking about surreal and creepy characters, surely the gold medal (or the silver if we count the man behind the wall) will go to the old couple.

You can see them in two specific moments inside the movie: the start and the end of Betsy (aka Naomi Watts). At the start of the movie they are happy, smiling to her at the airport, bringing her to the car while she thanks them for their company.

At the end, instead, things are far more creepy. The old couple will go out as a miniature from a  paper bag, owned by the man behind the wall. Yes you read well, a miniaturized and creepy old couple coming out from a bag to haunt Betsy. In one of the most scary scene, they will scream to Betsy till she will suicide to make them stop.

Who or what are they? My theory is that they are the personification the regret and the grudge of Betsy.
At the start of the movie, the old couple is smiling and happy. Betsy is starting her happy dream, where all is perfect. The regret is no more in her heart and the old couple goes away… but creepily smiling, knowing that they will come back.
At the end, when the killer is paid, there is no more coming back. Betsy is destroyed by the guiltiness and the regret. The old couple comes back like a nightmare, screaming and haunting her. The only escape for Betsy is the suicide.

I suggest you to watch the entire movie but, if you are only interested in something creepy, here is the link to the last scene.