Lost Highway

Non-Euclidean geometry

Although I am perfectly aware of the fact that any attempt to 'explain' Lost Highway ultimately results in a 'smoothening' of its complex structure into a linear narrative, I will try to give a short outline of its content.
The enigmaticity of David Lynch's movies and specially Lost Highway confronts us with the question: How do we read films?
The answer lies in another question if a should necessarily be about something ?
David Lynch himself has warned against attempts at reading of a filmic text, especially when asked for the 'hidden meaning" of Lost Highway: "the beauty of a film that is more abstract is everybody has a different take. ... When you are spoon-fed a film, people instantly know what it is ... I love things that leave room to Dream ..."
(http://www.mikedunn.com/lynch/lh/cinelh.html )
Being particularly vague with respect to the question of 'meaning,' Lynch on the other hand emphasizes film as an art form in its own right - " It doesn't do any good ... to say 'This is what it means.' Film is what it means" (Cinefantastique).

In order to approach the mystery of lost Highway , Lynch and Barry Gifford, with whom Lynch collaborated on the screenplay, have mentioned Moebius Strip in their interviews ,a topology accounting for a time-space that differs from Euclidean space concepts.
(http://mathforum.org/sum95/math_and/moebius/moebius.html)

Moebius Strip seemingly has two sides, but in fact it does only one. At one point the two sides can be clearly distinguished, but when you traverse the strip as a whole, the two sides are experienced as being continuous. In Lacanian Psychoanalysis the Moebius Strip is introduced as a model to conceptualize the "return of the repressed," an issue which is very important in Lost Highway as well. Mobieus Strip can illustrate the way psychoanalysis conceptualizes certain binary oppositions, such as inside/outside, before/after, etc. - and with respect to Lost Highway, characterize Fred/Pete!which are seen completely distinct. Reni Celeste when commenting on Lynch's emphasizes the position where "violence meets tenderness, waking meets dream, blond meets brunette, lipstick meets blood, where something very sweet and innocuous becomes something very sick and degrading, at the very border where opposites becomes both discrete and indistinguishable" (Celeste).
We can see specific example of this inside –outside pattern in the scene in which Fred meets the Mystery Man for the first time. In fact, the Mystery Man - simultaneously being inside and outside –( I am at your home now , MM pulls out his mobiles and asks Fred to call his house !) -the twist in the Moebius strip.
A last reference I want to make use of is the term "psychogenic fugue" that David Lynch has used :
Sometime during the shooting, the unit publicist wasreading up on different types of mental illness, and she hitupon this thing called "psychogenic fugue." The personsuffering from it creates in their mind a completely newidentity, new friends, new home, new everything - theyforget their past identity. This has reverberations with LostHighway, and it's also a musical term. A fugue starts offone way, takes up on another direction, and then comesback to the original, so it [relates] to the form of the film."
-David Lynch