LOST HIGHWAY (43)

Directed by: David Lynch

Starring: Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Robert Loggia

The Pitch: The Siberian Department of Transportation seems to have misplaced a vital stretch of road between Omsk and Irkutsk. No wait, that can't be right...

Theo Sez: Proof if nothing else that Lynch remains true, 20 years on, to the spirit of ERASERHEAD - which, given that movie's near-experimental boldness and his elevation in the interim into brand-name status (usually a cue for playing it safe) is a remarkable achievement. Unfortunately it also means, for us non-cultists, that he's made another arid, soporific movie, without even the genuinely fringe quality that made ERASERHEAD (however maddening) so fascinating to watch : this is a bunch of established pros playing at innovation, and, though they're too accomplished for the result to be embarrassing - indeed, it's probably the most daring mainstream movie of the year - it's just not the same. It uses (or at least features) absence rather than presence, silence and darkness instead of shaped, palpable effects you can actually respond to or evaluate : it's a style all right, but a grey and muted one, and dramatically limited - all it sets up is a vaguely creepy nothingness, without the shades of light and dark that would make it threatening as it was in the early scenes of BLUE VELVET (those shots of overhanging tree branches as Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern stroll down the street in that movie represent the same kind of eerie netherworld - but their menace actually means something to the story). Mood in itself, without much striking imagery and unleavened by any apparent metaphorical meaning (let alone narrative excitement) doesn't go very far : if you can imagine the opening bars of the Stones' "Gimme Shelter" stretching on for over two hours it may give some idea of the rapidly diminishing returns in this cold, sere, utterly unknowable movie.