[After a brisk nap]

Originally Posted by Once A Villain

A film being "challenging" because it makes no sense isn't quite fair and deserves a mere fraction of the credit you give it.

That would be a valid point if Lost Highway made no sense whatsoever. However, there's plenty of meaning in the film.

Although Hollywood has conditioned us to think of film as a storytelling medium, meaning in art is not limited to narrative. Lynch, as a painter, knows that art can speak to us in other ways than through accounts of sequences of events.

That's not to say Lost Highway doesn't have a meaningful plot. Even at first look it tells several stories that are reasonably coherent, even if they may seem fragmentary or incomplete. Look a little closer, and you'll see that there's an overall structure and a secret narrative which makes sense of a lot of what you're seeing.

However, the film is not a mere puzzle which you can solve and then put aside, like Mulholland Dr. Its true meaning remains shrouded in questions, contradictions and caveats. Even if we accept a particular interpretation as "correct", we have to admit discordant elements.

This is an important aspect of how Lynch experiences life, as expressed in his art. "This whole world's wild at heart and weird on top", as he puts it in one of his films. That's why I said Lynch is weird for the sake of being weird for a reason: The inexplicable strangeness of life is one of the main things he's trying to express.

Spiwak, you make a very good point when you call Lynch a surrealist. Lost Highway may not be a surrealist film in the vein of Un chien andalou or some of his own short films, but it definitely fits in well with films like Cet obscur objet du désir, which integrate surreal elements into an otherwise conventional story.

Mulholland Dr. IS challenging for most viewers. It's a very visual film, nothing is spelled out for the viewer, but the hints are there in the images. Sense can be made of this picture, meaning can be pieced together.

Mulholland Dr. was challenging for some viewers, but not for anyone who had struggled with Lost Highway. A lot of people were able to decrypt the movie, so it can't have been that difficult. I'm pretty much convinced that if you re-edited Mulholland Dr. in chronological order, it would seem self-evident what's going on. That's why I think it's lightweight and superficial.

Now I quite enjoy a brain workout, and I'm not going to disparage disorientation as valid literary and filmic device, but a puzzle is entertainment, not art. And Mulholland Dr. is very little more than a puzzle. It doesn't have much to say other than "can you figure it out?"

It has something to say, it has a point. Lost Highway did not. As you said, "Parts of the film are going off in every direction. Even the best explanations available remain wholly unsatisfactory." That is the sign of a film that has nothing to say and no clear direction. For you, perhaps a virtue. For me, no thanks. Lost Highway is the minor work of the two.

It sounds like you haven't really understood the bits of Lost Highway that are understandable. If you watch it again while keeping in mind that the key is the same as that to Mulholland Dr., maybe you will start to appreciate it.