After Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, David Lynch took his longest break between feature films. After a five-year pause, he released the neo-noir psychological horror film Lost Highway.

Partly inspired by the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the film is about a musician (Bill Pullman) who is convicted of murdering his wife (Patricia Arquette). While in prison, he suffers a breakdown and wakes up the next morning as a different person — a young mechanic played by Balthazar Getty. The confused authorities release the man, unsure of how we got there or what happened to the musician.

The movie then follows the mechanic as he gets entangled with a local gangster (Robert Loggia) and the man’s mistress (Arquette, again).

Is the second storyline a prison hallucination? A parallel universe? That’s never made clear. But the stories converge at crucial points and eventually connect, creating a circular narrative akin to a snake eating its own tail.

As with almost all of Lynch’s films, the point isn’t to understand every minor detail but to get lost in the atmosphere they create. More than using dream logic, his films are dreams. No filmmaker has ever captured the essence of dreams (and nightmares) better than Lynch.

With its L.A. setting and bifurcated structure, Lost Highway feels like a dry run for the upcoming Mulholland Drive. It’s sloppier than that film, rougher around the edges, but it’s almost as compelling.

But before Lynch got to Mulholland, he took a detour to make the most unexpected film of his career. More on that tomorrow.