The Thinking Machine #94

In their series The Thinking Machine, critics Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin create a new video essay for Filmkrant every month.

Two films from 1997, both centering on trauma – and murder. Both films are about men in denial: one blacks out from extreme intoxication, the other enters a full-blown fugue state that conjures an alternative life. In both, a world of image-making spreads a contagion of confusion and perversion. In both, a woman splits into two bodies, two identities. These dark, bleak films speak to each other, unknowingly: Abel Ferrara’s The Blackout and David Lynch’s Lost Highway.