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Laura Palmer and Dale Cooper trapped in Twin Peaks nightmare halfway house between this world and the next |
Director: David Lynch
Cast: Sheryl Lee (Laura Palmer), Ray Wise (Leland Palmer), Mädchen
Amick (Shelly Johnson), Dana Ashbrook (Bobby Briggs), Phoebe Augustine (Ronette
Pulaski), David Bowie (Phillip Jeffries), Eric Da Re (Leo Johnson), Miguel
Ferrer (Albert Rosenfield), Pamela Gidley (Teresa Banks), Chris Isaak (Special
Agent Chester Desmond), Moira Kelly (Donna Hayward), David Lynch (Gordon Cole),
Kyle MacLachlan (Special Agent Dale Cooper), James Marshall (James Hurley),
Frank Silva (BOB), Kiefer Sutherland (Agent Sam Stanley), Grace Zabriskie
(Sarah Palmer)
Twin Peaks was a
mystifying, but very short lived, sensation. Its first series gripped America
with its whodunit mystery around who killed Laura Palmer: it was an early 90s Broadchurch with added mysticism and
twisted Lynchian psychosis. Just like Broadchurch,
the second series stumbled from disaster to disaster as the answer to the
mystery was revealed. Though this plot line was dark, disturbing and haunting,
effectively contrasted with the surreal humour of the rest of the show, large
chunks of the episodes were, to be honest, terrible. As Lynch’s attention
turned elsewhere, the show fumbled through half a season of increasingly
bizarre, pointless, laughable and plain rubbish episodes, before rallying at
the end with a return to the mysterious dwelling on the nature of evil that the
series is now best remembered for.
Twin Peaks is a
rare anomaly – a show whose most die-hard fans would probably admit at least a
quarter of the episodes were terrible. Ratings had dropped off a cliff as the
series went on (sure enough it was cancelled). The cast and crew knew the show
had lost something – several actors, most notably Lara Flynn Boyle (here
replaced by Moira Kelly) refused to appear in the film. Even the show’s star,
and Lynch surrogate, Kyle MacLachlan only agreed to return for this film for a
few brief scenes (requiring an urgent re-write). However, Lynch’s interest in
the concept had clearly been awakened during his writing and filming of (what
would become) the final episode, surely one of the most surreal, unsettling,
bizarre, intriguing and disturbing episodes of TV ever screened
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk
With Me was Lynch’s final reclaiming of the series from the toilet it had
dropped into. It also served partly as a “retcon” to tie the foundations of the
original series plotline into the mythology the show had deepened in its
final few episodes (built upon many surreal elements Lynch had introduced in
the first episodes, otherwise hinted at rather than
explored). As much of this mythology was unsettling, this movie
very much follows that mood, losing much (if not all) of the dark, surrealistic
humour that contrasted the darkness so well in the series. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is a
strange movie that is more like an expanded extra episode of the series, rather
than a stand-alone. It makes no attempt at all to appeal to anyone who hasn’t
seen every episode of the series: I’d go so far to say it’s almost completely
impenetrable without having sat through all of Twin Peaks.
The film explores two plot-lines: the first an investigation
by FBI Agent Chester Diamond (Chris Isaak) into the murder of Teresa Banks, a
plotline referred to many times in the series. The film then flashes forward a
year to cover the final few days of the original murder victim Laura Palmer
(Sheryl Lee) and her relationship with her father Leland Palmer (Ray Wise), who
is possessed by a demonic presence known as BOB, driven by it to perform acts
of sexual and physical violence. Laura is aware – and terrified – of the
existence of BOB (a greasy haired face from a thousand nightmares) but seems
unable to recognise that BOB and her father are one and the same. It’s the
discovery of this in the film that will help to tip her over the edge into
despair.
If the film is about anything other than expanding the
mythology around BOB and the mysterious “Black Lodge” between dimensions, where
evil and violence abound, it’s about the damaging impact of domestic abuse. The
film intensely explores the personality damage Laura (an excellent and fully
committed Sheryl Lee, leaving nothing in the locker room in a performance of
fearless intensity) has suffered as a result of years of sexual abuse from her
father (Ray Wise equally good as his personality veers wildly between gentle
father and possessed evil rapist). Laura’s fractured psyche is the root cause,
Lynch makes clear, of her sexual promiscuity, drug addiction and flashes of
cruelty. She’s even aware of the damage, as seen in her desperation to protect
others (especially the gentle Donna) from being sucked into the nightmare of
her life.
The unremitting bleakness of Laura’s disastrous life is
intermixed with the horror of the scenes where we witness Leland’s destructive
behaviour to her, while the final scene of her eventual murder is haunting in
its skilful nightmare imagery and suggestive editing. Lynch’s direction remains
humane and tender, and despite putting Sheryl Lee through the ringer she never
feels exploited. Instead, the film has an incredible empathy for both her
suffering, and the confused, damaged actions she is driven to carry out. It
gives us an understanding of the damage that can be done to even the strongest
seeming people by abuse.
Alongside this, Lynch unleashes the full range of dark
surrealism through a series of disturbing images to build up his mystical
backstory. This is a flat out horror film, with twisted images
of monkeys, blood and forests guaranteed to haunt your dreams. Nearly every
scene in Twin Peaks repositions the
often quirky town of many of the episodes as a nightmareish world of neon,
darkened rooms and twisted sexual and physical violence. The portrayal of Laura
Palmer’s fragile heart is as intensely moving as it is intensely filmed, while
the views behind the red curtain into the hellish underbelly of Twin Peaks’ mystical mythology will
stick with you for some time – and is sure to be central to the new third
series.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With
Me was met with intense hostility when it was released: “It’s not the
worst movie ever made,” the New York
Times review read, “it just seems to be”. David Lynch publically stated
he had clearly done when the network couldn’t do, and successfully killed Twin Peaks. Of course that wasn’t the
case – with the new third series finally coming to the screen 25 years after
the screening of this film. The re-evaluation of the film
has only grown in the intervening period. The nightmarish content (and the final scenes of the series) – the wicked BOB, the
nightmare of the Black Lodge and the Red Room, the elements of psychological
horror – these are the things that Twin
Peaks is remembered as being about: the rotten core of the sweet pie of the
town.
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