Twin Peaks: Classic or Dud?

I love that scene

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, April 29, 2016 4:36 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it gets really loud in the theater. i remember being utterly terrified.

i saw Mulholland Drive in the theater when it came out and was laughing through the first half hour or so. everything was so hilarious, the awkward nonsensical dialog, the scene transitions, that ridiculous swing montage from out of nowhere, etc.

i find Lynch's work to have a cosmic and deep sense of humor that is genuinely exciting and thrilling in a way that makes most humor seem lazy and rote. but i totally see why people don't think he's funny, you have to be willing to get to a very particular mindspace.

i find myself laughing at the sheer audacity and unexpectedness of some of his stuff

laughing appreciatively, of course

otm

Yes, absolutely. The bank scene in the final episode of TP totally gets me on that level.

So I rewatched FWWM after the sincere adoration it's gotten here and... my opinion remains unchanged. Just feels so plodding and uninspired. Lynch going through the motions. Never captures the ecstatic melodramatic heights or creeping terror in the best moments of the series. Suffers from the classic prequel problem of giving you information that's way more compelling in the imagination. Laura Palmer is better as a corpse. You spend the majority of the time with her and she's not very interesting.

"it just seems pretty consistently inventive in its editing/soundtrack/staging/etc."

This is such a weird opinion to me! It easily feels like his LEAST inventive film in those departments.

Wish I could see it through different eyes. Remains lower tier Lynch for me.

"Laura Palmer is better as a corpse"

no!

one thing that I liked about it is that Laura was actually quite different in FWWM than I'd pictured her from the series. She was much more multidimensional.

fwwm is one of the most harrowing depictions of domestic abuse on film

FWWM is a complete ret-con of the TV show, making the implicit explicit

― wizzz! (amateurist), Friday, April 29, 2016 9:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yep. The fact that it's telling you things you already know is the point! The uninspired, obvious thing to do would have been to make a film that followed cooper and the townspeople, wrapping up all the cliffhangers from the end of the series. I think that's what people were expecting. Instead, lynch gives us a sour parody of twin peaks for half an hour before spending the rest of the film rubbing our faces in everything the series shrinks back from after lynch leaves (the disappearing of ronette and maddy as mentioned above, the glossing over of leland's actions). It completely ignores sheriff truman et al in favour of really delving into the effects of years of systematic rape and incest in a way that the series never does even at its most disturbing. You don't have to like it, but "we already know who the killer is!" is a seriously dumb criticism imo

Feel like I saw a completely different movie.

I'll take the early 90s view. Wild at Heart winning the Palme, FWWM getting gutted.

haha getting booed at cannes + tarantino hating it = no higher recommendation for me

I don't think that was the extent of it.

Yeah, I dunno. I'm legitimately jealous of everyone getting so much out of it. I WANT it do something, but it falls so flat for me.

oh I know, I'm given to understand that everybody hated it back in the day except david foster wallace xp

There's so many thrilling moments. I don't recall much like that in the first season of Twin Peaks (which I liked but don't remember any really juicy bits).

the film takes a lot of its cues from the "secret diary" that lynch's daughter (!) wrote and published in between the two seasons

since i was around in 1992 and was an O.G. twin peaks fan it might be helpful to note that TP:FWWM pointedly did not give the show's hardcore fans (however many were left at that point) what they wanted. in fact, i recall people being at best disappointed and at most downright upset that the film chose to cover a period /before/ the timeline of the TV show rather than pick up where the final episode left off. rather than "resolve" the various narrative strands left dangling at the end of the series, the film only makes glancing reference to some of them.

one thing i've never been sure of (and lynch in interviews has been a bit contradictory about this) is whether the incest/abuse theme was present from the beginning of the show's conception or whether it was "discovered" in the course of making the series. so i'm not sure if the film can be said to represent lynch's attempt to return to (and make more explicit) his original conception of the show's themes, or if it is more of an attempt to inscribe (?) those themes into the twin peaks mythos by re-visiting events that we thought we knew well. (not that the show ever depicted the last days of laura palmer per se, but much of the show involves the gradual revealing of what happened during those days.)

one thing i find interesting about the film is its totally non-classical structure-- how it follows the two FBI agents for about 40 minutes, has that weird interlude w/ bowie etc., then effectively starts over again as a new narrative. this looks forward to some of the narrative games in lynch's subsequent films, i think.

also, the first episode -- the one with the two FBI agents-- is a pseudo-remake of much of the pilot, the doppelganger of agent cooper's arrival in twin peaks, his encounters with the local police, etc. the various encounters there mirror scenes from the pilot, in a mordant, bitter mode.

i can't help but be impressed by the perversity of all of this. it's a very, very strange way to go about making a feature-length "sequel" to a beloved TV series.

and yeah it's far, far from perfect. but while in 1992 TP:FWWM was greeted as Lynch's nadir, evidence that he needed a rest, in retrospect I think it's the beginning of his bouncing back from the dead-end mannerism of Wild at Heart (even if some of the pervasive adolescent humor of the latter remains in FWWM and Lost Highway.)

mj anderson reprised his twin peaks role in scooby doo 3 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97AKy7mViBg

I guess that's the episode order confirmed, then (if it wasn't already)

https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13256490_10100821897967885_5583536082578583416_n.jpg?oh=b4b6c61cb79755eb599d8b602ccf0a3d&oe=57D06AB8

Great poster.

Yeah, that's really cool!

fan made poster apparently

Very nice, nonetheless.

I don't know why it's only just occurred to me that the revival's presence on Showtime allows for much stronger content than we got on the original show. Although it seems like he wouldn't even be able to get away with Maddie's murder on the network TV of today.

love that poster

xpost

you can get away with /much/ worse on contemporary network TV than you could in 1991!

I know you can in terms of content (gore or sex or whatevs) but I have a hard time imagining something that legit terrifying on, say, ABC today.

I've never seen anything on network TV surpass Maddie's murder in terms of pure horror

well it's terrifying b/c lynch is just so good at terrifying. but i've seen stuff that /strives/ to be just as graphic and visceral on network TV.

yeah a lot of it has to do with context and the framing and the way it's shot, obviously it's not particularly gory or sexy

lol def thought that was an official poster, if it's not it should be

would be perfect without the "25 years later"

why is the poster upside down? aside from trying hard to look arty.

yeah i actually think that poster kind of bites tbh

fan made tho so whatevs

On what you can do on networks today: Hannibal was a network show for three seasons...

Lynch's horror isn't based on gore or standard violence, his most effectively terrifying moments have little to no gore. Think the man behind the cafe. Or Bob peering over the edge of the bed. Or evil Laura screaming/shrieking in that final episode.

monster faced Laura Dern at the end of Inland Empire still haunts me and that's just some dumb video composite

Aside from general consideration of it all after watching fwwm this week ive also realised that this may be the most incredible looking cast ever assembled

otm

Straight-up looking forward to this. That poster just doesn't seem right - doesn't feel pulled together.

http://youtubedoubler.com/?video1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DkhMlcTE7lw8&start1=&video2=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D6laGvKtPZYQ&start2=&authorName=saalow

I'm rewatching and noticed BOB in the background of the episode where Audrey is back from One-Eyed Jack's. Creepy!

https://66.media.tumblr.com/925262b81f9dda330ed9a3217bdadbd1/tumblr_oazi5gFWdE1qbypg1o1_540.png

oh no way, never noticed that before

Whoa, that's an amazing catch.

that's... not Bob?

Bob wears a denim jacket