Director: David Lynch
Writers: David Lynch, Robert Engels, Mark Frost
Photography: Ronald Victor Garcia
Music: Angelo Badalamenti
Editor: Mary Sweeney
Cast: Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, Kyle MacLachlan, Chris Isaak, Kiefer Sutherland, David Lynch, Harry Dean Stanton, David Bowie, Miguel Ferrer, Grace Zabriskie, Phoebe Augustine, Eric DaRe, Heather Graham, Madchen Amick, Dana Ashbrook, James Marshall, Julee Cruise, Lenny von Dohlen, Walter Olkewicz
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me has long been polarizing even for a David Lynch picture. It was widely dismissed at release. Halliwell’s makes the basic points: “Mystifyingly obscure and dull prequel to the TV series Twin Peaks, which tries one’s patience with its visions and precognitions.” In response, legions of David Lynch partisans have risen in fury, defending the pathos of the Laura Palmer story. It’s true that the picture comes with a full ration of Lynchian nonsense: The red room where people talk funny. The roadhouse on the edge of town that programs dream-pop and extremely hard rock. Heck, we don’t even see Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) until more than 30 minutes in. There’s a lot of things here that could go if you wanted to make this movie closer to 90 or 100 minutes, although I’m not sure it would be as effective. The nonsense kind of necessarily softens us for the harrowing reality behind it.
The story at the heart of Fire Walk With Me is not mystifyingly obscure at all, nor dull. It’s about child sexual abuse—what it looks like and how it feels for the victim. Laura is 17 and has been raped by her father (Ray Wise) since she was 12. Much of her behavior can be interpreted through this frame and it is not exotic or unusual. The picture is practically a clinical profile. What is happening to her is unthinkable, and therefore Laura tries to distance herself from it. She can’t believe it’s her father. The cognitive dissonance is too much. She displaces him with this “Bob” figure who creeps into her bedroom through the window. She disassociates. The result is an ongoing bundle of contradictions. She is a volunteer in bobby socks for Meals on Wheels as well as a hooker for rent out at the roadhouse. She uses sex, drugs, and the approval of others to cope, as solace. Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) sums her up: “She’s in high school. She is sexually active. She’s using drugs. She’s crying out for help.”
Cast: Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, Kyle MacLachlan, Chris Isaak, Kiefer Sutherland, David Lynch, Harry Dean Stanton, David Bowie, Miguel Ferrer, Grace Zabriskie, Phoebe Augustine, Eric DaRe, Heather Graham, Madchen Amick, Dana Ashbrook, James Marshall, Julee Cruise, Lenny von Dohlen, Walter Olkewicz
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me has long been polarizing even for a David Lynch picture. It was widely dismissed at release. Halliwell’s makes the basic points: “Mystifyingly obscure and dull prequel to the TV series Twin Peaks, which tries one’s patience with its visions and precognitions.” In response, legions of David Lynch partisans have risen in fury, defending the pathos of the Laura Palmer story. It’s true that the picture comes with a full ration of Lynchian nonsense: The red room where people talk funny. The roadhouse on the edge of town that programs dream-pop and extremely hard rock. Heck, we don’t even see Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) until more than 30 minutes in. There’s a lot of things here that could go if you wanted to make this movie closer to 90 or 100 minutes, although I’m not sure it would be as effective. The nonsense kind of necessarily softens us for the harrowing reality behind it.
The story at the heart of Fire Walk With Me is not mystifyingly obscure at all, nor dull. It’s about child sexual abuse—what it looks like and how it feels for the victim. Laura is 17 and has been raped by her father (Ray Wise) since she was 12. Much of her behavior can be interpreted through this frame and it is not exotic or unusual. The picture is practically a clinical profile. What is happening to her is unthinkable, and therefore Laura tries to distance herself from it. She can’t believe it’s her father. The cognitive dissonance is too much. She displaces him with this “Bob” figure who creeps into her bedroom through the window. She disassociates. The result is an ongoing bundle of contradictions. She is a volunteer in bobby socks for Meals on Wheels as well as a hooker for rent out at the roadhouse. She uses sex, drugs, and the approval of others to cope, as solace. Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) sums her up: “She’s in high school. She is sexually active. She’s using drugs. She’s crying out for help.”
I think the problem with the reception of Fire Walk With Me may have been that Lynch—and equally his sponsors at the ABC TV network, and much of the Twin Peaks audience too—set expectations for a zany, light-hearted, and heavily ironic hipster comedy. See also Northern Exposure. That’s what we got, and it was one of the best things about Twin Peaks. One thing Lynch did not want to do was solve the murder of Laura Palmer in any conventional way. But he was getting a lot of pressure for exactly that. He wanted to do it his way, but the pressure to solve the mystery eventually deranged the show itself after alienating Lynch in the second season.
With Fire Walk With Me Lynch seems to be flinging the answer in the face of everyone who wouldn’t stop bugging him about it. It was her dad who killed her, OK? It’s not funny at all, in spite of the reflexive Lynchian elements. Indeed, there’s a lot of craft here, as with all his pictures. He brings Douglas Sirk elements to the scenes inside the Palmer home, for example, along with a touch of Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion. Lots of soap opera suds everywhere too, presumably for the contrast.
Sheryl Lee, unfortunately, is something of a weak point in the picture. She’s trying very hard, but so much is expected of her, as of Laura herself. I’m not sure anyone would be up to this role. Grace Zabriskie has said Lee held nothing back, gave everything she had, and it shows. She’s missing for the first 30 minutes and then she is everywhere, in most scenes, the very center of the picture. There’s only so much quivering and screaming that we can take, perhaps.
I somehow keep forgetting Fire Walk With Me also has one of Lynch’s greatest scenes involving music so it’s always kind of a surprise when I see it again. It’s fair to call it amazing. It takes place out at the roadhouse, where Laura’s best friend Donna (Moira Kelly) has followed her attempting to save her. The music absolutely dominates for eight minutes. It’s one of the most realistic scenes I’ve seen from inside clubland. Most movies make people easy to hear when they talk. But it’s not that way really. People have to shout in each other’s ears and even then often can’t be heard. That’s how it’s going here, with a very hard kind of slow dream-pop hard rock and subtitles to get the dialogue. The heavy repeated riff is called “The Pink Room” (or “Blue Frank”) and is credited alternately to both Angelo Badalamenti and Lynch himself.
“Chug-a-lug, Donna,” Laura says in a memorable moment, encouraging Donna to down a beer that has been doped. Down the rabbit hole we go with this throbbing music giving us our own contact high. The band is so loud and the scene goes on so long that it all becomes purely visual, though in dim red light. The depravity is suitable for jaw-dropping, weeping, and many other shocked responses. It’s impossibly powerful. Is there any way this can come to a good end? Do you understand this picture is a prequel?
And so it heads to the ending of any prequel, attempting to fit in neatly like a trailer hitch with the story already known. My own response to Fire Walk With Me started with a VHS rental and taking it as “mystifyingly obscure” like so many, but my regard has grown every time I look again. Just the roadhouse scene, which opens with Julee Cruise eternal, is worth the price of admission. You can disregard the rest if you must.
With Fire Walk With Me Lynch seems to be flinging the answer in the face of everyone who wouldn’t stop bugging him about it. It was her dad who killed her, OK? It’s not funny at all, in spite of the reflexive Lynchian elements. Indeed, there’s a lot of craft here, as with all his pictures. He brings Douglas Sirk elements to the scenes inside the Palmer home, for example, along with a touch of Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion. Lots of soap opera suds everywhere too, presumably for the contrast.
Sheryl Lee, unfortunately, is something of a weak point in the picture. She’s trying very hard, but so much is expected of her, as of Laura herself. I’m not sure anyone would be up to this role. Grace Zabriskie has said Lee held nothing back, gave everything she had, and it shows. She’s missing for the first 30 minutes and then she is everywhere, in most scenes, the very center of the picture. There’s only so much quivering and screaming that we can take, perhaps.
I somehow keep forgetting Fire Walk With Me also has one of Lynch’s greatest scenes involving music so it’s always kind of a surprise when I see it again. It’s fair to call it amazing. It takes place out at the roadhouse, where Laura’s best friend Donna (Moira Kelly) has followed her attempting to save her. The music absolutely dominates for eight minutes. It’s one of the most realistic scenes I’ve seen from inside clubland. Most movies make people easy to hear when they talk. But it’s not that way really. People have to shout in each other’s ears and even then often can’t be heard. That’s how it’s going here, with a very hard kind of slow dream-pop hard rock and subtitles to get the dialogue. The heavy repeated riff is called “The Pink Room” (or “Blue Frank”) and is credited alternately to both Angelo Badalamenti and Lynch himself.
“Chug-a-lug, Donna,” Laura says in a memorable moment, encouraging Donna to down a beer that has been doped. Down the rabbit hole we go with this throbbing music giving us our own contact high. The band is so loud and the scene goes on so long that it all becomes purely visual, though in dim red light. The depravity is suitable for jaw-dropping, weeping, and many other shocked responses. It’s impossibly powerful. Is there any way this can come to a good end? Do you understand this picture is a prequel?
And so it heads to the ending of any prequel, attempting to fit in neatly like a trailer hitch with the story already known. My own response to Fire Walk With Me started with a VHS rental and taking it as “mystifyingly obscure” like so many, but my regard has grown every time I look again. Just the roadhouse scene, which opens with Julee Cruise eternal, is worth the price of admission. You can disregard the rest if you must.
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