FrankieSay said: "Hello Luscious. Let's engage with others up to the task in one of those little-seen "conversations with grown-ups."
I wasn't prepared for such an extended meditation on loss, grief, trauma (including inherited traumatic responses), love, the evil done by those with bad intentions and the unintended consequences of well-intentioned people trying to correct past mistakes.
For me the whole thing was really about aging, and dying, and the old truism about not being able to go home again. In retrospect,m "The Return" was the perfect season title, since nothing goes as planned when you try to move backwards.
I think of the whole season as a very close relative to Munch's "The Scream," as Laura Palmer's and "Laura Palmer's" unearthly shriek echoed across the dimensions."
I agree with you, Frankie, that it certainly can be seen and appreciated as a rumination on loss, grief and trauma, but those were not the themes that resonated the most with me, in the way that, say, a show like The Leftovers did. I think it was about many things, and can be appreciated (and analyzed) in many ways and on many levels. For me, one of its primary themes was time and space, but more specifically, parallel alternate realities existing within the same time-space continuum. I also think it was about good vs.evil (the battle over Laura's sole), and how the fight between the two never really ends. But, ultimately, what I really think it was about lies in the Sanskrit scripture that Monica Bellucci whispers to Gordon Cole in episode 14, “We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream.” She then adds, "But who is the dreamer?" Who is the dreamer, indeed? Both Phillip Jeffries and The Giant/Fireman echoes this idea by stating "We are living inside a dream". The entire story may be someone's dream, perhaps Dale's (Richard's), perhaps Laura's (Carrie's), perhaps Judy's, or someone else's entirely. Lynch's entire career has been spent telling stories and communicating ideas through what can best be described as "dream logic". From Eraserhead to Blue Velvet to Wild at Heart to Lost Highway to Mulholland Drive to Twin Peaks - they all have a dream-like quality and logic to them. And dreams never really have any one interpretation or true coherence and resolution. Anyway, those are just some of my thoughts in a nutshell. I'm sure that die-hard fans of the series, myself included, will be hypothesizing about it for a long time to come. I really don't think there's a right or a wrong interpretation. That's the beauty of Lynch's work. Like all art, it's subjective. You get from it what you bring to it.
Updated On: 9/6/17 at 10:24 AM