Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is David Lynch's Masterpiece

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 8:11am

'Laura, where are you going?
Nowhere fast..and you're not coming.'


'Fire Walk With Me takes the show's loose cluster of supernatural phenomena and reconfigures them as a vulnerable mind's imagined demons, a coping strategy for trauma. If the series is about hunting a literal demon—BOB, a gray-haired man who is said to "possess" Leland Palmer—the film is about realizing that the demon is real. Though in a way these fantastic elements were its bread and butter, the series ultimately suffered, emotionally, by "explaining away" the trauma of Laura's death and by assigning Leland's evil to his demonic alter ego. But the film returns us from fantasy to reality, reasserting the evil in the man himself: Laura's death at the hands of her father becomes a tragedy localized in a recognizable world rather than one happening in the fantasy of fiction. The fantasy becomes figural. A history of sexual abuse becomes real."


When this scene takes its dark turn in the last minute and Sheryl Lee's face becomes engulfed by an insurmountable despair, there are times when I sob for about 15 minutes straight. There are not a lot of films that are able to illustrate that kind of lack of hope so very well. Georgia with Jennifer Jason Leigh would be one. Devastating.

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant actress. (But she's so ethereal that she's hard to cast well.) Moira Kelly is great in the film. Very good choice to replace Flynn Boyle.

If you were falling in space:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzl3TXRSJIM
village voice link

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 8:38am

This is one of my all time favorite movies and I think it's one of Lynch's best. Sheryl Lee should have gotten an Oscar that year.
Sadly I think the tone of the film was so much darker than the TV show that it turned a lot of fans off.

[best12bars]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 9:02am

I never saw the movie. I was a huge fan of the series when it aired during the first season. After they solved the mystery of "who killed Laura Palmer?" in Season 2 the show fell completely apart. I tried to stay with it for the remainder of the season, but I finally gave up. Everything that was so good about it disappeared. It was just a flailing mess.

So when the movie came out, I still had that bad taste in my mouth from the TV show, and I skipped it.

I should check it out. I recently bought a cheap copy of the TV series (which is scheduled for a Blu-ray release now), but it didn't come with the movie. The BD set will include the film, so I'm told.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 9:06am

Back when we had a lot of movie theaters all over the place, TP: FWWM was tucked away in the one teeny theater in the one part of town that was hard to get to. I went to see with no expectations after all the horrible reviews and the Cannes stories.

I loved it. It's the heart of darkness.

[trentsketch]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 9:13am

I'm a big fan, too. I don't know what people were expecting in the backstory of the high schooler found stuffed in a body bag in the first episode of Twin Peaks. It's not going to be a light-hearted romp and it can't take the same bizarro psychological approach as the TV series where the main character was an outsider looking into the town.

[best12bars]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 9:13am

One of my surreal moments in life is that my mom lived off the coast of Seattle just about a mile from where they filmed a lot of the location stuff for the series. I have photos of me in 1991 down by the water next to the huge hollow log where they discovered Laura Palmer's body. I also have pictures of the lodge just up the hill used for many of the Benjamin and Audrey Horne scenes, and a bridge seen in the credits.

My mom was actually up for the Log Lady, even going so far as to screen test for the part. She lost out to an old family friend of hers, so she was okay with it. I thought that was kinda cool.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 9:24am

brief sheryl lee interview

[romantico]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 9:26am

Although not official, this is coming to Blu Ray along with the complete series sometime in 2014. Not sure if FWWM will be included in the box set or a stand alone release is planned. Either way, I can't wait.This movie freaked me out when I saw it and it's one of my all time favorites.

http://welcometotwinpeaks.com/news/twin-peaks-blu-ray/

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 10:05am

I read David Lynch lost interest in the series after ABC forced him to reveal the killer. I think the episode where the killer is finally revealed is one of the most terrifying moments ever aired on TV. But the series definitely goes down hill after that. I've been having fun revisiting them on Netflix.
I hope they eventually release a Blu Ray of the film that includes deleted scenes. Apparently several scenes were shot with series regulars that didn't make it into the final cut of the film.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 10:30am

Nah, not his masterpiece. There's a lot of interesting stuff in it, to be sure, and it was really hideously underrated and deliberately misunderstood on its first release -- I've never seen so many reviewers bend over backwards to miss a film's point as they did here. Lynch was CRITIC'S TARGET #1 at the time, and it was an ugly ugly spectacle.

For me, Lynch's real masterpiece is ERASERHEAD -- the first and best real true clear expression of his vision. The film noir stylings of BLUE VELVET and so on have their appeal, of course, but ERASERHEAD is the one I keep going back to when I want my head well and truly f*cked with.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 10:32am

I'll have to give this another try. I never could get past the first half-hour.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 10:41am

It's kind of like Moulin Rouge that way, Borstal.

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 10:48am

I like the first half hour. Especially the scenes with Irene in the Diner.

[Master Bates]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 11:20am

I think I still have a copy of this somewhere:

Plus, I am forever thankful to TP for introducing me to Julee Cruise. I cannot imagine a more haunting yet peaceful piece of music to accompany the show intro, and her other music on the TP sound track is amazing.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 11:33am

Eternal Marilyn is with us everywhere. Praise her light.

"In late 1989, David Lynch and television producer Mark Frost decided to work together on a biopic of singer and actress Marilyn Monroe based upon Anthony Summers’s book, The Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe.

Of Monroe, Lynch said: “I always, like ten trillion other people, liked Marilyn Monroe and was fascinated by her life. So when this came along, I was interested, but you know the drill. I got into it carefully… We met with Anthony Summers, who wrote the book. The more we went along, the more it was sort of like UFOs. You’re fascinated by them, but you can’t really prove if they exist. Even if you see pictures, or stories, or people are hypnotized, you never really know. Same thing with Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedys and all this. I can’t figure out even now what’s real and what’s a story. It got into the realm of a bio pic and the Kennedys thing and away from this movie actress that was falling. I got cold on it. And when we put in the script who we thought did her in, the studio bailed out real quick.”

No one ever really seemed to know Monroe; she appeared somewhat of a mystery during her lifetime which turned into myth after her death. Similarly, no one really knew who Laura Palmer was when she was alive, and much less after her death which revealed a side of her completely unknown to even her closest friends. In fact, it is not until her death that we find out who she might really have been.

http://popreflection.wordpress.com/tag/laura-palmer/

[Playbilly]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 12:05pm

To each his own....

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 2:18pm

Love many of you, but I completely disagree. I find it completely pointless and misguided, with an awful awful performance from Sheryl Lee. The subject is so uninteresting, they removed everything that made the story mysterious and told you what happened. There are interesting moments (none of which concern Laura or her father), but all the stuff with the high schoolers was terrible. The biggest offense of all: casting an embarrassing Moira Kelly as Laura Flynn Boyle as Donna.

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 2:31pm

The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer!! I recently dug out my copy when I introduced my better half to the show on Netflix. I forgot what a disturbing read it is. Even darker than the film.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 2:34pm

Namo gets it.

It hit something primal in my sad little gay boy self when I first saw it at 12.

It resonates even more deeply now.

[best12bars]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 3:04pm

I love the disparity of opinions (and ones I respect).

It sounds like a "must see" for me now.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 3:10pm

Yeah, Ms. Kelly can't hold a candle to Ms. Boyle.

The very opening of the film should have given folks an idea of what to expect -- the credits play out over a TV screen showing white noise. As the credits finish, the screen is smashed and screaming starts.

And the film is missing the veneer of self-referential humor that made the show so delightful -- there's no "Invitation To Love" soap opera, or inside jokes to VERTIGO and all that. The film is a straight up horror story about a girl going out of her mind, and it is still pissing people off.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 6:20pm

Sherilyn Fenn: David finds the gift in mistakes. There are no accidents with David.


Cool story

Updated On: 12/19/13 at 06:20 PM

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 6:20pm

nightmare fuel

Updated On: 12/19/13 at 06:20 PM

[bobs3]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 7:01pm

I remember when the film was released the film critic for LA Weekly wrote about Sheryl Lee's performance (I am paraphrasing) "This is either one of the worst film performances I have ever seen or one of the BEST I have ever seen, I'm not sure." He ended up voting for her for Best Actress of the Year at the Los Angeles Film Critics Awards in 1992 (Emma Thompson won for HOWARD'S END).

Updated On: 12/19/13 at 07:01 PM

[JohnBoy2]

Posted: 12/19/13 at 8:36pm

I don't know if I really think the movie's all that, but I do recall being completely mesmerized by Sheryl Lee, and thinking that she gave one of the best performance by an actress that I had ever seen. I only ever saw it, once, when it was in theaters. I need to revisit it.