Retro Review: Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me

Retro Reviews is a column devoted to reviews of older films (and by older, I mean films that or at least ten years old). It has been months since I first did a Retro Review. So, in order to right that wrong, here is one for a movie I just finished watching. The review is for David Lynch's 1992 controversial follow up to his popular television series Twin Peaks. It is called Twin Peaks Fire Walk with Me.

Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me is not a movie. At times, it is incoherent, lacks transition and is downright bizarre. It truly doesn't fit together to really form a movie. No, when dealing with this you have to really be prepared for viewing what it really is: a piece of art. Knowing this, you can see the kind of trouble I am going to have reviewing this. When it comes to being a film, it pretty much fails on every level. It is beyond frustrating to watch with little plot, over-the-top acting and straight up insanity. However, when looking at every frame and just viewing it as an experience, it can be taken as something else. Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. It is also one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen. Not many filmmakers can achieve making nightmarish images so beautiful so I guess you have to give Lynch that. But still, there's the problem of the actual film at hand. Because, well, in a traditional movie sense, it just doesn't work.

Okay, let me try to review this thing. 

When Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 1992, it was booed by the audience. The film received universally bad reviews and was written off by most fans of the television series. It is easy to see why. Gone is the warm fuzziness, humor and quirkness of the show. Gone are characters like Sheriff Harry S. Truman, Deputy Andy, Deputy Hawk, Big Ed and Audrey Horn. The character of Donna Hayward is completely re-cast (mostly due to Lara Flynn Boyle probably not wanting to do the things that Lynch had the character do in the Bang Bang Bar scene). Special Agent Dale Copper (who could be considered the main character of the show) is only in the film for 5 minutes. Lynch takes the nightmare-like horror of the Second Season and amplifies to a pretty disturbing, in-your-face level (but, if you ask me, the nightmare horror of Season Two was already pretty disturbing and scary). Very unlike the television show, this movie is filled with explicit sex, violent and drug use. It's basically the polar opposite of the show. It takes all the darkness and evil that was boiling underneath everything in the show and puts it on the forefront. And it's truly hard to swallow it all.

Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me basically works as a prequel to the television show. Without watching the television show in its entirety, you will not understand any of this movie (I had trouble understanding some of it and I watched the whole show). It focuses on the primary investigation of the murder of Teresa Banks by two F.B.I. agents (played by Chris Isaak and Kiefer Sutherland) and the final days of Laura Palmer's life before she is brutally murdered, shrink-wrapped and thrown into the lake (thus starting the television series). Given the subject matter (the self-destruction, brutal rape and murder of Laura Palmer), the movie pretty much had to be disturbing and violent. A lot of people just weren't prepared for how far Lynch was going to take it. I was prepared (I read up a lot on the film before watching it) but, even still, I was fairly disturbed by what I saw. The film goes to some very dark places. In a way, watching this film is like taking a descent into hell. 

When viewing Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me as a movie, it definitely needs some work. The film is barely coherent at times and doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. The thirty minute opening that involves the investigation of the murder of Teresa Banks is much panned by many people because, aside from one thing, it is pretty pointless in regards to the rest of the plot. I myself enjoyed most of this section. It is closer in tone to the Twin Peaks series due to its quirkiness and occasional bits of comedy. That and I just really like Harry Dean Stanton whenever he shows up in a movie. Personally, I found the scenes in the F.B.I office building in Philadelphia with Cooper and Rosenfield more pointless. And what was up with David Bowie's brief cameo? It was very creepy and bizarre but what did it mean?

Other big problems with the film kick in when the actual Twin Peaks section of film begins about 40 minutes in. This section starts off fast- a little too fast for my taste. There feels like there is barely any kind of transition between scenes and it just feels really choppy. This may have to do with the fact that Lynch was forced to cut over 5 hours of footage down to just 2 hours and 15 minutes (5 hours... a director's cut of this would either be unwatchable or just plain brilliant). So, from a storytelling standpoint, this movie is pretty much a train wreck. 

The other problem I really had with the movie was the acting. There were times when it could get a little over-the-top in the television show but never to the point that it does here. The scene where this is most evident is when Laura and her father are berated by Philip Gerard (The One-Armed Man) in their car. Sheryl Lee has a couple of moments of this throughout the film.

My last problem with the film is with Laura as a character. Laura Palmer is really hard to like as a person. She is a manipulative, self-destructive, drug-addicted whore. It's kind of hard to really identify and care about someone like that. Lynch is obviously fascinated with her, devoting a whole film to her and her awful death. However, in the end, she really isn't that interesting. The great thing about the television show was that you just found out about her from other people. By just listening to stories about her, I found myself disliking her. Seeing her story play out, I found myself liking her even less. Despite all of this, Lynch still managed to really get me to sympathize with her at key moments. This shows his mastery as a filmmaker, something I'm about to discuss further.

Despite Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me suffering from these elements, it's still an incredibly powerful experience to go through. I've seen a lot of movies in my life time but none felt closer to what a nightmare feels like than this movie. There were some moments in the Twin Peaks television show where I felt that Lynch captured this feeling (the ending of the Season Two premiere still bothers me) but he manages to go even more beyond that in this film. We get more of the Black Lodge (complete with the backwards-talking midget) and much more of Bob. Believe me when I say this- no other character in film or television has fascinated me and scared me more than Bob. The scene where Laura finds him in her bedroom freaked me the eff out. I actually had to turn the movie off and start it up again today (I was watching it around midnight- you would think I would have learned my lesson after what happened when I watched the TV show at 2 a.m. and Bob freaked me out then). The scene where only the sound of that creepy ceiling fan fills the audio was also very scary and effective. Lynch fills this film with nightmare images and, by the end of the movie, actually manages to make them hauntingly beautiful.

That's another thing about this movie: Ron Garcia's cinematography is absolutely beautiful. There are so many stand out scenes where this is displayed that it is kind of hard to name them all. One scene that definitely stood out was the Bang Bang Bar. This scene was very disturbing to watch but Garcia managed to make it beautiful by contrasting a blue strobe light with a red hue. The ending of the movie with Laura in the Black Lodge was also quite beautiful. I almost feel as if the imagery of this scene, along with Garcia's lighting, impacted me on a very strong emotional level. It is not often that that can happen but the two pulled it off here.

Despite me not caring for Laura a lot of the time, Lynch really managed to hit me on an emotional level from time to time. For me, the last half of the film really hits hard. It's violent, horrible and somehow beautiful at the same time. Many reviewers have called this section the "passion of Laura Palmer" and I have to agree with it. In a way, she has to die so she can finally be at peace. But that doesn't mean it's a truly terrible thing to witness. Another scene that really stands out is the scene where Laura breaks down in the Roadhouse while Julee Cruise sings "Questions in a World of Blue." The song is beautiful and Lee's performance is pretty stand out in this scene. You can watch that scene above.

Overall, Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me is a tough movie to judge. It's ugly and beautiful at the same time. It's both a work of art and train wreck of storytelling. It's just not easy to watch. It's a portrayal of devastating self-destruction through the eyes of a bizarre but visionary filmmaker. It is polarizing. It's the definition of an experimental, art film. It is everything that Twin Peaks was not. 

So, when you see my score of this movie below, just know that it is just a number. It's in the middle because I just don't know how to score this thing. It's not really a movie. It's just expressionism. All I know is this- it was not what I wanted from a Twin Peaks film. Despite this, it hit me hard somewhere deep. It bothered me. It scared me. It put images in my head that I know won't leave any time soon. For that, for its impact and pure artistic drive, I have to respect it and David Lynch.

5/10