Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

This film has a very bad reputation. Indeed, there are fans who consider it to be the nadir of David Lynch's career, although frankly I'd rather watch it than Wild at Heart or Dune, or even Inland Empire. In fact, in my opinion, Fire Walk With Me is nowhere near as bad as many claim, but this is sort of damning with faint praise. The fact remains that it's not a masterpiece.

The premise of Fire Walk With Me -- that Laura Palmer was a self-destructive teen thanks to being repeatedly raped since the age of twelve -- is basically sound, but then once you start piggy-backing off the success of your own work you're probably in safe territory. Unfortunately, Fire Walk With Me doesn't play anything safe, even by Lynch's standards, sledgehammering us with obtuse symbols and bizarrely uninspired visions, as if to atone for the competence and discipline displayed in the TV series. Frustratingly, the whole idea of Laura Palmer's backstory has great promise; the revelations about her incest have solid potential, but are diluted by extraneous surrealism and a preliminary FBI investigation of a murder which took place a year ago in another town. Ironically, this 30-minute prologue is more reminiscent of the TV show than Laura's story is, yet it's by far the most tedious and inconsequential part of the film; the drama is dull; the two FBI agents (unlike Kyle MacLachlan's Agent Cooper) laughably forgettable.

As for the more familiar characters -- Bobby Briggs, James Hurley, and Leo & Shelley Johnson -- they are introduced and disappear before we know it, for no other reason than to play preordained roles. The only individual fleshed out appropriately is Laura's best friend Donna (the only returning character played by a different actor, as it turns out), aside, of course, from her monstrous father, played superbly by Ray Wise. Agent Cooper himself actually appears in the atrocious prologue; he shouldn't have been in this prequel at all. The woeful cast barely supports a murky enterprise that feels stitched together by different editors working at cross-purposes.

Given all this criticism, why do I think that Fire Walk With Me is much better than its reputation? A few reasons. Most importantly, it is Lynch's darkest and most emotionally hurting film (more so than even Blue Velvet), containing scenes in Laura's bedroom so terrifying they make parts of The Shining look tame. The question of whether Leland is an innocent man possessed by an evil spirit, or a garden variety sexual molester (seen as diabolical through the perspective of a traumatized daughter), is never answered (the TV series makes pretty clear it's the former), though the reality is suffocating on either option. I was frankly more disturbed by Leland/"Bob" than by villains in some of the most hard-hitting horror films. The ending nonetheless provides an authentically uplifting payoff, where after a repugnant life on earth -- and her thoroughly degrading final hours -- Laura gets her angel in heaven. It brought tears to my eyes. Lynch had the right idea in making this film a character piece, in contrast to the TV series' focus on the dynamics of an entire town. It's an intensely personal film, and a switch in tone that I can readily applaud in the context of a Twin Peaks prequel.

Second, the sound design is pretty impressive. A haunting score is served up as expected, and of course there is the ethereal Julie Cruise (obligatory in Lynch productions around this time). But my favorite bit plays at the Bang Bang Bar, when Laura and Donna are going wild with a couple of guys ten years their senior on the dance floor. Lynch opts for subtitles at this point to provide a rare realism, as we hear the girls' shouting conversation over the deafening music exactly as they do -- barely at all.

The final reason that Fire Walk With Me isn't as bad as some claim is Sheryl Lee's performance. For someone originally cast as "the dead girl" on the TV program involving little to no screen time, Lee turned out to be ferociously talented in playing a complex victim of child abuse, haunted and terrified one moment, ragingly self-destructive the next, yet capable of tender mercies, especially when protecting her best friend who tries following her into prostitution. Lee deserved a hell of a lot better than having to see this film booed at the Cannes festival. For all its serious problems, Fire Walk With Me isn't a dud; I'm drawn back to it repeatedly. I just wish that Lynch had had the mojo to smooth it out into what could have been a gem.

Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5.

UPDATE: 5 stars is my revised judgment after revisiting. This film is a masterpiece when watched as a standalone, completely apart from the context of the TV series, which I didn't do at first. See my rankings of David Lynch films.

4 Comments:

Blogger Gary said...

I remember mostly liking this when I saw it in the theater, but it was both more disturbing and less enjoyable than the tv show. I had read Laura Palmer's secret diary before weeing it (it was being sold in bookstores back then), so I was already familiar with the outline of Laura's backstory. Part of me was hoping that the film wouldn't be quite so true to that story.

I certainly agree about how disturbing "Bob" was throughout. Your point about the ambiguity of natural/supernatural influence is spot on. I can't recall another work where that sort of ambiguity was maintained as well.

8/04/2010  
Blogger Seifer900 said...

I love love love this review. This film aggravated me to no end because the sound design and Sheryl Lee and Ray Wise and the scenes with them (and the cinematography in their scenes) was so captivating, and yet surrounding them was such nonsense. And after that 35min prologue which is nothing more than a parody of the show, it was so hard for me to get back into this film.
I actually made a fan edit of the film in order to center it squarely on Laura and Leland, and it's actually enjoyable. You can check out my alterations on youtube.

9/09/2011  
Blogger Joel Bocko said...

Interesting that you later revised your rating. Like you, I was more troubled by the film on first viewing than later ones but within a day of that first viewing (my only one for 5 years) I had already conceded to myself that, flaws and all, the film was a masterpiece.

It seems like this a film whose reputation is growing exponentially over time. For the first 10 years or so of its existence, any praise was from voices in the wilderness: this has to be one of the most reviled films from a major director. Reading the reviews from the time is just astonishing, especially Vincent Canby's vicious and mean-spirited pan in the New York Times.

But I've noticed in the past 5-10 years, a lot of people have either been reevaluating its reputation or seeing it for the first time and wondering why it was so despised. In the last year or two, the number of tributes seems to have skyrocketed and this year Twin Peaks fever seems to be striking again as the blu-ray release is prepared.

In time, I think Fire Walk With Me will be very widely seen as Lynch's most emotionally powerful film. That might actually already be the case.

5/15/2014  
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5/14/2016  

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