Spitting Out the Demons Part IV/Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

Part IV – Movies That Frustrate Jojo

Okay, you know the drill. These are the reviews I should have really gotten done ages ago, but the good news is I'm officially done with college for the year, which means I've got plenty of time to sweat out a couple more quickie reviews. The theme this time: movies that I can appreciate on a cinematic level but that have frustrated or are likely to frustrate my fiancée Jojo. Many of them have a significant amount in common, as I’ll get to in a moment, but a blanket consensus would be that she found the ones she has seen to be boring, slow or lacking in their narrative or characters’ believability. On the other hand, she enjoys the Narnia books, so I suppose everything’s relative.

Theorem – One of my few concessions to trying to absorb New Wave cinema, this film combines the direction of the late Pier Paolo Pasolini (Salo) with a hypnotic turn from a then-young Terence Stamp as a student who boards with an upper-middle-class Italian family of four and subsequently seduces all of them (including both parents, the son, the daughter and the maid), causing their lives to change in unusual ways. Watch for the striking visuals and haunting musical score, but be prepared to sit through a lot of (subtitled) ramblings about class and identity. Stamp is a sight to see, though.

Hesher – More or less as above, only instead of Terence Stamp, we have Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the titular scruffy metal-head who begins crashing in the home of a boy, his near-catatonic widowed father (Rainn Wilson) and his hilarious granny. And rather than seduction, his method of imparting wisdom and change involves smoking weed, physical assault and being an arsehole to everyone. There’s a subplot about the kid trying to buy back the wreck of his late mother’s car, and Natalie Portman pops up as a slightly unnecessary love interest, but any second when Gordon-Levitt is on screen is fried gold.

Lost Highway – Oh, this film has tested me. The story of how I finally got to see it could fill a page on it’s own, which is just as well as I cannot describe the plot in less than 100 words anyway. The story is a cinematic pretzel folding in on itself (though not as far up its own arse as Inland Empire), the performances range from great (Bill Pullman, Robert Loggia, Robert FUCKING Blake) to meh (Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty) and the music is brilliant. Look, it’s a David Lynch film. You either love it or hate it.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me – This, however, I can say plenty about. After watching the whole series on Netflix (more on that later), I decided to give the film prequel a chance, and whilst it clearly sets the groundwork for future Lynch films, its pre-existing universe grounds it a little more as we get to see the events that lead to the death of troubled schoolgirl Laura Palmer. Chris Isaak and Kiefer Sutherland make the most of their too-short roles, David Bowie materialises out of the "Dancing in the Street" video and Harry Dean Stanton says what we’re all thinking: “Goddamn, these people are confusing”.

Okay, I'm going over my 100 word limit on this, but a couple of things have to be said for and against Fire Walk With Me. One of the strengths of the TV show was that it balanced a murder mystery within the trappings of a soap opera pastiche, with a big cast and several interlinking B-plots to serve the narrative and flesh out the characters and environs of Twin Peaks. Kyle MacLachlan was undoubtedly the lead character, but his material (arguably the best of David Lynch’s writing) never pulled focus more than was necessary, and the presence of other established actors as well as up-and-comers made it a great launchpad for careers whilst still giving us familiar faces. Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti created a soundtrack to the show that was instantly recognisable and resisted becoming boring through repetition, and the cinematography was exceptional for a 90s TV show. And here, at least, these are Fire Walk With Me’s strengths too: the returning cast all fit neatly back into their roles like they've never left. Badalamenti’s key score themes are incorporated into the film but with bigger and bolder arrangements in places, and the film retains the distinctive rosy colour grade of the show.

Of course, the nudity and drug use is much more visible, which was a little jarring considering the slightly forced chastity of the show when it came to that sort of thing, due to FCC regulations of the time, but then this is a David Lynch film so that’s almost par for the course. That being said, whilst seeing Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer stripping off and getting nasty does have a certain bent appeal that never really depreciates, seeing her shovelling coke up her hooter every five minutes does cause it to slowly lose its allure.

However, one of the main principal bugbears I have with the film is that it reins in the expansiveness of the show; despite being set in a few more locations besides the town itself, its failure to show off as much of the town ironically makes it feel more limited (some perhaps would say tighter) in scope, and after getting used to a wide cast and numerous plot strands, focusing almost exclusively on the lead-up to Laura’s death (especially when fans of the show will already know who killed her and revealing it here will spoil it for non-fans) is a little jarring. “Where are Sheriff Truman and his deputies?” I found myself asking. “And Ben and Audrey Horne? They were my favourite support characters and they don’t appear once!” Plus, even for someone watching it without the benefit of knowing the show, once you've seen one pine forest you've pretty much seen them all, no matter how lovingly it’s been photographed.

In fact, whilst a large chunk of the essential cast do reprise their roles, there are still a couple of notable absences that have been handled with questionable recasting. Moira Kelly (Chaplin, The Lion King) replaces Lara Flynn Boyle (Wayne’s World, Men In Black II) as Laura’s friend Donna and part of me really doesn't have a problem with that; Donna spends most of her time on the show crying or sulking over her friend being dead, so it was actually nice to see the more naïve and waifish side of her; plus I suspect Boyle felt she dodged the bullet by not having to go topless.

Even MacLachlan’s role is little more than an extended cameo here, with the first act leaving us mostly in the hands of Chris Isaak for no discernible reason than they couldn't get MacLachlan to film a bigger role. Isaak isn't bad, despite being better known for his singing than acting, and he does have genuine chemistry with Kiefer Sutherland (playing against his more recent Jack Bauer type as a speccy FBI nerd with Dennis the Menace hair); he just doesn't get the chance to be particularly good either. As for David Bowie… let’s just say that whatever you think about him as an actor, (and I happen to like him,) his performance, whilst deliberately jarring and weird, isn't even close to being the weirdest thing in this film. The trademark dream sequences are back, but so too are the increasingly strange jaunts in which supposedly unreal characters start popping up in the town itself for all to see and hear; aren't these people supposed to be supernatural beings who remain incognito? Part of me feels it is Lynch waving his Jacobs at us. There’s also a slightly gruesome scene involving a drug bust that goes wrong that I can’t remember ever being followed up in the show (my Wikipedia research claims it was mentioned in the pilot, but that's it), and it certainly doesn't seem to have any further relevance to the film’s characters or narrative once its done with.

All this would probably not rankle so much if it weren't for the fact that, whilst keeping faithful to the show’s aesthetic, the cinematography for a lot of the scenes is almost too televisual and not as cinematic as I've come to expect from Lynch. Perhaps it’s a side effect of the show being so of its time, and the show's format and artistry - despite very clearly being an affectation - were a blueprint for other long-form television shows to come, but what this film seemed to lack was the expansiveness of the show or the cinematic qualities of a film in its own right, and while the characters are fleshed out well and the film is still pretty to look at, it still feels like Lynch was hedging his bets a little on this one and hoping for a revival of the series that sadly would never come.

A lot of these technical criticisms, I suppose, seem moot. “Well, of course it’s flawed,” you say. “It’s a film spin-off from a cancelled TV show; of course it’s going to look crappy on a big screen, or not make sense within the narrative of the show. Right?”

Well, no, not really.

For the sake of comparison, take a show like Neon Genesis Evangelion and its first two movie spin-offs, Death and Rebirth and End of Evangelion. And before you say anything, yes, I know I go on about Evangelion constantly, yes, I'm aware it’s a Japanese animated show, and yes, I will be reviewing the next two films when they come out; but that’s not what I'm talking about now and it’s the closest thing to a good example I can come up with so just deal with it.

The two shows, Twin Peaks and Evangelion, share a lot of interesting similarities:-
• They both ran for at least 26 episodes (Peaks actually ran for 30 episodes, but let's not nitpick), and had a slight dip in quality in the middle from which they never quite fully recovered.
• In both cases this was largely due to network interference, though Evangelion’s initial demise was also due to its risqué content, forcing Sega to pull their sponsorship and leading to corners being cut in the animation department.
• They both had film spin-offs that act as both a prequel and sequel to some extent; Fire Walk With Me being very much a prequel with some sequel elements hinted at through the dream sequences, whilst Death and Rebirth functions as a non-linear clip-show/rehash of the show’s plot (reusing a lot of its material from the show itself with new sequences added) with End of Eva being a rewritten and more action packed version of the show’s finale.
• Both shows, and their spin-offs, conclude with more questions raised than they answered.

The difference, (and this is probably a matter of the medium allowing for it more,) is that whilst Evangelion’s scope only suffered when the animation was under-funded and under-used, End of Eva picked it back up again in spades, even in quiet or introspective scenes. Seriously, just watch the first half of it and see how easy it is to create scope with a little consideration for what is cinematic.

Okay, I’m going to wrap this up. For those considering watching the film, I’d have to say you’re probably only really going to get the most out of it if you’re a fan of the show and of Lynch’s 90s output particularly. On the other hand, it is the only David Lynch film I haven’t fallen asleep in with the exception of Dune, and that’s not damning with faint praise; I simply have a bad habit of watching his films when I really should be in bed.

The Atrocity Exhibition – This independent film, based on J.G. Ballard’s book, was an unmitigated slog compared with Mr Lynch’s oeuvre: easier to stay awake through (though only slightly), but significantly less satisfying at the end. The plot is a series of vignettes (one shares its roots with David Cronenburg’s Crash), and a framing narrative describes the film as chronicling a scientist’s mental breakdown, but otherwise the film offers little. The actors are blank and speak in awkward sentences describing absurd scenarios, and the visuals are a mixture of stock footage and student film-level cinematography. Clearly a labour of love, but scarcely worth it.

We Need To Talk About Kevin – Okay, home stretch. Tilda Swinton plays a mother dealing with her increasingly sociopathic titular son (played by a terrifying Ezra Miller), all while her husband (John C Reilly) is blithely ignorant of… You know what? Just watch it for yourself. You’ll see what I mean.

Seriously, watch any or all of these films, they are all interesting or different in one way or another. Even Atrocity Exhibition if you can find it. If you actively never watch films that are going to challenge you or that give you something to think about at the end without their being explosions or car chases or tits to hold your attention, then I don’t know why you bother. There’s clearly no pleasing you.

I'm Raggedy Adams. Let's rock.