TWIN PEAKS: FIREWALK WITH ME
US, 1992, 129 minutes, Colour.
Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, David Lynch, Kiefer Sutherland, Madchen Amick, Moira Kelly, Kyle MacLachlan?, Peggy Lipton, Heather Graham, Jurgen Prochnow, James Marshall, Harry Dean Stanton, Grace Zabriskie, David Bowie, Miguel Ferrer, Lennie van Dohlen.
Directed by David Lynch.
Twin Peaks: Firewalk with Me is based on the very popular television series created by David Lynch, Twin Peaks. To appreciate the film fully, one needs to have seen the series or most of it. The film presupposes audience knowledge of the town of Twin Peaks, the characters, the murder mystery, especially the death of Laura Palmer, and her father being the murderer.
David Lynch has always been interested in the dark side of the American character, the dark side of the small American town. This is particularly to the fore in his films like Eraserhead, especially Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive. However, he is capable of directing films with much different atmospheres and more optimism, such as The Elephant Man and The Straight Story.
Lynch has created an archetypal west coast American small town, setting in Washington and Oregon states. People go about their business, but underlying are all the demons of the American character. Laura Palmer, the central figure, is a small-town sexpot, promiscuous, drug-taking, callous in the face of violence. However, Lynch sees her as needing to be redeemed - she has visions of light, experience of the transcendent which puzzle her, and eventually she seems to ascend to Heaven in a kind of theophany, accompanied by the FBI agent Cooper. This is symbolised in Laura looking at a portrait of the guardian angel with children and the angel disappearing from the picture - and later appearing as she ascends into Heaven. Her father, on the surface a benign businessman, is sexually preoccupied, focused on his daughter, seems to be schizophrenic in some ways, violence surfaces and he is brutal, especially in the death of his daughter. Cheryl Lee played Laura Palmer in the series and Ray Wise her father. They reprise their roles in the second part of the film.
The film also casts many of the characters from the television series, especially Moira Kelly as Laura's friend Donna, James Marshall as her boyfriend James, and Dana Ashbrook as the drug-dealing and murdering Bobby. There are interesting guest appearances from Kiefer Sutherland as a rather slow FBI agent, Kyle MacLachlan? reprising his role as agent Cooper, minute appearances by Jurgen Prochnow, David Bowie, Heather Graham, Lennie van Dohlen.
The first part of the film focuses on the investigation of the death of a young woman named Teresa Banks. This gives the opportunity for the FBI agents, including David Lynch wearing a hearing aid and shouting, to parody the police and FBI investigation films, especially the local police. The second half of the film focuses on the six days before Laura Palmer's death, the FBI agents disappear and the focus is particularly on the family and friends.
This is a technique that David Lynch uses in many of his films, especially Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, where the first part of the film presents one world where the audience gets accustomed to the characters and the issues, and then suddenly makes a transition to another world which upsets audience expectations, making emotional demands as well as their trying to puzzle out what is happening and why.
Lynch raises a great number of issues. However, his elliptical style, his esoteric approach, the sinister music of Angelo Badalamenti (composer on all his films), the use of light and darkness, the introduction of fantasy images, can be bewildering and not lead audiences to clear resolutions and conclusions about what is happening and the motivation of the characters. The film needs to be seen as a part of David Lynch's canon.
