David Lynch is notoriously stubborn when it comes to explaining the explicit meaning of his work. In his 1992 interview with Kristine Mckenna, he stated “I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.” His surrealist works tackle the harsh, gritty realities of modern life, delving deep into the unconscious mind and exploring what drives normal people to dark places. Utilising the realms of the spiritual and the supernatural, Lynch always seems to uncover real problems that exist within the absurd. Therefore, it may be surprising that Twin Peaks, a series that is often labelled as one of the best television shows of all time, is surprisingly subdued and comforting at surface level. The story of a small town brought together by the murder of model schoolgirl Laura Palmer, in which the quiet bubbling of something more sinister is drowned out by quirky townsfolk, pine trees, and slices of cherry pie. Details of sexual harassment, trafficking, and murder are delivered to us through the cosy filter of charming characters and settings, meaning although the premise of the show is built on the grisly demise of a teenage sweetheart, we never seem to come into full contact with the true darkness that lurks in Twin Peaks. Lynch’s 2017 revival of the show Twin Peaks: The Return is contrastingly one of the filmmaker’s most daringly explicit works. The Return does not shy away from the gruesome, in fact it embraces it. Scenes of eerie woodsmen warping through desolate gas stations, exploding heads, evil doppelgängers, and a particularly grisly hit-and-run are just some of the more disturbing elements of The Return, all of which combine to create a distinctly dark atmosphere that the first two seasons seem to lack.
Therefore, a viewer may be inclined to wonder: what happened between the original episodes of Twin Peaks and The Return that caused such a dramatic shift from quirky soap opera to psychological horror? A simple answer would combine Lynch having much more creative freedom due to a newfound lack of strict network censors and a cult following that desires an excess of all things ‘Lynchian’. However, the much-overlooked feature film and prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, released in 1992 exists as a markable point for this surreal shift in tone. Fire Walk with Me (abbreviated to FWWM) was a notorious box office flop, with fans of the show despising the film for abandoning the final cliff-hanger ending of season 2 and instead returning to follow Sheryl Lee’s Laura Palmer throughout the last week of her life, right before her inevitable demise. Lynch stood by the prequel, even when it was met with boos at Cannes and subsequently lost $5 million at the box office. However, today FWWM is hailed as a cult classic, despite its huge losses in the ‘90s; FWWM is a retrospective milestone in Lynch’s on-screen exploration of the Twin Peaks universe, marking a significant shift towards the dark and unexplainable.
The undeniable risks taken by FWWM project Lynch’s devotion to embracing a non-linear, non-conformist way of storytelling. The film can be interpreted as Lynch testing the waters, by putting out a project that would not play into the hands of the viewers and provide satisfactory conclusions; instead, it would introduce new characters whilst reviewing old plot points, at a time when all viewers wanted was a continuation instead of a change. We follow Laura as she engages in chaotically self-destructive behaviour, indulging in excessive drug use and sexual promiscuity, as she is pursued relentlessly by the evil spirit BOB who resides in her father’s body. No longer is Laura Palmer the dead girl wrapped in plastic, her spirit only living on through the nostalgic stories people tell of her; through FWWM we gain a vital insight into the graphic and grisly realities that the original series only alluded to. We see Laura’s relationships and mental state rapidly deteriorate, slipping deeper into her delirious state of denial and paranoia as she uncovers the truth about the evil spirit that torments her day-to-day. The film provides various details that are brought up again in The Return, for example the significance of the jade ring, the meaning of ‘Blue Rose’ and the prominence of David Bowie’s brief cameo as FBI Agent Phillip Jeffries, which supports its status today as essential Twin Peaks viewing. Although many scenes are still labelled as unnecessary, especially the introduction of FBI Agents Sam Stanley and Chester Desmond (played by Kiefer Sutherland and Chris Isaak), this solidifies the presence of this typically Lynchian non-conformist narrative; expecting a sequence of linear necessary scenes from Lynch leads a viewer to inevitable frustration. Many moments in The Return have no follow up scenes, no explanations at all, and FWWM introduces this idea of scenes that do not add or take away anything from the larger narrative. The first two seasons of Twin Peaks are relatively plot driven despite their slow pace, following Agent Cooper and the rest of the Sheriffs’ Department as they solve the crime and catch the killer, so FWWM exists almost as if it is preparing the viewer to experience more scenes that exist simply to exist.
Although the entire film explores trauma in a brutally frightening and confrontational way, the depiction of Laura’s graphic murder was to me the most poignant and shocking moment. When I first watched FWWM, I was taken aback by how genuinely terrifying and disturbing the film is, contrasting greatly with the original television series, in the way there seems to be no safety net of quirky characters to provide moments of comedic relief. Laura Palmer’s visceral murder was the moment I understood Twin Peaks had taken a definitive turn, meaning that specific cosy depiction of the town would never exist on screen again. In the final moments of the film the viewer is confronted with Laura being violently stabbed to death by her own father; in a similar way to the depiction of Maddy Ferguson’s murder in the second season, Lynch constructs a hypnotic scene of choreographed chaos. Yet, in Laura’s final scenes, we are met with much more explosively explicit imagery. With more blood splatters, more flashing white lights, and more crazed eyes staring directly into the camera, this final scene does not shy away from the horrific truth of Leland Palmer murdering his daughter against his own will. It’s more accurate to compare Laura’s death with the blood and guts of The Return, in the sense that more surrealist iconography seems to be present alongside the copious violence (specifically, the appearance of the angel apparition about midway through the scene — a brief moment of silence as both Laura and friend Ronette Pulaski take in the heavenly figure before the violence continues). Like the explicit deaths featured in The Return, the murder of Laura Palmer is a genuinely frightening moment. The scene does not utilise jump scares or grotesque SFX, but it does entirely bombard the audience with a sensory overload, with Sheryl Lee’s infamous screech accompanying a sequence of blindingly bright flashes of shocking imagery.
Fire Walk with Me is a highly ambitious project from David Lynch that may not have necessarily been received as an instantaneous hit, but has without a doubt culminated a cult-like status over time. A film originally labelled as pretentious and confusing essentially foreshadowed the rise of arthouse elements in mainstream media, challenging an audience with darker themes and nonsensical detail to encourage an active engagement, whether it be negative or positive. The risks taken by Lynch may seem inevitable when you look at the absurd twists and turns that exist in Mulholland Drive or Blue Velvet for example, but to do so in the context of a beloved television show that was for the most part softened and tamed by network executives, was a step towards the transformation of Lynch’s work. With the show shifting from network TV to HBO for The Return and FWWM placed in the very centre of this shift, we see the full experimental blossoming of Twin Peaks. The release of FWWM acted as a catalyst for Lynch, giving him a sense of ultimate creative freedom over the show that was never present throughout the production of the original series, and allowing him to orchestrate 134 minutes of experimental filmmaking that defied genre. To me and many others, what initially was perceived as an unnecessary prequel now stands as an extremely prominent piece of cinema, bridging between the cosy and the disturbing and existing within the liminal space between two contrasting depictions of the town of Twin Peaks.
