Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)

Chuck Dowling

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Even though my senior year of high school had just begun and I'd never done anything foolish in my entire school career, on August 28, 1992, I had no choice but to ditch school to attend the very first showing of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. As one of the few remaining "Twin Peaks" fans on Earth, I was so excited about the film's arrival that I barely slept the night before.

This was well before the information explosion of the internet, and all I knew about the film came from a few snippets of info gleaned from the pages of some upstart magazine called Entertainment Weekly. I knew the film was a prequel of sorts to my favorite television series of all time, and that David Bowie was playing a "time traveling FBI agent". I hadn't even seen the film's trailer or any TV spots, but my hopes were that in some small way, questions left lingering from the series finale might at least be addressed. I don't think I'd ever anticipated a film more than this one.

I don't think I'd ever been more disappointed either. When Fire Walk With Me had concluded after 134 depressing minutes, I wanted to throw my shoe at the screen (I refrained, for fear of hitting the other patron in the theater with me). I promptly declared the film as the "worst of all-time" and gave it a rating of NO STARS. I would have warned everyone not to go see it, but the words "Twin Peaks" on the marquee did that for me.

I'd seen the film several times since then, usually by showing it to someone who had just watched the entire run of the series. Each time, I hoped to like it a little better than before. Each time I got more and more furious. And while I saw films in the interim that took the "worst movie of all-time" crown away from FWWM (Cruising, for example), my NO STARS rating remained intact.

Fast forward to 2002. It had been about five or six years since I'd seen the film, until New Line Home Entertainment finally released it onto DVD (more on that in a moment). Seeing as how I'm now a full-fleged DVD critic, it was time to sit down with Fire Walk With Me one last time. Hopefully at this point I could give the film a fresh look, without the crutch of that emotional reaction which gave me the desire to hurl footware.

I've always enjoyed the first thirty-four minutes of FWWM (thirty-three minutes and forty-six seconds to be precise). It's during this time that I felt as if I was watching another episode of "Twin Peaks". It's a year before the murder of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), and FBI Special Agent Chet Desmond (Chris Isaak) and Agent Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland) are called to the small Washington town of Deer Meadow to investigate the murder of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley).

(Geeky fans like myself can argue that, should we go by the official Twin Peaks book The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes, it was Agent Cooper who investigated this case and there was no mention of any of the business that happens in the first thirty-four minutes of the film. However, I'm more than willing to look past that. While The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer helped propel the plotlines of the show's second season, the books shouldn't really be taken as gospel... despite their branding as "official".)

What I love most about these first thirty-four minutes is that it's the "Twin Peaks" we all knew and loved. Sure the characters and situations are slightly different (Deer Meadow is an interesting flipside to Twin Peaks, for example the sheriff's department there is corrupt and refuses to cooperate with the feds, and the local diner is cold and decrepid), but it's all good. In fact, you can draw even more parallels to the series by noting that in these first thirty-four minutes, there's no language, no nudity, and no excessive violence (save for a gratuitous fingernail removal). It's like watching a lost episode of the show.

In fact, in these first thirty-four minutes I have only one issue... the whole nonsense with Lil (the freaky woman in the red dress whom FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole uses to tell Agents Desmond and Stanley about the case they're about to take). Now, I can buy into the fact that an FBI agent might throw rocks at a bottle to help narrow a list of suspects. I can also buy that the same agent might use interpretations of his dreams to help solve a murder. However, I really have a hard time buying that the chief of a branch of the federal government doesn't give his men a report on the case they're about to take, but instead communicates entirely in cryptic gestures and clues which are only understood by one of his two men.

After thirty-four minutes however, the actual meat of the film begins: the final week of the life of Laura Palmer. Unfortunately, it's all downhill from there. WAY downhill. But before I get into all the reasons I hate the remainder of the film, something needs to be addressed. In reading reviews of FWWM over the years, I always see a common opinion shared by those who are not familiar with the series which preceeded the film. These critics often say "Peaks fans will revel in the big screen version of their favorite show." This couldn't be more wrong.

There are two camps of opinion when it comes to FWWM. There are "Lynch fans" and there are "Peaks fans". You can be both, or you can be one or the other. I happen to be a "Peaks fan" only. And while "Twin Peaks" was Lynch's baby, overall it was a collaborate effort. There were lots of elements to the show that had nothing to do with David Lynch that were just as entertaining as anything Lynch directly influenced.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, however, is a "David Lynch movie" all the way. After the first thirty-four minutes, the film wallows in sex, violence, drug use, and a general overall depravity that was completely absent in the televison series. The darkness of the town of Twin Peaks was always kept under the surface in the series, but in the film, it's right in your face the whole time.

Now, by focusing on the last week of Laura Palmer's life, the film completely turned me off. The series wasn't specifically about the murder of Laura Palmer. Over the course of Agent Cooper's investigation we learn two things: Laura Palmer wasn't the nice girl everyone knew her to be, and that there was a greater evil at work here... something beyond just a simple murder. Laura Palmer, as a living person, is not a compelling character. To watch her life play out, one loses all sympathy for her.

So, for a fan of the series, the movie merely becomes a checklist of details. "Ok, Mrs. Palmer says 'Goodnight, sweetheart'. Check. Ok, Laura jumps off James' motorcycle at Sparkwood and 21. Check." Lynch was given a prime opportunity here to continue the story of my favorite Washington town, and instead chose to go back and tell a story that I was not only familiar with, but had also moved past.

The bulk of FWWM hinges on the performance of Lee as Laura Palmer, and it's her performance that hurts the film even more. Laura Palmer, by design, is supposed to be this tragic figure, so it's understandable that every moment of her life we see is going to be an emotional rollercoaster. We get to see three emotions from Lee though: she's either grinning like a demented kewpie doll, sobbing uncontrollably, or trembling spastically with her eyes wide open looking one direction while her head points another. Lee's performance even borders on camp in some scenes, a direction I'm sure Lynch wasn't going for. She was fine in the series, so it would seem that huge emotional moments in motion pictures just aren't her cup of coffee.

Laura Palmer's murder scene was recreated for the film, and oddly, the scene was more disturbing and more powerful in the series (in an episode which Lynch also directed). In that episode, the scene was brutally violent and frightening. In the film, it's just another scene.

Had the film simply stuck to its prequel notions, I think in time I might have warmed to it in some way. However there are at least three moments where the film jumps ahead in time and somehow references events either during or after the show's swan song. During the pre-Laura Palmer segment of the film, Phillip Jeffries (David Bowie) points to Cooper and says "Who do you think this is there?". It's at this point that the scene spins wildly out of control. I've always assumed this line means that Jeffries, through whatever experience he's just emerged from, has been in the future and knows Cooper's fate (which we see at the end of the final episode). When I first saw the film, my mind started racing. It looked as though they were going to jump ahead in the timeline at some point and continue the story. This would keep me planted in my seat until the final credits were over.

Later, during a dream Laura is having, Agent Cooper appears in the Black Lodge. This is another time jump, as Cooper was in the Black Lodge during the series finale (in a nice moment of detail, you'll note that Kyle MacLachlan's hair in these "future" scenes is slightly higher than it is in the past, as Cooper's hair got a bit poofier as the series progressed). During this same dream, Annie (Heather Graham) appears in Laura's bed, in the same state which we last saw her from the finale. She tells Laura that "the good Dale is trapped in the Lodge". Essentially, these scenes ended up mocking me and those who watched the film hoping for any kind of new information.

One last thing. The television series had its share of moments that would make you scratch your head and wonder "What the hell did THAT mean?" However, while such things are usually a turn-off, they were compelling because there was a good chance that in the episodes to come, such bizarre moments would result in some sort of explanation (Cooper's dream for example, made NO sense when we first saw it, yet in future episodes it was indeed explained to a degree and it became a crucial part of the story). Well, Lynch decided that instead of addressing any of the lingering questions from the cancelled show, instead he would introduce all new ones.

This is probably what angers me the most about the film. Lynch was given the opportunity to make a Twin Peaks feature film and instead of answering questions and continuing forward, he chose to tell a story we already knew while posing all new unanswerable questions. Surely he knew that this would be the last chance ever for anything Peaks, didn't he? I'm not saying he had to wrap everything up into a neat little package... that wouldn't have been compelling either. But to give us nothing, coupled with more lingering questions seems so unfair. What's this ring that figures to prominently in the film yet was never in the series? What happened to Chet Desmond? Who is Judy? I am the arm? Garmonbozia? What the heck is that?

I can however raise my rating from NO STARS to 1.0 stars. NO STARS would signify a worthless experience. There is some value in FWWM. The soundtrack is excellent, there are some genuinely creepy moments involving BOB, and the aforementioned opening thirty-four minutes are still excellent.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is available on DVD from New Line Home Entertainment. The disc presents the film in a glorious 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that makes the film look the best it's ever looked on home video. Unlike the laserdisc release, the audio here is truer to how the film was in theaters, with moments that'll truly blow your speakers out and make the subtitles relevant again. Also, you can now clearly hear the monkey at the end of the film say "Judy", which took some effort to hear in previous releases. (Wow, there's a sentence that's never been written before.)

In New Line's press release you'll see this a lot: "The Most Requested Title in New Line's Catalog". If you want to buy into that, go ahead. But can you name for me any other New Line catalog titles you've been waiting for? Can you name any at all?

But since New Line wants to hype this as "The Most Requested Title in New Line's Catalog", let's examine how they've treated such a lofty title. First, I'll quickly address the main problem with the DVD. There is an extensive collection of deleted scenes from the film that fans have been clamoring for for years now, and to New Line's credit, they were making every effort (so we were told) to get the rights to this deleted material from a third party. Then came the announcement that they were unable to obtain the rights. While this isn't entirely New Line's fault, one could argue that as long as they kept us informed of their efforts, we would have continued to wait patiently until some sort of deal could be reached.

Instead of concentrating on what isn't on the DVD however, let's focus on what is. First, you get the film's original theatrical trailer. No real problems with this, its a fine trailer and a good extra (especially since I'd never seen it). The problem comes though when you select the all-new documentary Reflections on the Phenomenom of Twin Peaks. Well, calling it a documentary is like calling a bathtub a delicious ham sandwich.

This waste of 30 minutes of anyone's life was put together from the same interview sessions which made up the miserable extras on Artisan's Twin Peaks: The First Season DVD set. Now I probably bit my tongue in that review and didn't say everything I wanted to say about the lousy quality of those extras, but I'm not holding back any longer. Watching this train wreck brought back all the anger I felt that day in 1992 when the film itself had disappointed me so.

The doc (which is described as an effort to catch up with the cast and crew of the film, to get their thoughts on it, and to find out what they've been up to since) starts out with six minutes of worthless footage, where no one being interviewed completes a sentence. Later we hear about Grace Zabriskie's troubles with casting directors, Catherine E. Coulson talks about life in the theater, Ray Wise tells a story from the FIRST SEASON, Miguel Ferrer tells a story about Dana Ashbrook from who knows when, and some sweaty Peaks fanboy tells us how much he loves the film.

Now, I'm not knocking the power of the sweaty fanboys here, as I can be just as geeky about stuff I like as the next fanboy. But, if I was going to be a part of a documentary... if I was going to be filmed for something that hundreds of thousands of people might see... I might consider shaving. Or maybe waering something other than a T-shirt.

This documentary was a perfect opportunity to sit down with the stars and get their final thoughts, for the record, on the film and their experiences... much like how the film should have been the final word on the Twin Peaks universe. Instead we get a shaky camera filming nonsensical ramblings that are edited together by monkeys on crack. This extra serves two functions: It makes the cast and crew of Twin Peaks look like freaks, and it makes those of us who like the show look like idiots.

Most frustrating though are the five minutes or so of worthwhile information mixed in with all the junk. Kyle MacLachlan and Peggy Lipton voice their displeasure with the film, and in an odd moment of clarity, Director of Photography Ron Garcia discusses cinematography and lighting techniques (it's too bad that later we have to see the shorts the man is wearing). Terrible, absolutely terrible.

Twin Peaks has been royally screwed when it comes to DVD. Unless some wonderful new format comes out soon and all extra features are revisited on new Peaks releases, we as fans have been royally screwed as well. Peaks looks and sounds great both here and in Artisan's set... but for something so many people have wanted to own for so long, we sure don't get the quality extras we deserve.

I cannot find any reason whatsoever to recommend this DVD. Those of you who love the film, you'll buy it regardless. I had planned on buying it myself (to replace the disc only review copy that I received), but now I doubt I'll even do that. I see no reason to spend a dime on this disc. What a miserable experience.

From www.daily-reviews.com

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