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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