Review of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) by Mary B — 02 Jan 2014

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me was a difficult film for me to experience because while Twin Peaks is one of the finest TV series I have ever seen and I needed to see more of it than the meagre 30 episode run it had, the man that recommended it to me said that Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me was sometimes too surreal for its own good, and Quentin Tarantino said that director "David Lynch had disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see another David Lynch movie until I hear something different. And you know, I loved him. I loved him." That's a pretty brutal consensus, so my expectations going in to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me were mixed yet still hopeful.

There were three things mankind was not meant to understand in life: which belief system is the right one, what the meaning of life is, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. And how I could write on something I simultaneously understood and yet didn't understand at all is one of the great challenges of the world. It is like the epitome of David Lynch's surrealism without going as excessive as in Eraserhead, yet certainly going somewhat excessive. It's a sick and twisted film, but it has a premise and knows what it wants to do.

To begin with the criticisms, the narrative in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is rather disjointed in its narrative as it tells the story of the investigation of the previous murder caused by Laura Palmer's killer and a small element of Agent Dale Cooper's fixation on Twin Peaks, as well as the last seven days in the life of Laura Palmer. But it doesn't settle for a while at the start of the film until it puts focus solely on the life of Laura Palmer, and so the experience has a shaky beginning.

The beginning is not promising, also because Special Agent Chester Desmond is a terrible replacement for Agent Dale Cooper. Kyle MacLachlan's role was iconic and one of the greatest and most sophisticated performances in a TV drama that I had ever seen, and his unwillingness to return to a bigger role in the film due to fear of typecasting and a dislike of the second season of Twin Peaks caused his role to be replaced by actor Chris Isaak who has no charisma or spirit.

David Bowie's cameo didn't even make sense since he's just a name planted on a guy that gets less than a minute of screen time, and Heather Graham's cameo as Annie Blackburn is senseless and pointless since it makes no sense where she has come from or why she is delivering such poorly conceived dialogue.

Much of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is clunky and misses the mark, and those not ready to embrace the intense and shocking surrealism of David Lynch at some of his most hardcore will not be able to comprehend what is on screen in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.

But in all honesty, the thing that Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me achieves which boosts the credibility of the original series is that it teaches us to love Laura Palmer. It characterises her as such a nice and sweet girl who has her innocence shattered by fear, but also the object of everyone's desires due to her powerful sexual appeal. As she is the source of all the mystery and questions in Twin Peaks, it is important that David Lynch depicts just what made her the perfect specimen who everybody looked either to or at. And when she is around, the atmosphere is genial, which means that what we are feeling is what the characters of Twin Peaks feel. That's an incredible achievement, and so the love of Laura Palmer is single handedly what makes Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me a good film.

But it does succeed in other areas, such as the fact that the feel of the film is never settling as it goes between beautiful, intense, scary and shocking all at many times without ever stopping on one. You can never be sure what is going on in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and that is where the real beauty of it comes into place. It's a shocking psychological journey through the mind of Laura Palmer, and so really it is mostly a good prequel to the masterful TV series.

Like I said before, the most important aspect is the film's depiction of Laura Palmer. And what nails it is Sheryl Lee's performance as her. Sheryl Lee proved she had talent in the first season of Twin Peaks, but her finest work is in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. She characterises Laura Palmer perfectly, because the way she enters merely as a friendly girl and later turns into the most attractive woman to everyone in the school and beyond is incredible. You wouldn't expect it to happen, but it's easy to fall for Laura Palmer's beauty, the beauty within her eyes, her skin, the way she walks, and later the sight of her breasts all contribute to our realisation of how people decided to characterise or objectify her as being such a perfect figure. Sheryl Lee captures the sexual appeal of Laura Palmer perfectly, but also nails the real emotional instability of the character. Her innocence and her fears characterise a young girl, yet her sexual desires characterise her as a an enigmatic woman, and the mix is an incredibly complicated character which Sheryl Lee perfects without skipping a heartbeat. Sheryl Lee gets everything about Laura Palmer spot on and pays back the legacy out behind Laura Palmer perfectly. Once the story focuses on Laura Palmer, Sheryl Lee just completely takes over.

Ray Wise also manages to nail his role as Leland Palmer again. I always found him to be one of the best characters from the TV series, so to see him interact with his daughter before her untimely murder is a great experience. Their chemistry is intense, and Ray Wise again proves himself a a talented actor who supports the film strongly.

Moira Kelly manages to do a good job filling in for Lara Flynn Boyle and she manages to achieve almost the same charm that was in the TV series, and David Lynch returns to supply the same charismatic line delivery which made him a memorable character to begin with.

Frances Bay also makes a mysterious presence.

Lastly, Kyle MacLachlan manages to deliver the same charm that won him a Golden Globe for being in the sequential TV series in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Even in such a small part, he is too memorable for being the one man bent on configuring all the mysteries.

Really, even under the issues relating to story structure and the small quantity of strange script moments, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is as sick and twisted as you could hope for and strangely easy to connect to.