Login
David Lynch's feature-length prequel to his cult series "Twin Peaks" depicts, in assiduous detail, the last seven days in the life of its morally ambiguous, self-destructive and deeply troubled 17-year-old catalyst Laura Palmer.
"Fire Walk With Me" in itself surpasses the masterful TV pilot with inherent strangeness, perversity, excoriating beauty and magic realism. Lynch reveals the side of this quiet American town that could never be shown on television, thus delving further into the darkest secrets of Twin Peaks. Laura is visualised on a constantly alternating moral spectrum: she volunteers at Meals on Wheels, is the high school Homecoming queen, and the darling of her parents, community and friends. However, Laura led a double life — she was victimised by abuse, suffered unusual dreams and often prostituted herself to fund a secret cocaine habit; the film unveils the crux of her character and its contradictions.
Of its lyrical, inexplicable imagery and symbolism the film's stand-alone merits are expansive, but the power lies within its ability to transmogrify an entire television series into an infinite whirlpool of weirdness that will never be unplugged. "Fire Walk With Me" is one of Lynch's most twisted neighbourhood visions, albeit with an emotive core similar to "Blue Velvet". Lynch did not care for the limitations of television (hence the ironic opening image, a smashed TV set) and reiterated the world of Twin Peaks to match his prevalent ideas of underlying perversity in white-picket fenced suburbia: the hidden nightmare this time being incest and murder via soul possession connected with BOB and the Red Room/White/Black Lodges. Whatever the case of Lynch's trademark ambiguity, the mystery of Twin Peaks, its extradimensional spaces and spirits are all part of its incomparably twisted beauty, whether you get it or not; the final sequence of Laura's implied passing over into the White Lodge is a Lynchian trait: the existential happy ending seen in his most recent films "Mulholland Dr." and "INLAND EMPIRE".
I think of the film as an indefinite part of the series cannon, without it "Twin Peaks" would not have come full circle as most of Lynch's films do, there would be no resolution for Laura Palmer and that last image of her angel is exquisitely unforgettable. I recommend it to anyone who is a Lynch fan, but at its heart, aside from the supernatural elements, it is a film about incest and the torment, loneliness, shame, guilt and devastation of its victims.
