...better late than never?
TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME was the return to the titular town, where no one is innocent - the same goes for the critics and fans like who watched the film upon its release. No one liked it. Released in 1992, a year after the show had run its course and David Lynch at the helm once more...
What happened, and why is it celebrating critical reappraisal 20 years past its release?
The curious case with this film and the point that everyone has with Fire Walk With Me is a simple one: it has little to do with Twin Peaks, at least in style or tone. Instead it plays like standard Lynch fare - more akin to his features, with some quaint and odd echoes to his past films such as Blue Velvet, handling similar themes. It's non-linear structure and seemingly incoherent narrative lost fans, including myself on a first viewing, baffled by the images that had passed my retina. It takes a deeper look to fully appreciate what Fire Walk With Me is, which is not Twin Peaks, the goofy, loveable and ever so slightly uncomfortable look into a small town, but Twin Peaks, the horrifically dark and sinister place with the façade of an idyllic small town. The literal fourth wall breaking moment at the very beginning with the smashing of a TV screen should be enough evidence to suggest that this is to subvert expectations and play with it's own space, the big screen, not the small.
It touches upon all of the elements that would have been in Twin Peaks if it weren't on TV or more appropriately, a network looking to play it by the books, not taking any risks. Drug abuse, violence and psychological torment play key roles in this film, at the centre of it - a girl who is about to give into said torment and end her own life. It goes back to fill in the blanks, Lynch himself coining the story as not the obvious death (or at least it should be obvious) of the lead, but when. When is Laura going to die? It's this uncertainty which is what Fire Walk With Me hinges upon, it constantly unnerves you. It's that feeling that many horror films attempt to replicate - that sense of dread, you know something is going to happen, but when? When it does happen, it feels like a great release, like a burden has been lifted from your shoulders because you know that Laura is free from her torment, from the killer BOB, from her revolting nightmare.
As ultimately, when I think of this film, I have a horrible feeling inside: a feeling I have for no other film, this film disgusts me... but that's what I love about it. That's what keeps me coming back. It's taken several years for people to realise this - Fire Walk With Me exists as its own entity, detached from the TV show to show Twin Peaks from a different perspective: the disgusted and haunted perspective of Laura Palmer and how she sees it before her untimely demise. I feel as Laura does and I'm not alone in this feeling.
Looking forward now, onto the already covered subject of a revival, most fans will be clamouring for that same old goofy Twin Peaks, that is what shouldn't be expected of the return and I believe it's third season will be much more akin to this misunderstood prequel, a much, much darker approach. Either way, be it like the show or the film, or even perhaps a mix of both, I look back to Fire Walk With Me and can't help but love it, and look forward to the small screen eagerly for the return of the cult classic - but maybe in a darker light.
I'm not alone in seeing past Fire Walk With Me's undeserved hatred: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11153925/Fire-Walk-With-Me-the-film-that-almost-killed-Twin-Peaks.html
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