A Pilgrim's Peaks - Fire Walk With Me
[cw: thematic mentions of fictional depictions of rape and incest]
Season two of Twin Peaks is awful, and having just watched every episode of it for a second time, I can say without a doubt that I will never watch it in its entirety again, and that, frankly, no one ever should unless they’re doing paid research. The five-episode long subplot it contains about Benjamin Horne’s breakdown and identification with Colonel Lee of the so-called Confederate army is one of the lowest points in the medium of television and continues to age poorly with every passing day. And yet, its finale is one of the best episodes of television that’s ever been aired. That contradiction encapsulates both the show and the story it was telling; a combination of horrible tragedy existing right alongside incredibly transcendent experience. It's only fitting, then, that a show so capable of deftly balancing melodrama and comedy, the supernatural and soap operatic, has a cinematic doppelgänger.
After enduring the second season of Twin Peaks, I get the impression that David Lynch was just about the only person interested in going back for more. Fitting, then, that what we get from that is a fully-fledged David Lynch Movie about some of the most intense and dark isolation someone living among other people can experience. The Twin Peaks of the title is just bait to reel in whatever remained from the audience of the show. What they get with Fire Walk With Me is the most terrifying thing David Lynch has ever put to screen.
If in the past he has described Eraserhead as, “a dream of dark and troubling things,” then I would say that Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is a two hour-plus sustained nightmare of a downhill lullaby following the final days of teenager who’s been forced to fight against evils both domestic and supernatural for the last five years of her young life. The lived horror that pervades the life of Laura Palmer we see in this movie is so shocking when compared to the show that in retrospect the latter feels like a crass memorial to a desperate life left wilfully and tragically ignored by family, friends and the townsfolk of Twin Peaks.
I think I’m wrong to suppose that David Lynch was probably the only one who wanted more Twin Peaks, though, because of course Sherilyn Fenn would jump at the chance to bring to life the corpse she made so famous, and she holds nothing back here. Lest we forget, the character of Laura Palmer has been sexually abused by BOB since she was twelve years old and by the time we meet her in the movie, she’s an emotional and psychological wreck who barely manages to hold back a total mental breakdown with a steady flow of cocaine, cigarettes, and alcohol. Cracks are plainly visible in the dam she’s built to hold herself together, though, as her recent awareness of BOB’s desire to possess her adds continued pressure to a life with a steadily falling number of safe harbors. Home for her, already sundered by the abuse she’s suffered, becomes fully broken when she realizes the BOB has been preying on her through the body of her father and is one of several meltdowns she has throughout the film. She is the flipside to all the kooky eccentrics we came to know in the original run of the show - someone who has, and continues, to experience incredibly painful traumas and has almost no one she can trust to confide in, much less ask for help to process them. How do you tell your best friend, your boyfriend, or your lover that for the last five years you’ve been raped by an evil spirit who’s possessed the body of your dad?
In this world, she’s alone in her struggle. Almost without exception, the only thing everyone else around Laura wants is their own piece of her. A survey of her social circle reveals Bobby as jealous of her when she’s not with him and self-absorbed when she is, while James is too immature to do anything but express rose-colored platitudes and Donna is at least brave enough to try and follow where Laura goes, but she’s too naïve to take care of herself and winds up getting saved by the person most in need of a savior. Laura spends her days fighting breakdowns and her nights being used by people who actively don’t care who she is, just that she's a young, pretty girl they can possess, if only temporarily.
It would be easy for all of this to feel lurid, for her continued exploitation at the hands of so many men to play as a series of cheap, leering thrills, but Lynch keeps viewers firmly rooted in Laura’s perspective and makes you feel the pain and fear and confusion of everything that she goes through until she’s dragged screaming through the woods at night and murdered on the floor of an abandoned railroad car before being wrapped in plastic.