Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me – Press Play Video Blog

Try to imagine a universe in which one might have complaints about the films of David Lynch. I can’t, personally, but maybe you can. In this hypothetical, impossible-to-imagine universe, the closest thing I might possibly be able to conceive as a vague complaint–not a complaint, really, but a concern–is that sometimes his films lack–and this isn’t to say this is required, just that certain people require it, who knows why–narrative continuity. There might be all kinds of reasons for this characteristic–that is, if we’re actually saying it’s a quality of his films–and, if I had to produce a statement of "defense," I might offer the idea that the films are all meant to both talk to each other and to work together as a large assemblage, a story, if you wish. Joel Bocko asserts this idea, both directly and indirectly, in this brilliant video essay. He begins by noting points of correspondence between the creepy interiors of ‘Eraserhead‘ and those of ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me,’ and then he goes to broaden his vision a little, making the work of Lynch resemble, more than anything else, a hall of mirrors. The difference between Lynch’s oeuvre and a side-show distraction, though, is that each mirror, each reflection, moves you forward; each repetition of a motif develops it, expands its girth. At this point in time, when we watch a new Lynch film, from ‘Blue Velvet’ to ‘Wild at Heart’ to ‘Inland Empire,’ we are truly watching it to see what happens next: not within the body of the film, but within the body of his work. How will the symbols change? What new side of the human face will he show us? Who will disappear next and the re-appear, magically transformed? Who will die? Who will triumph?

Coming as it did on the heels of the more-than-a-cult-show ‘Twin Peaks,’ David Lynch’s film annex to the series, ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’ had an uphill climb with its viewers and reviewers. Such is the way with extensions like this: Tolkien’s Silmarillion never had much of a chance beside the Lord of the Rings series, just as the X-Files films have not seen much critical acclaim. (Ever read the "other" Oz books by L. Frank Baum? Didn’t think so.) It’s hard to say what causes this syndrome of reception, if you want to call it that: perhaps the simplest way of saying it is that once viewers decide they’ve had enough, they back away? Or, in the case of Lynch’s film, a creative world that teemed and had true magnetism in one medium didn’t have the same draw for its viewers in another, for reasons that weren’t the film’s fault? Whatever the case, Joel Bocko is a defender of ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,’ and defend it he does, with 7 well-supported points and an appropriately dreamy tour of Lynch’s much-maligned film, which takes imaginative leaps that shouldn’t be overlooked. Take a look yourself: you might want to enter into the Twin-Peaks dreamscape once more after you watch this piece.

Tag: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

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