Skip to main content

I’m supposed to watch the box and see if anything appears inside.

Twin Peaks
3.1 & 3.2: The stars turn and a time presents itself.

(SPOILERS) Well, Lynch hasn’t lost it, that much is clear. Not his marbles, which he never had, of course, but his capacity for weirdness, hilarity, discord and the outright disturbing, all of which are brewing away potently in Season Three of Twin Peaks. What’s most striking, though, and something I’ve occasionally found a detraction from his work, is that the presence of Mark Frost ensures there’s a lucid narrative thread upon which to hang his strange fascinations. It means that, even when we go on a diversion into five minutes of plot-free surrealism, or one of Lynch’s trademark crawl-act comedies (which are sublime, as long as you’re willing to pace yourself), it won’t be long before (potentially remaining unanswered) mystery and intrigue will pull us back on track.


I’d read, not least from Lynch himself, that his prequel movie Fire Walk with Me would indicate the tone of Season Three, but that might be a touch misleading. If you took the first act, the non-Laura Palmer part, the fragmented but fascinating part (I know there’s a spirited defence of the picture from many quarters, first expounded by Kim Newman when it debuted, but as much as I admire parts of it – and Sheryl Lee’s performance is phenomenal – I still don’t think it really works as a movie, and I still don’t think it really justifies its prequel status; Lynch, after all, was never even going to reveal Laura’s murderer, so to then go and make a film filling in this background is suggestive of how inessential it was to join the dots. Even as an examination of horrific abuse, I tend to think more is less), you might have something.  But you’d be as well to draw attention to Lost Highway (alter-ego evil Cooper in biker jacket), Eraserhead (any of the cosmic weirdness on display), Wild at Heart (the various brain-spattered viscera, and particularly the upchuck – of whatever nature – on the carpet) and even On the Air (the batty special effects).


It would be difficult to label any of the first four episodes driven; indeed, they’re almost wilfully abstract and fragmented in places, unless you’re alert to the mystery of Coop as the glue that holds the various pieces of character and location together (rather than the more tangible mystery of the murder of a schoolgirl). Without network edicts, Lynch is free to be as tangential as he likes, which in a way makes it surprising the results are as compelling as they are.  Note: although this review concentrates on the first two episodes, I may reference the next two here as I watched them in one session, so as to hold the train of thought.


What’s instantly most evident about Peaks 3.0 is that it’s largely the new characters and scenarios that are the immediate winners, rather than those hearkening back to, or continuing, the old. In the case of Ben and Jerry Horne (Richard Beymer and David Patrick Kelly), their couple of scenes simply feel tired, Beymer particularly lacking the energy to give the same-old-brothers vibe anything (and Ashley Judd currently at least, appears superfluous). Russ Tamblyn’s Dr Jacoby’s role is so oblique (taking delivery of shovels and then spraying them gold in 3.3, the latter scene going on so long, it becomes almost hypnotic) as not to indicate anything either way.  The familiar shtick of Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) and Andy (Harry Goaz) has picked up where it was left off, while Carel Struycken has to fill in in the Red Room for his pint-sized, departed colleague (now he’s turned into a blob in a tree).


The Arm: He must come back in before you can go out.

There’s a familiarity, obviously intentional, when it comes to Laura Palmer’s repeated dialogue and the Black Lodge scenes generally, Cooper quizzing her about her identity and receiving evasive responses (“I am dead yet I live”) and further enigmatic information (“Is it future or is it past”) but it means that it isn’t until the appearance of the Arm, resembling some spawn of Eraserhead lodged in the branches of a dead tree, given to cryptic pronouncements (“I am the arm. And I sound like this... The evolution of the arm”) that we really feel like we’re going somewhere, that Lynch is really channelling his unfettered subconscious once more, and it’s mesmerising to behold.


Other characters are in a holding pattern (Grace Zabriskie’s Sarah Palmer watching lions tear apart bison on TV, accompanied by copious booze – Sarah, that is, not the lions and bison). Mädchen Amick’s Shelly is bigging up James Hurley (James Marshall), who obviously suffered somehow in a motorcycle accident: “James is still cool. He’s always been cool”. Well, maybe to anyone who wasn’t a viewer of the original show, but he’s actually more interesting, genuinely lost and tragic, in a scene here than he was in the previous run full stop.


The Log Lady: Something is missing and you have to find it.

Talking of which, the most welcome surprise is the amount of time devoted to Michael Horse’s Deputy Chief Hawk. In the original, he was given odd moments but never the chance to shine; here, he’s taking on the traditional intuitive Coop role, and in the next episode makes comedy gold out of over-used wise Native American tropes (“The way you will find it is something to do with your heritage”). It’s sad to see Catherine Coulson so fragile, but the Log Lady is used well, in both these openers, prodding and teasing the mystery as previously and reintroducing the figurative spectre of Cooper.


Evil Cooper: Tomorrow, I’m supposed to get pulled back into what they call the Black Lodge. But I’m not going. I’ve got a plan for that one.

The other returnee of note is, of course, Kyle McLachlan himself, making great capital of Bob/evil Coop. So much is suggestive in Lynch’s plots that it’s probably asking for trouble to speculate over whether they will lead anywhere, although some answers have been provided already (his “plan for that one”). I had rather expected him to assume the most of the opportunity to wreak havoc posing as Cooper at the FBI, but it appears he dropped off the radar and took up a life of more standard-issue crime, one that is coming back on him (“How much do they want me dead?”).


Although, he seems well-equipped to deal with any threats, killing Jack (Steve Baker) by massaging his jaw and revealing a trademark method of dispatch by a gunshot to the head in a particularly tense and nasty seen with Darya (Nicole LaLiberte) (“Are you going to kill me?”: “Yes, Darya”). It seems evil Cooper still has his double’s tape recorder, which is nice. Perhaps the most intriguing scene finds him take a call from not-Phillip Jeffries (David Bowie in Fire Walk with Me; here, we don’t know, yet), and learn that he met with Major Garland Briggs (but that was 24 years ago, so presumably not the body in the bed) and he is told, “You’re going back in tomorrow, and I will be with Bob again”.


Ben: I’m supposed to watch the box and see if anything appears inside.

But, as noted, the most impactful scenes here are with all-new characters. Those between Ben (Sam Colby) and Tracy (“You’re a bad girl” – Madeline Zima certainly was in Californication) are classic Lynch and therefore entirely distinctive. We wonder if she hasn’t been put up to checking out whatever Ben is doing, and when we find out what he is doing, for an elusive millionaire, we’re none the wiser (“We’re not supposed to say anything about this place, or that glass box”). 


Even less so when a freaky apparition, one that outdoes Bob in the primal fear stakes, is drawn into the room (by their having sex, or is it connected with this being the same moment Cooper drops into the box – is he, unbeknownst to himself, somehow responsible?) turning the lovebirds to bloody gloop, like they’ve been set upon by a threshing machine.


Then there are the scenes with Bill Hastings (Matthew Lillard), another scenario where you start out second guessing and the reveals indicate otherwise. The respected school principal, bedrock of the community, arrested for murder seems like textbook Bob-style possession, particularly when he tells wife Phyllis (Cornelia Guest), “I wasn’t there, but I had a dream that night, that I was in her apartment”. Except, it seems that this was Evil Coop’s set up, for reasons as yet unclear, and that he’s also setting up Dale’s lawyer George (Neil Dickson), whom Phyllis is having an affair with. The downward progression of the relationship between Dale and Phyllis, more of a plunge towards on abyss, as masks are torn away and they descend into a screaming match in his cell, is expertly done. Her initial, very-Lynchian, obliviousness to the severity of Dale’s situation (“But the Morgans are coming to dinner!”) is revealed as part of her own cold agenda (“You’re going down. Life in prison, Bill. Life in prison”), and then part of Evil Cooper’s (“This is George’s gun” before shooting her in, yes, the head).


Marjorie Green: It was a funny thing. I couldn’t remember my address when I called you on the phone.

I don’t have much to say about the Vegas scene between Mr Todd and Roger, except that I presume – hope – it will become clear(er). The one with Marjorie Green (Melissa Jo Bailey) calling the police because of the terrible smell in her neighbour’s apartment is hilariously inert comedy of strained miscommunication, with attempts to get the keys leading to further misunderstandings (“Am I free to go?” asks Max Perlich’s paranoid handyman, so concerned about being arrested for whatever he feels guilty about that he ignores the officers’ requests for assistance) before Marjorie announces she has her neighbour’s key after all.


We also have Balthazar Getty being a cock (don’t fall for him, Shelly; he’s another Leo!), Jennifer Jason Leigh (more, please), two Sheriff Trumans (“One is sick and the other is fishing”) and a generally air of undinted oddness that is utterly transfixing. I’d say this is undiluted lynch, but to reiterate, I think that, unlike some of the mystified mainstream critics’ responses, Frost’s influence ensures Twin Peaks’ return remains accessible. Although, neither of the creators are really doing any favours to anyone who knows nothing about the show. It has that much in common with Fire Walk With Me, at least.



Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lieutenant, you run this station like chicken night in Turkey.

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) (SPOILERS) You can’t read a review of Assault on Precinct 13 with stumbling over references to its indebtedness – mostly to Howard Hawks – and that was a preface for me when I first caught it on Season Three of BBC2’s Moviedrome (I later picked up the 4Front VHS). In Precinct 13 ’s case, it can feel almost like an attempt to undercut it, to suggest it isn’t quite that original, actually, because: look. On the other hand, John Carpenter was entirely upfront about his influences (not least Hawks), and that he originally envisaged it as an outright siege western (rather than an, you know, urban one). There are times when influences can truly bog a movie down, if it doesn’t have enough going for it in its own right. That’s never the case with Assault on Precinct 13 . Halloween may have sparked Carpenter’s fame and maximised his opportunities, but it’s this picture that really evidences his style, his potential and his masterful facility with music.
Post a Comment
Read more

The wolves are running. Perhaps you would do something to stop their bite?

The Box of Delights (1984) If you were at a formative age when it was first broadcast, a festive viewing of The Box of Delights  may well have become an annual ritual. The BBC adaptation of John Masefield’s 1935 novel is perhaps the ultimate cosy yuletide treat. On a TV screen, at any rate. To an extent, this is exactly the kind of unashamedly middle class-orientated bread-and-butter period production the corporation now thinks twice about; ever so posh kids having jolly adventures in a nostalgic netherworld of Interwar Britannia. Fortunately, there’s more to it than that. There is something genuinely evocative about Box ’s mythic landscape, a place where dream and reality and time and place are unfixed and where Christmas is guaranteed a blanket of thick snow. Key to this is the atmosphere instilled by director Renny Rye. Most BBC fantasy fare doe not age well but The Box of Delights is blessed with a sinister-yet-familiar charm, such that even the creakier production decisi
Post a Comment
Read more

White nights getting to you?

Insomnia (2002) (SPOILERS) I’ve never been mad keen on Insomnia . It’s well made, well-acted, the screenplay is solid and it fits in neatly with Christopher Nolan’s abiding thematic interests, but it’s… There’s something entirely adequateabout it. It isn’t pushing any kind of envelope. It’s happy to be the genre-bound crime study it is and nothing more, something emphasised by Pacino’s umpteenth turn as an under-pressure cop.
Post a Comment
Read more

We got two honkies out there dressed like Hassidic diamond merchants.

The Blues Brothers (1980) (SPOILERS) I had limited awareness of John Belushi’s immense mythos before  The Blues Brothers arrived on retail video in the UK (so 1991?) My familiarity with SNL performers really began with Ghostbusters ’ release, which meant picking up the trail of Jake and Elwood was very much a retrospective deal. I knew Animal House , knew Belushi’s impact there, knew 1941 (the Jaws parody was the best bit), knew Wired was a biopic better avoided. But the minor renaissance he, and they, underwent in the UK in the early ’90s seemed to have been initiated by Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, of all things; Everybody Needs Somebody was part of their That Sounds Good to Me medley, the first of their hits not to make No.1, and Everybody ’s subsequent single release then just missed the Top Ten. Perhaps it was this that hastened CIC/Universal to putting the comedy out on video. Had the movie done the rounds on UK TV in the 80s? If so, it managed to pass me by. Even bef
Post a Comment
Read more

How do you melt somebody’s lug wrench?

Starman (1984) (SPOILERS) John Carpenter’s unlikely SF romance. Unlikely, because the director has done nothing before or since suggesting an affinity for the romantic fairy tale, and yet he proves surprisingly attuned to Starman ’s general vibes. As do his stars and Jack Nitzsche, furnishing the score in a rare non-showing from the director-composer. Indeed, if there’s a bum note here, it’s the fairly ho-hum screenplay; the lustre of Starman isn’t exactly that of making a silk purse from a sow’s ear, but it’s very nearly stitching together something special from resolutely average source material.
Post a Comment
Read more

He must have eaten a whole rhino horn!

Fierce Creatures (1997) (SPOILERS) “ I wouldn’t have married Alyce Faye Eicheberger and I wouldn’t have made Fierce Creatures.” So said John Cleese , when industrial-sized, now-ex gourmand Michael Winner, of Winner’s Dinners , Death Wish II and You Must Be Joking! fame (one of those is a legitimate treasure, but only one) asked him what he would do differently if he could live his life again. One of the regrets identified in the response being Cleese’s one-time wife (one-time of two other one-time wives, with the present one mercifully, for John’s sake, ongoing) and the other being the much-anticipated Death Fish II , the sequel to monster hit A Fish Called Wanda. Wanda was a movie that proved all Cleese’s meticulous, focus-group-tested honing and analysis of comedy was justified. Fierce Creatures proved the reverse.
Post a Comment
Read more

I dreamed about a guy in a dirty red and green sweater.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) (SPOILERS) I first saw A Nightmare on Elm Street a little under a decade after its release, and I was distinctly underwhelmed five or so sequels and all the hype. Not that it didn’t have its moments, but there was an “It’ll do” quality that reflects most of the Wes Craven movies I’ve seen. Aside from the postmodern tease of A New Nightmare – like Last Action Hero , unfairly maligned – I’d never bothered with the rest of the series, in part because I’m just not that big a horror buff, but also because the rule that the first is usually the best in any series, irrespective of genre, tends to hold out more often than not. So now I’m finally getting round to them, and it seemed only fair to start by giving Freddy’s first another shot. My initial reaction holds true.
Post a Comment
Read more

Maybe he had one too many peanut butter and fried banana sandwiches.

3000 Miles to Graceland (2001) (SPOILERS) The kind of movie that makes your average Tarantino knockoff look classy, 3000 Miles to Graceland is both aggressively unpleasant and acutely absent any virtues, either as a script or a stylistic exercise. The most baffling thing about it is how it attracted Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell, particularly since both ought to have been extra choosy at this point, having toplined expensive bombs in the previous half decade that made them significantly less bankable names. And if you’re wondering how this managed to cost the $62m reported on Wiki, it didn’t; Franchise Pictures, one of the backers, was in the business of fraudulently inflating budgets .
Post a Comment
Read more

Ours is the richest banking house in Europe, and we’re still being kicked.

The House of Rothschild (1934) (SPOILERS) Fox’s Rothschild family propaganda pic does a pretty good job presenting the clan as poor, maligned, oppressed Jews who fought back in the only way available to them: making money, lots of lovely money! Indeed, it occurred to me watching The House of Rothschild , that for all its inclusion of a rotter of a Nazi stand-in (played by Boris Karloff), Hitler must have just loved the movie, as it’s essentially paying the family the compliment of being very very good at doing their very best to make money from everyone left, right and centre. It’s thus unsurprising to learn that a scene was used in the anti-Semitic (you might guess as much from the title) The Eternal Jew .
Post a Comment
Read more

No, I ain’t a good man. I ain’t the worst either.

A Perfect World (1993) (SPOILERS) It’s easy to assume, retrospectively, that Clint’s career renaissance continued uninterrupted from Unforgiven to, pretty much, now, with his workhorse output ensuring he was never more than a movie away from another success. The nineties weren’t such a sure thing, though. Follow-up In the Line of Fire , a (by then) very rare actor-for-hire gig, made him seem like a new-found sexagenarian box office draw, having last mustered a dependably keen audience response as far back as 1986 and Heartbreak Ridge . But at home, at least, only The Bridges of Madison County – which he took over as director at a late stage, having already agreed to star – and the not-inexpensive Space Cowboys really scored before his real feted streak began with Mystic River. However, there was another movie in there that did strong business. Just not in the US: A Perfect World .
Post a Comment
Read more