@andrewbloom ah we're finally finding our differences. I totally understand your criticisms, I've heard them before (some of them I've even identified with). I'll just quote my review of Inland Empire so that you understand where I stand wrt Lynch.
Mark Fisher (R.I.P.) wrote that Inland Empire "often seems like a series of dream sequences floating free of any grounding reality, a dream without a dreamer [in which] no frame is secure... to see Lynch's worlds captured on digital video makes for a bizarre short-circuiting: as if we are witnessing a direct feed from the unconscious." (The Weird and the Eerie [2017]). I first saw this in the Australian summer of '07/'08, late at night on SBS. I would have been 16 at the time, and as such had never seen anything like it before. I was sheltered from anything too subversive in my quiet suburban cul de sac. I thought it was the weirdest thing I'd ever watched and didn't even know if it was supposed to mean anything. Later when I found out the director's name was David Lynch I must admit that I steered clear of his other works... for years I was hung up on needing to "get it". Then I moved into my first "art" sharehouse in 2015 and my new housemates were obsessed with Twin Peaks. A piece of advice with regards to Lynch that was given to me by one of the housemates was (paraphrased), "It is important to keep in mind that Lynch tends to value the emotional expression in his work over anything else. It would do well for you to focus on how you're feeling and not whether you're following what plot there may or may not be." This helped me not just with appreciating Lynch's creations but also many other films and forms of art. With Inland Empire in particular, upon revisitation, I let it wash over me and savoured the little things. The closeups that I cringed at as a teenager now mesmerise me. Where I couldn't understand why certain cuts were being made before, now I can see their emotional value. Also, because I've seen so much of Lynch's other work, I can understand the hyperlinks in Inland Empire to Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. They're not just references, but in some places microcosms of those films themselves.
History will look kindly on David Lynch.
Most relevant is what my housemate was saying about Lynch as I was being introduced to Twin Peaks. Every single other aspect of film, cinematography, sound and set design, writing, storytelling, casting and overall production is subject and behelden to... emotion. Everything good about Lynch is a byproduct of his raw emotional output. Because this is so hard to actually quantify and talk about, it's easy to take potshots at his works. I had to actually block out everything tangible going on and constantly check in with myself, "how am i right now?". This meant I could actually approach Lynchian works from their base, pure emotion. This breakthrough lead to me being able to revisit Inland Empire and not just tolerate, but enjoy it... and exhalt about Twin Peaks :).
@killip-sean I hear what you're saying, and I think it's why the parts of the original run of Twin Peaks I appreciate most are those famous Red Room scenes. For that very reason, even though they (deliberately, I think) don't make a ton of sense, there is something visceral and even primal about them that provokes an emotional response. The power of them is undeniable to me.
The problem I have with most of original recipe Twin Peaks is that given the style of performance and presentation for most of the scenes in the real world, there's a certain cartoonishness that makes it hard for me to have a reaction beyond rolling my eyes. I think some of it is just the conventions of the late 1980s/early 1990s, and some of it is Lynch and Frost's attempt to lampoon soap operas looping back around toward indulging in their hokey excesses.
I love shows and films that run on dream logic and magical realism and "the vibes" for lack of a better term. Similarly "out there" stuff from rough contemporaries like Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Terry Gilliam hits my wavelength. But something about the poor acting (outside of Cooper and Audrey), tin-eared dialogue, and often goofy tone of Twin Peaks' original run makes most of the show lack emotional truth for me, which makes it hard to connect with the series, even when I'm willing to forgive its nonsensical plotting.
What's so interesting for me, then, is that I loved Fire Walk with Me when I finally saw it. It's no more clear or narratively sound, but I feel like Lynch modulates the tone to a significant degree, and the actors follow that lead. The result is, in my book at least, the crown jewel of the Twin Peaks of the 1990s, and a film I found piercing and even profound, because despite the outre elements, there's more recognizable humanity in it. I think he carried that tone over to the The Return, and I think it's why I probably appreciate that more than the original run as well, even as it goes down as many narrative rabbit holes as the 1990s show did.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-06-16T15:25:49Z
[4.4/10] Thank goodness for Kyle MacLachlan as Agent Cooper. That’s about all I can say for the second episode of Twin Peaks. There is such a joie de vivre, a wide-eyed, confident heap of quirk to the character and the performance, that his presence instantly elevates every scene he’s in. From the Batman-like introduction in this episode, to his meticulous evaluation of coffee, pie, and various other breakfast foods, to his ability to sniff out that the Sherriff is seeing Ms. Packard, there’s the sense that Cooper is certainly eccentric, but also scrupulous and good at what he does because of it. It doesn’t hurt that MacLachlan can make Lynch and Frost’s dialogue sound believable in a way that no one else in the cast can.
The only other character in the episode who offers anything of note is Audrey. There’s parts of that I find unpleasant, because her role seems to be to titillate as much as she’s meant to be a legitimate character. But the other side of the coin is that there is an intrigue and an unassuming pathos that cuts through the way she’s uncomfortably cast as a teenager oozing sexuality.
That comes through in her apple cart-upsetting ways. Like everything in Twin Peaks, it’s absurdly over the top, but the scene in which she pulls her pencils out of the cup she just bored into, just to see what happens when the coffee spills everywhere, represents the way in which she is something of a wildcard, willing to stir the pot for the sake of stirring the pot.
But as much as it seems like adolescent nihilism, or causing trouble for trouble’s sake, there’s also the sense that it’s a cry for attention. It’s trite to have the wealthy parents with kids who make problems because they feel neglected, but it’s at least an interesting tack to take in the scene where her dad confronts her for scaring off the Swedish investors with the news of Laura’s death. It’s all a little silly, but unlike most of the characters in Twin Peaks (Dale Cooper excepted) she at least has a presence about her that makes her stand out in a show full of thinly-drawn, stereotypical characters. (It may help that she typically doesn’t have to spit out too much of the series’s abysmal dialogue.)
And no one in the show is more of a flat, stereotypical character than Leo, the abusive husband of Shelley. But before we get into that, let’s tease out the ridiculous, lumpy, love-dodecahedron that the show has going with its teen cast members at the moment. It starts with Leo, who’s married to Shelley, who’s seeing Bobby on the side, who was also dating Laura, who was having a dalliance with James (and possibly two other guys), who is not romantically involved with Donna, who is officially dating Mike. If that weren’t enough, there is Naomi (the eye patch-wearing nut obsessed with drapes), who’s married to Ed, who’s secretly seeing Norma, who’s married to a man in jail. And just to make sure there’s enough tangled romantic webs to really make things convoluted, the Sherriff is seeing Mrs. Packard, who is flirting with Pete, who is married to Catherine, who is schtuping Audrey’s dad. Phwew. Suffice it to say, this is a show where you need a diagram to keep up with all the romantic connections, and it’s utterly, utterly ridiculous.
Anyway, we get Leo’s homecoming with Shelley, where he is viciously jealous (over unfamiliar branded cigarettes in his ashtray) and willing to beat her with soap in a sock over a missing, blood-stained shirt. I’m willing to cut some slack to a show made in 1990, but I can’t help but wince at something as serious as spousal abuse being depicted in such a cartoonish, Halmark Channel-esque fashion.
Rest-assured, there’s plenty more crap where that came from, as we dig deep into a budding relationship between expressionless James and Donna. There’s the grain of something solid there, with the idea that grief provokes strong emotional states in people that sometimes forges unexpected connections, but there’s next to no chemistry between the pair.
It doesn’t help that James has all the ability to emote of a particularly dull Rock, or that Donna is saddled with the cringiest of bad dialogue. Her little monologue about this all seeming like a wonderful dream, but also a nightmare, is a noble attempt to capture the confused feelings that emerge around grief and comfort, but it’s written with all the nuance and eloquence of an episode of G.I. Joe.
That level of depth and subtlety carries on in the scene that Donna shares with Laura’s mom. As if the over-the-top acting the mom had already shown weren’t enough, we get some poorly-done special effects to superimpose Laura’s face on Donna’s to signify that the mom is delirious or out of it in her grief and grasping in vain for her daughter. The frantic screaming when she sees a random dude peeking from behind the couch is too much too, and it’s hard not to laugh when the show at least seems to be going for sincere, grief-stricken emotion.
The thrust of the episode seems to be a dichotomy of Laura as someone who was an upstanding young student on the one hand – dating the captain of the football team, volunteering at meals on wheels, and tutoring Audrey’s mentally-challenged older brother, and a doomed ingénue on the other, two-timing her boyfriend, doing cocaine, and getting lost in dark forests with mysterious people. But it’s a rote sense of duality, the usual Madonna/whore complex without any wrinkles in the early going beyond mystery thrown on top of mystery in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, it’ll all be going somewhere.
That’s the best I can hope for this rewatch of Twin Peaks, that eventually all this over-exaggerated camp and baroque plotting turns into something decent beyond its status as an intermittent showcase for Kyle MacLachlan. We’ll just have to wait and see.