True, it’s Tuesday, but we watched this last night, finally. And before I get to the thoughts about it:
The song is created by Marjen, my dear Hubs, called “Waldo the Bird is Dead” — part of a “Prequel of a video triptych around Twin peaks. This video is part of IRM’s project celebrating the release of Twin Peaks season 3” says the website.
We’d bought and watched the first two seasons of Twin Peaks some time ago and probably should have done a rewatch before putting the Criterion Collection film in the DVD player. Yep, Criterion. A long way away from 1992 and its less than critically acclaimed addition to David Lynch’s filmography at the time. From the Guardian:
When it was released in 691 screens across the US on 28 August, the show’s rabid fanbase were feverishly expecting another slice of quirky cherry pie on a bigger canvas, with all their favourite characters back and as adorably odd as ever. Instead, they were presented with an intense, sordid, phantasmagorical tragedy about sexual abuse and loneliness, filled with bizarre sequences and wacky details – David Bowie showing up as rogue FBI agent, for instance – that, detractors claimed, made zero sense to anybody but the director and co-writer Robert Engels.
And it was booed at Cannes.
Bowie’s in it so little; I was more thrown by the gooftastic FBI agent as played by Kiefer Sutherland in a bow-tie and floofy ’90s hair. What the hell.. I guess he was relatively fresh off Young Guns II and Flatliners a couple years earlier so still had name cachet, and had a few weeks he could fit this role into.
Anyway, the original show’s premise is solving Laura Palmer’s murder and the weirdness that is the town of Twin Peaks. The film essentially covers Laura’s last week of life, going through the motions of a high school senior’s relationships while dealing with a growing coke addiction, a rapist, a stalker, bad clubbing decisions, and the stark realization that her innocently school girl cutsy friend Donna cares so much about her well being that she’d follow the broken woman into a sexual hell that Donna never would have witnessed otherwise. That particular scene is horrible and it’s good to see Laura realize, finally, that her actions are having awful consequences for those she claims to love.
“I don’t want you wearing my clothes,” Laura snaps at a quaking Donna the next morning after both of them have returned from the Canadian sex club. Donna’s somewhat recovered from whatever drug was Russian Roulette’d into her body there. Donna apologizes for picking up the jacket, but what Laura really meant was, don’t become like me.
If the movie had just been a story as straightforward as that, it’d probably be a pretty good one, although painful to watch as these girls never go to the police with what’s happening. (Who would believe them?).
With Lynch’s twists of dreams, nightmares, creepy characters, and straight up, fucked up story telling, it’s sometimes just a baffling hodgepodge of scenes slapped together with recognizable faces in them. There’s James looking moody on his motorcycle. There’s Bobby acting like a smarmy jock. There’s Leland looking either insane or sorry, depending on what just happened. Here’s Laura being sweet with Donna. There’s Laura being cold and heartless with Donna who looks concerned maybe. Here’s a white horse. Here’s a ring. Here comes some backwards talking. Here’s a screaming one armed man in a camper trailer. Here’s a sex offender, there’s a sex offender, here’s a murderer…there’s another murderer…here’s an angel.
All in all, I’m glad we got it watched, but nothing I’d feel compelled to try and watch again.
One Minion's Opinion 