story over thought

The closing shot of Fire Walk With Me (hereafter FWWM) is of dead homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) being comforted by FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) in a surreal, red, interdimensional portal-like purgatory. Palmer cries/laughs as Cooper rests his hand on her shoulder, and the camera pulls back slowly as an image of an angel is superimposed over the screen. The mournful score swells as we fade to a heavenly blue. It’s an image that doesn’t make any literal sense, but it really sums up the sort of film that FWWM is: David Lynch’s compassionate and unusually sensitive ode to the Dead Girl.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things and came to the conclusion that it was fairly exploitive. However, it was also a movie I enjoyed in parts, because certain performances and lines of dialogue were both entertaining and amusing. FWWM is a film that I didn’t really enjoy at all (and make no mistake about it, neither did contemporary critics), and yet it’s ten times “better” than Poor Things, at least in my book. At the risk of sounding like someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, I can’t help but throw my hands up in defeat at the challenge of harmonizing the strange relationship between enjoying something and recognizing artistic merit. Who am I to tell you to watch one example of a girl enduring vicious torture over another one, just because I interpreted it as more sympathetic? Would I prefer Poor Things if it had a Dale Cooper-like character that I could relate to? No, but there’s no way I can prove that to you. Reviewing movies is so very tough, you see.

All that aside, I think FWWM does a remarkable job of deconstructing the Dead Girl by cutting out the middleman, which are the other tropes that usually surround her. Lesser focus is given to the traditional crowd-pleasing slasher villain (BOB) and more to Laura’s own father, Leland, who regularly rapes her while possessed by the demon. Laura follows the teen slasher model of having a lot of casual sex and doing a lot of drugs, but instead of being exciting and carefree, it’s pathetic and miserable and deeply distressing. It’s all the more disturbing since we saw the more traditional version of this character at times in the show, and many viewers were no doubt connected to her in a different way.

In FWWM, Laura’s suffering is explored with a harsh and cataclysmically gloomy tone. She engages in orgies as an underage prostitute and snorts cocaine to escape the dark reality of incest at home, although it is all handled with a necessary degree of restraint. On some level, Twin Peaks has always played with the expectations of the viewer and the nature of the genre, but FWWM is also a rejection of the show’s simultaneous engagement in the trope. Cooper is here, but Palmer’s death is not a vehicle for him to grow and develop; it’s the other way around. Hence why the majority of his scenes are lumped together in the opening prologue—this is Palmer’s opportunity to take center stage, and also quite literally, when we’re in the red room.

The demons in this film literally feed on human suffering (represented visually by creamed corn, oddly), and the more intensely Laura suffers, the hungrier they get. This suffering, perhaps the “fire” in the title, could also be interpreted another way: the more Laura engages in passionate activities like love and lust, the stronger the desire from the demons/her father/the viewer to torture her. This could be a play on slashers and the seemingly recurring theme of how sleeping around leads to getting axed by Jason. Unlike those poorly drawn protagonists, Laura is a sort of dying star, beautiful and happy on the outside but inwardly driven mad by these desperate attempts to feel good. When she’s murdered, it’s almost a relief for the character.

Lynch is clearly disturbed by the callous treatment of women onscreen, but by making Laura’s killer her own father, he shifts the focus from fantasy to something very real. Several of his other films explore the violence and horror lurking beneath the surface of seemingly idyllic small-town America (especially Blue Velvet), but it’s especially abrasive here. The real terror of FWWM is that many of the traumatic experiences that haunt Laura haunt women in the real world as well.

Still, FWWM is a supernatural horror film and delivers more visceral scares as well. There’s an eerie old lady who gives Laura a painting of a doorway (it’s later revealed to be a portal that lets them into her room), a child in a white mask with no eyes, and various other visually spine-chilling freaks. I haven’t even mentioned Lynch’s liberal use of stock surrealist touches, which include random cuts to unidentified mouths screaming in horror and smoky, hellish rooms filled with flickering strobes. All of the craft that you would expect from a Lynch horror film is in effect here, except for a few areas that still look like TV sets. The Roadhouse has an inexplicably cheap feel, although I can’t put my finger on why. Maybe because the live band plays the same song on loop? Do better, David.

I suppose the main issue for many today is the unnecessary nature of its existence. As a prequel, it’s sort of frustrating, failing to develop the plot all that much beyond what we already know. Looked at purely as an installment in a series, this film is dispensable, although I’d argue it’s the most important thematically. Maybe something we can all agree on is that Twin Peaks wrapping up after season two would have robbed us of perhaps the strangest season of television ever made.

I feel like I could go on further discussing the measured way Lynch writes his love letter to Laura Palmer, but like Lynch himself at the end, I will step aside and let the creation speak for itself. If we are doomed as a society to enjoy watching women suffer on screen, this more empathetic entry comes close to transcending. 02-19-24