For those who find David Lynch’s films glib or shallow, take heed:
with FIRE WALK WITH ME he wasn’t kidding. It’s the darkest, scariest
movie Lynch has ever made, but also the most disjointed, representing
Lynch at his most vital and his most flawed.
The Package
FIRE WALK WITH ME was the big screen prequel to the
iconic David Lynch produced TV series TWIN PEAKS. Never mind that the
show was cancelled in 1991 after just two seasons, and that Lynch went
from media darling to pariah. FWWM, released in 1992 by New Line Cinema,
only made things worse. It was booed at Cannes and released to
widespread critical hostility. It was no coincidence, Lynch claims, that
his popular comic strip “The Angriest Dog in the World” ended its run
that same year.
FWWM has since attained a following, but continues to
be disrespected. For years fans (and David Lynch himself) have been
trying to get a reported several hours’ worth of FWWM’S deleted scenes
released on DVD but have thus far been unsuccessful. The reason? Lynch
wants to clean up and remaster the deleted footage to match the quality
of the film, but New Line doesn’t want to shell out for it. Hence, the
fans get screwed.
The Story
In a small Washington town the corpse of one Teresa
Banks is found. Two quirky inspectors are charged with examining the
body and tracking down the killer. The inspectors’ search turns up a
tiny square of paper imprinted with a letter under one of the dead
girl’s fingernails.
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Special Agent Dale Cooper
has a series of weird dreams that seem to foretell the future. His
latest dream suggests that the next killing will occur in the town of
Twin Peaks, and the victim will be a teen girl who’s sexually active and
taking drugs. Albert, Cooper’s gruff supervisor, claims that description
covers “half the teenage girls in America,” but Cooper has in mind one
specific individual: a troubled young woman named Laura Palmer.
Laura is a good-looking cheerleader who snorts cocaine,
turns tricks and is stringing along seemingly every guy in the town.
Each night she’s molested by Bob, a freaky guy who enters through her
bedroom window. It’s beginning to dawn on her that Bob may actually be
somebody else, and before long that individual is revealed to Laura as
her own father!
This revelation sends Laura into a tailspin. Her sexual
exploits and drug use grow increasingly out of control until finally
Bob, in the form of Laura’s father, decides to put an end to her
exploits--and her life.
The Direction
For those who complain that this film has too little in
common with TWIN PEAKS the series, they’re right. FIRE WALK WITH ME is
so different in tone and style from its televised forerunner it should
really be viewed as a separate entity. Many of the film’s weakest
moments occur when Lynch attempts to reference TWIN PEAKS in a
succession of brief scenes that go nowhere, and will be incoherent to
anyone unfamiliar with the series (such as the old man who berates Laura
and her father at a stop light, or a green ring that gets passed back
and forth).
There’s also the problem of the opening half hour, in
which Kiefer Sutherland and Chris Isaac play detectives in search of the
killer of Teresa Banks. Neither character is very compelling, and both
are dropped after thirty minutes. The sequence serves no purpose that I
can see other than to provide cameos for Lynch regular Harry Dean
Stanton and Lynch himself as a hearing impaired FBI agent.
But in FWWM’S final ninety minutes Lynch regains his
footing with a vengeance. The violence and sleaze are among the most
graphic and impacting of any Lynch film, and there are moments of
mind-tugging surrealism equal to anything in ERASERHEAD or
INLAND EMPIRE
(such as Laura’s dream-revelation of what lurks inside the open door of
a painting on her wall). Yet what really distinguishes the film is,
surprisingly enough, its realistic portrayal of the travails of an
incest victim. Sheryl Lee is unforgettable as Laura Palmer, making the
character’s sense of hopelessness and self-loathing terrifyingly
palpable. Lee claims she’s received quite a few encouraging missives
from real-life incest victims, so evidently she did something right. So
too the film overall.
Vital Statistics
TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME
New Line Cinema
Director: David Lynch
Producers: Gregg Fienberg
Screenplay: David lynch, Mark Engels
Cinematography: Ron Garcia
Editing: Mary Sweeney
Cast: Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, Grace Zabriskie, Moira Kelly, David Bowie,
Chris Isaak, Kiefer Sutherland, Harry Dean Stanton, Kyle MacLachlan,
Madchen Amick, Dana Ashbrook, Pamela Gidley, Harry Dean Stanton, Lenny
von Dohlen, David Lynch
