Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
Directed by David Lynch
In the questionable town of Deer Meadow, Washington, FBI Agent Desmond inexplicably disappears while hunting for the man who murdered a teen girl. The killer is never apprehended, and, after experiencing dark visions and supernatural encounters, Agent Dale Cooper chillingly predicts that the culprit will claim another life. Meanwhile, in the more cozy town of Twin Peaks, hedonistic beauty Laura Palmer hangs with lowlifes and seems destined for a grisly fate.
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What critics say influenced Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
But they did open doors to those who envisioned unsettling talent on the horizon and soon found critical vindication in Elephant Man and much green in Blue Velvet and TV?s Twin Peaks (though neither with its movie prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me).
I've been interested in Lynch's work ever since his 1978 debut film, "Eraserhead," an unsettling but inventive picture that embodies the spirit of surrealism - rooted in dreams, fantasies, and the irrational - more assertively than any other movie of its day.
"Eraserhead" or "Blue Velvet" it's not, but this movie swims in their stream.
I fondly recall the buzz of pop-cultural insanity, as I — a 15-year-old movie nerd with age-inappropriate tastes, clutching his well-worn VHS copies of “Eraserhead” and “Blue Velvet” — could not believe a major network had put lunatic David Lynch in charge of an asylum like a prime-time soap opera.
But with Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, he was moving closer to the 100% surreal, non-linear mindscrew territory that put him on the map when he first made Eraserhead.
Over several shots of orange lines being rendered, the most generically action-ey font you could imagine gives us the list of offenders this time around (if I'm not mistaken, it's the same font that David Lynch used in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me ).
His early coup Blue Velvet, devised as a kind of distorted TV soap, dug up a small town's sordid secrets, suggesting that all seemingly good things have a dark side.
Lynch rebounded from "Dune" with "Blue Velvet," an ode to sex and violence that established him as the most eagerly outrageous of mainstream moviemakers.
We're not talking about what goes on under the manicured lawns as in "Blue Velvet," but the dimension of dreams, the Devil's workshop and Agent Cooper's extrasensory vibes.
"Eraserhead" or "Blue Velvet" it's not, but this movie swims in their stream.
At this point, I had already viewed “Blue Velvet” and “Wild at Heart” through home video opportunities, creating awareness of Lynch’s wily art-school ways from a controlled distance.
I fondly recall the buzz of pop-cultural insanity, as I — a 15-year-old movie nerd with age-inappropriate tastes, clutching his well-worn VHS copies of “Eraserhead” and “Blue Velvet” — could not believe a major network had put lunatic David Lynch in charge of an asylum like a prime-time soap opera.
Even as "Twin Peaks" turned into a rousing TV hit, with its story of tangled teens and grotesque grown-ups in a rural Northwestern town, he concocted "Wild at Heart" for the wide screen, featuring Nicholas Cage and "Blue Velvet" heartthrob Laura Dern as uninhibited lovers on a road-movie rampage.
After the Elvis impersonations and "Wizard of Oz" nonsense in David Lynch's previous movie, the flawed but hot-bloodedly fascinating "Wild at Heart", it's a relief to see him returning to cool, dreamlike obsession in "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me." Parts of it are foolish, but much of it is as daring and fierce as anything this always-powerful director has done, and I wish I could recommend it to everybody.
At this point, I had already viewed “Blue Velvet” and “Wild at Heart” through home video opportunities, creating awareness of Lynch’s wily art-school ways from a controlled distance.
It makes "Wild at Heart" and "Blue Velvet" seem downright comprehensible.