TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME
A film review by Robert Chao
Copyright 1992 Robert Chao
I saw TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME grudgingly, just because a friend wanted to go. I felt David Lynch had gotten carried away with himself lately, as I didn't like WILD AT HEART or the pilot for the second season of "Twin Peaks."
I LOVED THIS FILM.
I HAVE NO IDEA WHY.
I was just speechless after I saw it. I thought I would hate it. But I was eating it up, every second of it. It was extremely emotional. I felt as though I knew all the characters, and to see them again, on year earlier, just blew me away. Especially when the familiar music came back and you see the girls walking to school.
What struck me the most was the style of photography. I was not as slick and polished as WILD AT HEART or the series. The film was grainy and the lighting was kind of naturalistic. Like the scenes in the Palmers' house or when Bobby is using the lay phone. It seemed almost low-budget at times. Does anyone know if the film stock was unusual for a theatrical release?
I really appreciated the way Lynch didn't pander to people who hadn't seen the series. He just stuck to being faithful to his creation. And there were *so many* characters from the series in it, even Leo and Shirley. The ads are stupid because they mention Bowie.
All throughout the film I was saying "This is a stupid movie, but I'm loving every second." I guess those Japanese are way ahead of us. I was fascinated with the character of Laura and the emotional high point was when she broke with James at the very end. The most emotional bit in any Lynch film.
I once saw Lynch's earliest films, THE GRANDMOTHER and THE ALPHABET, and the scene of Cooper playing with the TV monitors really reminded me of those. After the film my friend played me a laserdisc of INDUSTRIAL SYMPHONY and I hated it.
I guess a reason I liked this film is that it felt personal, that Lynch is out to please "Twin Peaks" fans, that he isn't being Ridley Scott or Oliver Stone, and to hell with everybody else anyway. It may sound ridiculous but I can't even remember the last time I enjoyed a film so much as last night.
-- Robert Chao Oakland, California
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews