Subject: FWWM MORE SPOILERS etc
From: blojo@xcf.berkeley.edu (Jon Blow)
Date: 1992-08-31, 13:11
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks
I found the Isaak/Sutherland detective pair very humorous. "Chet Desmond"
and "Sam Stanley"-- two agents, four first names.
David Bowie's character, "Philip Jeffries", was great. I would like to
see the uncut scene sometime. Gordon's words-- "You might have heard of
him in the Academy, Coop" and Philip's: "We're not going to talk about
Judy. In fact, we're not going to mention her at all." build for me
the following picture of him:
Jeffries was one of the FBI's best agents, probably pretty legendary.
He went insane. He took a Blue Rose case. His wife/girlfriend Judy
was killed, possibly at his own hands. He disappeared. All not
necessarily in that order.
The "Tremonds/Chalfonts" (old woman, young boy) are usually together. I
am led to believe that they are present in the movie more often than one
thinks. For instance, when One-Armed Mike drives up screaming at Leland,
the logging truck is stopped because an old man and a not-so-old woman
are crossing the street. Also, in Hap's Diner, the somewhat-old man
asking "Are you talking about the little girl that was murdered?" is
accomanied by a young woman who speaks _French_, more shades of Pierre.
But it gets worse. All the "Lodge Buddies" seem do be not-quite-distinct
aspects of the same personality/entity, even though they sometimes work
against each other. Reasons:
Pierre says (pointing at himself), "The man behind the mask is looking
for the book with the pages torn out. He is under the fan now." The
person looking for the book is, of course, Bob.
When Leland is wrapping Laura in plastic, we see different faces with
each layer of wrapping he places on her. The first is Leland. The
second is Bob. The third is hard to make out becuase the wrapping is
so thick, but it looks to me like the Little Man From Another Place
(The Arm).
When Phillip is sort of disappearing from the FBI office and showing
up in the Other Place, we see him squatting wearing the papier-mache
mask. Inside the Other Place, someone with a different body is wearing
this mask. Pierre wears the mask throughout the film; his manner as
well as his slicked-back hair likens him to Jeffries in some ways.
The indian-mouth noise made by the Little Man we hear when Mike is
driving toward Leland as well as during the focuses on the electrical
pole and during one additional time, but I don't remember when.
The drug carrier that Bobby shoots is, in fact, the deputy from the
beginning of the movie.
A great part of the movie seems to be concerned about who people are.
Some prominent lines include:
"I'm not your Laura. Your laura has disappeared..."
"I'm not Jacques. I am the Great Went."
"Who are you, really?"
"And just who do you think this man is here?" (Jeffries pointing to Cooper)
"Bobby, you shot Mike! Do you realize what you did?"
"This isn't fucking Mike! . . . Is this Mike?"
The People From Another Place seem to work for each other and against
each other at the same time. Perhaps their only goals are to have an
interesting time of it and to produce gormonbozia. The most striking
instance of this to me is when Leland storms away from the motel after
seeing Laura and Ronette-- Masked Pierre dances leprechaunishly around
in circles, and we hear the phrase "Black dog runs at night" muttered
repeatedly. I sort of interpreted this phrase (and scene) as, "Haha,
I've worked hard behind your back when you weren't looking, and I've
set up this great situation, I've totally stung you bad, isn't this
funny, isn't this great?"
When Mike was screaming at Leland in anger, we get an image of a black
dog barking fiercely. This to me helps tie the similarity between
Pierre and Mike.
In some sense, Mike's entire mission seemed to be to get the ring to
Laura. This is what finally happens when he gets to the railroad
car-- Ronette opens the door, Mike tries to climb up but is pushed out;
the ring falls off his finger (or he tosses it in?) and Laura picks it
up.
Question: Is the "Don't make me do this!" Leland screaming at Bob,
Leland screaming at Laura, Bob screaming at Laura, or Bob screaming
at the rest of the People from the Other Place/The-Universe-In-General?
The ring seems to me to be a symbol of desire, of drive, of the
consuming search for some goal, but this seems iffy.
Cooper has dreams about the murders and the Other Place; his dreams
lead him to experiment with the camera before Jeffries shows up. He
also appears there in Laura's dream, though he obviously doesn't
remember this afterward.
One of the statements made in the Other Place was, "We live in a dream."
This combined with one of my favorite moments from the second season
makes for an interesting prospect. During Jean Renault's death scene
when he was stuck in the cabin, he says one of the few things that I
think really shook Cooper: he talks about how things were just fine
until Cooper came along, and then everything just became a disaster;
he suggests that Cooper is the jinx, the cause of it all. I wouldn't
be too surprised to find that all these people from the Other Place
live in Cooper's dreams, that somehow he sustains them.
On the whole, I found it a wonderful movie about, to put it tritely,
the meaning of life and the nature of God.
-Jon
PS: My votes for best lines in the movie:
"This just means more shit I gotta do now."
"The thing is to have a positive attitude! That's the key!
Anybody will tell you that."
"If I had a nickel for every cigarette your mom smoked, I'd be dead."
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