Subject: TP:FWWM Impressions (Here be spoilers)
From: ingria@bbn.com (Bob Ingria)
Date: 1992-09-01, 21:15
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks
Reply-to: ingria@BBN.COM
Herewith aspects of _Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me_ that I found
interesting, at any rate. (Not all of these are new at this point.)
Lil and the dancing code: interestingly enough, this suggests that the
``Mexican chihuahua'' reference when Cole meets up with Cooper in the
series might be more than just Gordon's odd way of speaking but could
be part of Gordon's code, which all of his agents seem to know. (I
wouldn't go out on a limb with this one, though.)
Agent Sam Stanley: Remember the following from the pilot: ``Diane,
give this to Albert and his team. Don't go to Sam. Albert seems to
have a little more on the ball.'' It looks like we now know who Sam
is.
Irene from Hap's: ``You wanna hear about our specials? We don't have
any.''
Irene on Theresa Banks' arm going numb: ``You know, I never told
anybody, but once for about three days, just before her time, Teresa's
arm went completely dead...Her left arm. It was numb. She said she
couldn't use it. Said it had no feeling.'' This has been commented
on, but not the timing ``just before her time''. I assume this means
Theresa's period, which suggests an interesting synchronization with
matters Lodge-istical.
Donna to Laura: ``James is the one.'' (i.e. the one who would love
Laura unselfishly and unstintingly) Compare James' comment about Laura
to Big Ed in the pilot: ``She was the one.''
Bobby's code to Leo for drug deals: ``The football is empty.'' This
adds more resonance to the meeting in the woods between Bobby, Mike,
and Leo and the empty football that winds up on their car.
Just before Laura and Donna go to the Canadian swinger's resort:
Donna: ``Where are you going?''
Laura: ``Nowhere, fast. And you're not coming.''
Laura to Donna after she puts on Laura's jacket and starts acting
decidedly unDonna-like: ``Don't ever wear my stuff.'' (because it
makes the wearer like Laura.) This means Donna's request for Laura's
sunglasses was more than just a request for a keepsake of her friend,
but a conscious decision to make herself like Laura once again; i.e.
to open herself to the spirit of Laura in her possessions (to be
possessed by Laura, in effect).
Garmonbozia: ever since bits of the screenplay started circulating,
there's been a question about whether ``Garmonbozia'' means ``corn''
or ``pain and sorrow''. As has become clear, it means both: i.e. pain
and sorrow (particularly the pain and sorrow caused by BoB and his
ilk) consumed in the form of corn. Specifically creamed corn (at
least, when the LMFAP pointed to the pan and said ``This is
garmonbozia'', the pan was full of creamed corn). This, of course,
ties back to the creamed corn byplay with the Tremonds (whom, we now
learn, are really the Chalfonts).
The ring with the green stone that kept popping up, engraved with the
same petroglyph from the series (the one Earle referred to as ``The
symbol, inverted!''), suggesting a tie in there. And, by the way,
doesn't that petroglyph picture a bird? Possibly an owl? Are all the
wearers of the ring owls? (And, hence, not what they seem.)
A more substantive comment: lots of people, both pro and con TP:FWWM,
have said that it just shows us events we already know about, and
doesn't give us any new information. I think there is at least one
area in which this is quite wrong, namely, in the case of Mike, the
One-Armed Man. Remember that he presented himself as an inhabiting
spirit who had once hunted with BoB but, after having seen the face of
God, cut off the arm which had been touched by the Evil One, and now
sought only to stop BoB. But, his actions in TP:FWWM are quite
inconsistent with this. Note that he is one-armed in the movie, so
his actions should be after he has been ``saved''; I don't think they
can be explained as what he was like before he saw the face of God.
First, when Laura is being killed, he seems anxious to be there, but
not to stop BoB. Note that after he gets to the train car and is sure
that Laura is being killed, he makes no further effort to get inside.
As if his purpose were not to prevent the murder, but to make sure
that he doesn't miss out on the fun. I think this is confirmed by the
activities in the Red Room in which Mike and the LMFAP (presumably
Mike's arm) stand up in unison and recite, in unison (presumably
together they constitute one whole entity of some sort) a demand for
garmonbozia from BoB. BoB then extracts blood from Leland's wound and
tosses it to the floor. It disappears and then we see a tight close
up of someone's face sucking corn off a spoon: presumably the
suffering transformed into edible form.
All of this suggests that the falling out between Mike and BoB was not
because Mike had renounced his evil ways, but because BoB was welshing
on Mike. So, all of Mike's efforts to find BoB were really just so he
could be in on the action. Note that the idea that Mike is still part
of the killing team explains something I had always found quite
disturbing in the series: when Mike tells Cooper about the ``golden
circle'' of appetite and fulfillment and speaks of BoB's ``pleasures''
he runs his tongue across his lower lip as if anticipating them. This
is pretty inconsistent with Mike having given up those pleasures but
is a reasonable slip if he were actually colluding with BoB to set
Cooper up. (Also, given that the ``pleasures'' seem to be consumed
orally, it makes perfect sense that he would ``lick his lips'' when
contemplating them.) This raises a larger question: how many, if any,
of the supernatural characters in Twin Peaks were really helping
Cooper and others, and how many were just going around using mortals
to satisfy their own plans and desires? The LMFAP referred to himself
as ``the [i.e. Mike's] arm'' and behaved as such, making him suspect.
(This also suggests that his ``Wow, Bob, wow'' in the series
conclusion was sincere admiration for Bob.) It looked like at least
the elder Chalfont might have been among the consumers of garmonbozia
at the end (I couldn't make out who he/she/it/they were) and of course
both of the Chalfonts were present at ``one of their meetings'', as
Agent Jefferies called it, in the room above the convenience store.
This raises questions about what their intentions are. Even the
giant, for all that he sounede the alarm when evil was happening was
pretty useless in actually preventing it (What's the matter, is he
bound by the Prime Directive or something?), which makes him
questionable.
By the end of the TV series, I had become convinced that the murder of
Laura Palmer really served as a ruse to lure Cooper in, and that
Cooper was the target of BoB and his cohorts all along (part of this
came from reading Cooper's diary, but there was support for this in
the series, as well). In fact, I think that Jean Renault's comments
about Twin Peaks being a dream that turned into a nightmare with
Cooper's arrival was probably on the mark, since the inhabitants of
the Black Lodge would do anything to further their plan of getting
Cooper. FWWM's clear (at least to me) revelation that Mike was lying
when he said that he had renounced his killing ways, and that various
of the other supernatural entities hanging around Twin Peaks are also
of at least questionable trustworthiness confirms this. (Methinks I
may be opening the floodgates with this one.)
The final scene: I wonder if Cooper wasn't helping Laura to accept
death the same way he used the Bardo from the Tibetan Book of the Dead
to help Leland. Helping Laura into the light. Remember that Leland
saw Laura in the light when he died. I also wonder if this encounter
between Cooper and Laura wasn't the meeting in ``25 years'' that Laura
mentioned in the series finale. If time in the Lodges goes backwards
(or, at least, over, under, sideways, down), than this earlier
encounter in terrestrial chronology might easily be later by Lodge
chronology. Certainly the presence of Annie in Laura's bed tends to
suggest this is a possibility.
Some overall comments:
(1) I liked this movie very much, more so than I expected to. It
added a lot of emotional overtones to events in the series and wasn't
just a literal-minded acting out of events we'd already heard
described (at least in my judgment).
(2) I really want to see Lynch do more in the Twin Peaks universe. He
seems to be working out his own mythology, with the petroglyphs,
lodges, owls, white horse, even creamed corn. Or, if not a mythology,
at least symbology. At one and the same time, this is one of the
aspects of the movie and the whole Twin Peaks universe that I like the
most but which I also find the most frustrating. I like Lynch's
ability to create or appropriate symbols that he can imbue with all
sorts of emotional resonance. On the other hand, as Lynch himself has
said, he's primarily a visual creator, so there often isn't much
intellectual content to the symbols. If Lynch could come up with a
grand inter-connected mythology with resonant symbols and a consistent
intellectual base, it would be wonderful. But that's not the kind of
creator Lynch is, so I'll have to content myself with the images,
often with nothing behind them.
(3) One theme that seemed to run through the whole movie was that of
code. Gordon Cole's code (including the tantalizing Blue Rose), the
code Bobby, Leo, and Jacques used to arrange drug deals, the (so far
unbroken) code of the green ring, the full import of garmonbozia, the
secret identities adopted in the pink room, the ``meaning'' of the
ceiling fan, etc. But the overt codes are only one extreme on a
continuum that includes all sorts of miscommunication. For example,
when the younger Chalfont tells Laura that BoB is poking around for
her diary, he did it in such a round-about way (``The man behind the
mask is looking for the book with the pages torn out. He is
approaching the hiding place. He is under the fan now.'') that I
didn't realize that his words had a quite straightforward meaning.
And there was the miscommunication between Laura and those who loved
her: James, Bobby, and Donna; all of this was in plain, ``ordinary''
English, but somehow the meaning would get lost, as if it were in a
code that the other person didn't understand. In that kind of a
world, well-formulated codes at least have the advantage that those
who know the code can be sure of what they're saying.
-30-
Bob
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