Subject: DAVID LYNCH'S PREQUEL OF CONTEMPT - New York Newsday Review of FWWM
From: v075q5fr@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Scott J Gorcey)
Date: 1992-09-04, 11:36
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks
DAVID LYNCH'S PREQUEL OF CONTEMPT
* TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME. (R) All the eccentricity,
and none of the electricity, of David Lynch. With Sheryl
Lee, Moira Kelly, Ray Wise, James Marshall. Directed by
David Lynch. At area theaters.
By John Anderson
STAFF WRITER
IF YOU PLAN on seeing "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me," bring a book.
You won't be able to read it in the darkened theater, of course, but
it should still provide more entertainment than what's on the screen.
Feel the binding. Flip through the pages. Wear it on your head. By
the time this movie - and calling it that presumes, wrongly, that it
moves - ends, playing with your book will seem like high adventure.
David Lynch's long-gone and unlamented [Fucker!] TV series "Twin
Peaks" began with a two-hour pilot that was truly exciting television, and
from there it was all downhill. Lynch seemed to lose interest. Other
directors of the series managed to capture Lynch's obscurity without
turning out anything particularly compelling. By the time it was
cancelled, the series seemed to be daring viewers to try to watch it.
Which they couldn't. With "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me," a "prequel"
to the series, Lynch is making the same challenge of moviegoers.
Anyone who managed to watch the show knows who killed Laura Palmer
(Sheryl Lee), the young woman in plastic wrap whose murder was the focus
of the first season [Don'tcha love how authoritatively pretentious they
are - especially when they're wrong?]. But Lynch wants to tell us again.
He also either is trying to justify the series or punish us for not having
watched it. Characters and bits of plot line appear and disappear without
explanation; there are so many hallucinations you give up trying to
determine what the different characters are or are not seeing; time is an
elusive quality. But that wouldn't bother a director who makes a movie
based on a canceled TV show so he can tell us a story whose ending we
already know.
The film starts with the murder of Theresa [sic] Banks (Pamela Gidley),
a young woman who worked with Laura as a prostitute. Two FBI agents (Chris
Issak and Kiefer Sutherland) are sent to investigate. Then they [...um,
wrong again, John...] disappear strangely and are never heard from again.
Then it's a year later and we meet the ill-fated Laura, who's cocaine-
addicted, a part-time prostitute and increasingly hysterical. It's never
quite clear in the film whether her drug problems are caused by her sex
problems or vice versa, but abuse by her father Leland (Ray Wise) who is
apparently possessed, is contributing to her nervous, self-destructive
state. But thinking one will care what happens to her or why by the time
the movie ends is the height of presumption. [This guy can't even allow
himself to write a synopsis that might pique people's curiosity - not that
this synopsis is even close to the truth].
Lynch has proved in the past [Ah... here, he justifies avant garde
cinema, and justifies himself as a true arthouse critic - NOT!...] that
he's capable of producing exciting and disturbing films - "Eraserhead"
[what was that stuff about the difference between hallucination and
reality], "Blue Velvet" [that stuff about bit characters appearing and
disappearing without justification], and "Wild at Heart" [Glinda...Elvis...
Willem...who cares?]. But the pretensiousness [look who's talking, guys!]
of "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me," and what can be construed only as
utter contempt for its audience, threaten to make David Lynch irrelevant.II
[Notice how they get all upset and offended when they...don't
get it? Maybe that should have been rewritten a bit (at least):
"...and what can be construed only as utter LOYALTY TO its
audience..." Sounds more true-to-the-facts that way, I think.]
-Scott Gorcey
es?...].
But the pretensiousness [look who's talking] of "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk
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