After completing all three seasons of TWIN PEAKS, the TV series, one's final closure is this cinema prequel, aka, the last days of Laura Palmer, made in 1992 after the first two reasons, and was intended to herald an expanding Black Lodge universe, which was ill-fatedly scrubbed after the film’s dead-on-arrival reception.
The meat of Twin Peaks story is affixed to a prologue taking place one year prior in a God-forsaken town Deer Meadow, where FBI agent Chester Desmond (Isaak) mysterious disappears when he tries to retrieve a lost ring belongs to the murder victim Teresa Banks (Gidley), which triggers the concern from FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole (Lynch) and agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan), with the latter presciently foretells that another killing is imminent. The prologue gives us a glance of Lynch’s original conception of its botched sequels, what happened to Agent Desmond, and the introduction of David Bowie’s Special Agent Phillip Jeffires, who has gathered first-hand information about the eldritch rabbit hole, would have spirited us onto a Lynchian journey in another continent.
Back to Twin Peaks, FIRE WALK WITH ME, is a watchword of Laura Palmer's (Lee) scourge, delineating roughly the last week of her life and pruning less pertinent threads, Lynch emphatically puts Laura under scrutinies and Sheryl Lee gutsily takes it on herself to reify Laura’s distraught psyche to a thoroughly haunting and transfixing effect, a vulnerable, terrorized, traumatized girl whose only rebellion against the creepy demon willing himself to overtake her is to give herself up to the complete abandon, when one’s heart is dead, who cares about the body? It isa crying Oscar-caliber achievement goes criminally unsung, also Ray Wise stirringly amplifies his demonic impersonation of Laura’s father,altogether, their effort speaks volume of what we habitually turn a blind eye on:incest and sexual abuse, human's original sin.
Lynch’s trademark nonsensical touches in the beginning gradually morph into apsychedelic horror (suffused with tawdry iridescence, exploitative nudity and nocturnal killing) when the film inches toward that bloody foregone conclusion peppered with frantic editing and benighted screaming. For Lynch’s votaries, the movie is par for the course of earning the reputation as a filmmaudit, yet, assessed under a broader spectrum, as a singular piece, it still holds its own with Lynch’s peculiar conceits pumped up in high voltage, an eerie, spine-tingling voyage into a cosmic myth, the puzzle is unsolved, but redemption elevates itself in the final shot, rest in peace, Laura Palmer, an angel mired in the temporal vice.
referential points: Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001, 9.3/10), WILD AT HEART (1990, 7.4/10), BLUE VELVET (1986, 9.0/10)
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