Prayers On Fire: 2023

Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me turned thirty last year and I can't stop thinking about the first time I saw it. That experience was strange, funny, beautiful, scary, confusing, nightmarish, heavenly. I think it changed my life. It absolutely redefined horror and drama. Growing up in the woods but not suburbia so much of it still felt true to me. This was David Lynch? No wonder he was called a surrealist. As someone who hadn't seen a lot of movies but had a taste for nightmarish drama, this felt like the perfect movie. The battle between good and evil waged against an overbearing father almost felt like a religious epic to me. It even had angels! What on earth had I seen? I wasn't sure but Sheryl Lee's performance never took me anywhere but in Laura's shoes. As a sad teen with my own though less traumatic issues this movie came to me at just the right time. Anyone feeling isolated and navigating different spaces with more or less your own self to guide you could relate to Laura. Or if not the art of the film certainly took you on that roller coaster. So what was it that felt so similar but also unfamiliar about this story?

The unfamiliarity - of geography in Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me - is key to its surreal horror. The movie starts in a violent unknown place (it ends in a serene metaphysical place), it continues down the road to a jarring often abrasive place, it features a sequence where a long-lost character suddenly appears then abruptly disappears from a supposedly secure and highly surveilled law enforcement headquarters, and once the film cuts to its most familiar locations it then burrows down into the darker and most nightmarish (often literally) corners of those locations. Up until the end, the entire film takes Laura from one highly disturbing situation to the next. Dislocation and psychological insecurity are the consistent operative modes of engagement in this movie.

As if the consistent disruption of physical space (and violent unmasking of its darker underside) isn't enough, the constant psychological unmooring is also present. Leland pressingly demands of his wife "How do you know?" The long-lost Philip Jeffries pointing at Cooper demands "Who do you think that is there?" James imposes on Laura his view of her. Bobby Brigg imposes on Laura his view of her. Jacques and the johns make abundantly clear their view of her. Donna thinks she knows Donna. Bob wants to know Laura inside out through her soul and all. Laura's mom is absolutely empty and completely isolated from her daughter.

The disturbing tragedy of the movie and the television series isn't that no-one really knew Laura; it's that whoever she was landed between the un-mourned drifter Theresa Banks and the empty husk that was her mom. Laura seemed fated to be either. Or worse the demonic mix that was her father. That she escapes these fates is the triumph of the narrative. That the indelible images of Pamela Gidley and Grace Zabriskie persist long after the film only underlines this uncertainty. Had Laura survived would she have been as cursed as her mom and dad? This question really becomes more prominent the more one considers how frustrating James and Bobby are. Donna with so much love and sympathy is closest to the real Laura but that intimacy is sadly so much removed due to the greater damaged imposed on Laura's psyche.

One of my favorite aspects of the film is Laura's journey through space. Her dissociative episodes marking her interiority as she processes events.

Key to this is the sequence after Laura hangs up the picture given to her by Mrs. Chalfont. We move from her bedroom to the picture to the lodge and back to her bedroom. This disconcertingly immersive movement from spaces pushing the boundaries of her predicament. The editing and staging of this sequence is great testament Lynch's skills as a surrealist. She moves into it as easily as any dream. But the violent awakening to seeing Annie and seeing the ring destroys this lull. Cooper's pleading and Laura's screaming are fantastic sonic and visual disruptions that to some degree are David Lynch aesthetics in a nutshell.

Another superb iteration of the collapse of physical and psychological space is the Julee Cruise performance at the bar. This lush, soothing moment beautifully bathed in reds and blues and quietly portrayed by the soft editing around Laura experiencing the music and being sighted her evening companions is an oasis within the movie's deranged surroundings. The shots of Cruise performing and Laura looking at her feel as if only Laura can see this angel and feel this moment. This is underlined by the lengthy sequence scored by the monotonously repetitive guitar riff when the party moves to the Pink Room. If this is hell, Lynch couldn't have designed it better. Especially since here - ostensibly where there is no tomorrow - everyone is locked inside.

When watching this movie as my first Twin Peaks experience, the constant dislocation and unsatisfied interaction with every character was on one level not what I expected but also since Laura solely is your guide to this world almost beside the point. Ideal even since you arrive at Twin Peaks and there's Laura to show you around. You follow and sometimes what you want to know is just said upfront and what you don't know is conveyed by the other characters. I didn't know who these people were but the now familiar Laura was there so what else should you know?

I return repeatedly to this theme of displacement because as a first-time viewer this is really the only way these locations are explained to you outside of the occasional onscreen indication - "Philadelphia" "One Year Later" - that is just only helpful. The entire prologue in Deer Meadow does indeed give viewers the key to this spectacle. Who is Chet Desmond? Where did he go? Why are the sheriffs so passive-aggressive? Why is Sam Stanley acting so weird? What the fuck has Harry Dean Stanton seen? Where did Philip Jeffries go? Even if Deer Meadow is the set-up for a later sequel it exists to introduce this film but also confound your expectations at the beginning. What are you going to get from Twin Peaks? Where are you going? Who are these people tormenting this girl? Lynch's best, most familiar work consistently moves you from one mystery to the next. The entire mystery of Twin Peaks is answered in tragedy by way of Laura's psychic disintegration. But despite wherever she is or whoever she changes face in front of - and unlike the disintegration of James, Bobby, Sarah, and Leland - she is herself. No shell of despair, no vessel of rage, no uselessly uncomprehending companion. The rain of sparks and broken glass that begins the film ends the film in a shower of peaceful white light. Her crying is understanding - and as confounding as Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me was and remains - you understand something too.

Prayers On Fire

03 April 2023

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