David Lynch’s weird and wonderful ‘Twin Peaks’ still stands
Who killed Laura Palmer? If you are a sucker for a happy ending, you are strongly advised to cease seeking any answers to that thorny question posed ever so eloquently by Twin Peaks.
As for the Twin Peaks fanatics out there who have slalomed into the unfettered genius of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s take on small-town horror, there can be no debate about the greatness of Twin Peaks. This trailblazing coffee-laden fir-tree-filled (Douglas firs, for those who care) show obliterated the lines between genres. Lynch, one of the last bastions of Hollywood, said goodbye to the world last week – but not before delivering the series that became the base against which all other dramas are measured.
A look back
The mood is set when we are plunged into the discovery of high schooler Laura Palmer’s body, wrapped in plastic. Without ever cashing in on the gore that comes with a corpse, we witness the tsunami of grief that descends upon the town, crashing over not just Laura’s mother (whose anguish is expertly brought to life by Grace Zabriskie) but also Laura’s friends, teachers, and everyone else in this small town whose lives have never before been touched by such violence. (Zabriskie seems fated to play the grief-stricken parent, having also portrayed the mother of George Costanza’s carelessly disposed-of fiancée, Susan Ross.) Laura’s principal announces her death on the PA system, and we get a shot of her empty chair to ram it home: Laura is gone. Or rather, she is in a morgue. In plastic.
In other words, tragedy has befallen. A murderer is afoot. But fear not – the cavalry is on its way, ready to save the day in the form of FBI agent Dale Cooper, one of TV’s most wholesome, happy brainiacs to grace our screens. Unlike his TV detective brethren, Dale is refreshingly free from the shackles of cynicism and will tell anyone he meets how much he enjoys cherry pie. He will also be the first to recommend you give yourself a present every day, whether it is a new shirt or a damn fine cup of coffee. He is the big-city cop telling the small-town sheriff to chill out.
Can Dale and his halo of goodness cut through the heart of the invisible layer of evil consuming this surreal small town? Is anyone safe? Can anyone truly be held accountable for their actions? And most poignantly of all, would you be willing to give up everything you hold dear to eradicate evil? The answers to all this and more are why happy-ending-lovers should watch Twin Peaks with their eyes closed – and why cinephiles unbothered by the lack of happiness vis-a-vis endings will swallow it whole and be left hungry for more.
What set it apart
When Twin Peaks first emerged in 1990, thinking outside the box for filmmakers was strongly discouraged – or rather, unheard of. Big-city murders happened in big cities – on screen, anyway. Witty one-liners were the domain of sitcoms. A whodunnit was a thing to wrap up without boring anyone to death by dragging it out. And you had better make sure your music score was tethered to whatever mood was set by the script.
What Lynch and Frost, in effect, did was to pick up the box and throw it down the garbage disposal unit so they would not be bothered by its pesky confines. If you are looking for just one word to describe their creation, ‘strange’ will suffice perfectly. The dark off-beat jazz score will help you arrive at this conclusion fairly decisively.
Drama? Film noir? Murder mystery? Comedy? Family saga? Soap opera? Occult fest? Surreal music? Dream sequences that made little sense? Madness? Possession? Twin Peaks had it all and brandished it with the pizzazz of a circus performer. Moreover, not only did Twin Peaks pave the way for blending genres, it also delivered one of the first ever prequels in the guise of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in 1992, which explores the last of poor departed Laura’s numbered days. Film buffs whose eyes have gone square trying to total up the number of retroactive prequels being churned out by Hollywood have Lynch and Frost to thank.
Paving the way
Prequels and weirdness aside, Twin Peaks also offers two small little nuggets of interest. Viewers with a wide eclectic taste in entertainment and a burning love for Easter eggs will have spotted George Costanza’s in-laws-to-be from Seinfeld, and Tony and Riff from West Side Story playing Laura’s father and an eccentric psychiatrist, respectively.
And how could we leave out Dale painstakingly recording his movements for his devoted secretary Diane? We only see the mysterious Diane in the third and final season, which didn’t come out until a quarter of a century later in 2017, but that is neither here nor there. Such an effective tool was Dale’s one-sided conversation with Diane that decades later, law drama Suits lifted that particular blueprint and gave Louis his own invisible secretary, Norma, to whom the former dictates his demands via his prized Dictaphone.
Those who were fortunate enough to have watched Lynch’s masterpiece first-hand in the nineties would have had no way of knowing that the future contained a world of streaming platforms dedicated almost exclusively to limited mini-series employing film-equivalent cinematography and playing fast and loose with genres. Will we ever see the likes of the gripping genre-blending storytelling displayed so flawlessly in Twin Peaks? Thanks to Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Lost, Hannibal, Sherlock and Bates Motel (to name but a few), we already have – but only because Lynch and Frost got there first to show everyone how it’s done. The legacy of Twin Peaks burns bright – and will continue undiminished for as long as films and shows are made. It is the damn fine cup of coffee in a world of limp, lacklustre lattes.
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