TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME
by Kevin Koehler
Laura Palmer has a secret. His name is Bob and he comes in through her window at night. He rapes her, repeatedly, and has been doing so since she was twelve. "He says he wants to be me," she says, "or he'll kill me." She thinks he's tearing pages out of her diary, the ones that refer to him. Some people don't think he exists, like her friend Harold. She shows him the diary. "There are pages torn out. That is real, Harold. Bob is real." Bob also goes by another name, but we'll leave that for now.
Fire Walk With Me (henceforth known as FWWM) is a confusing film, even if you've seen every episode of the television series (as this critic has). Those seeking narrative clarity should probably look elsewhere; this being said, it's hard to fault David Lynch for failing to achieve something which he has not attempted. The picture is relentlessly obtuse, eschewing accepted ideas about time and space much less cinematic convention. It's also strangely moving, a Passion play for Laura Palmer as governed by the murky dream logic of a director who expands upon the mythology of his iconic television show while simultaneously rewriting it. Small wonder everyone hated it, not least those viewers who made Twin Peaks the pop culture phenomenon it was two years prior - disappointed by Agent Cooper's (Kyle McLachlan) diminished role, the conspicuous lack of non-sequiter humor that defined much of the show, and Lynch's seeming disinterest in answering the unanswered.
Perhaps appropriately, FWWM begins with a television exploding, smashed by a blunt instrument by an unseen killer (and, metaphorical, the director's own hand). Seventeen-year-old "drifter" Teresa Banks is the victim; murdered, wrapped in plastic, her corpse left to be discovered floating down a river. The FBI are called in to investigate, specifically agents Chester Desmond (Chris Isaak) and Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland). After an interlude with a strange woman in a red dress (featuring some of the self-conscious weirdness that has come to characterize some of the director's later work; the interlude is short, thankfully) and interactions with uncooperative local law enforcement, Desmond and Stanley examine the body. Under a finger nail, the letter "T," cut from a newspaper or magazine and placed there by the killer. When Desmond searches the dead woman's trailer, he sees a ring, lying underneath it on a mound of dirt. He reaches for it and it is the last we ever see of him - Desmond disappears without a trace.
"The letter that was extracted from beneath the fingernail of Teresa Banks gives me the feeling the killer will strike again," says Special Agent Dale Cooper. "Like the song goes, who knows where or when?"
It's really here that the film begins, transitioning to Twin Peaks, an Arcadian community in northeast Washington state, where we trace the final seven days on Earth of homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). She lives her life like she knows it will be ending soon (or simply wants to expedite the inevitable): snorting cocaine in bathrooms, secret rendezvous with lovers (Dana Ashbrook, James Marshall), prostitution, and expeditions to surreal sex clubs populated by French-Canadians, fat men, and depraved lumberjacks. Laura is quickly spiraling out of control, her self-destructive behaviors predicated on the molestation she receives at the hands of this mysterious Bob, and further, the sheer, existential betrayal at discovering his dual identity.
Such are the enduring wounds of sexual abuse, for which FWWM acts as an extended parable. "Quit trying to hold on so tight," she tells one of her many boyfriends. "I'm gone. Long gone." I'm probably making FWWM sound a lot more straight-forward than it is; for the uninitiated, what transpires is probably quite impenetrable, filled with typical Lynchian bizarro imagery like midgets talking backwards, red rooms, young boys wearing phallic masks and so forth. At heart, however, is a simple story: that of a young woman, left to fend for herself when all the angels depart from her world, replaced by devils, and death is welcomed as a reprieve from her living hell.
Interesting footnote: The disappointing second season of Twin Peaks led to much acrimony between cast and producers. Many of the principal actors felt abandoned by Lynch and Mark Frost, who they viewed as having allowed the series to go off the tracks by their reduced creative role. Kyle MacLachlan refused to reprise his role in the feature (requiring extensive rewrites) but then reconsidered (though he only shot five days). Sherilyn Fenn and Lara Flynn Boyle both chose other projects over FWWM; while Fenn's character of Audrey Horne was minor enough to be written out of the script, Boyle's Donna Hayward had to be recast, with Moira Kelly hired for the role. Frost likewise did not participate in FWWM, instead directing his own feature, Storyville, featuring Peaks regulars Piper Laurie and Michael Parks.
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