Twin Peaks: The Return

David Lynch – 2017 – USA

 

One thing elevates Twin Peaks: The Return from what we understand TV series to be into a work of cinema; that’s the fact that David Lynch directed all of it himself.  I wouldn’t even say that he directed “episodes,” because he actually directed one epic, 1,000-minute film and then cut it up into hour-long segments.  Not even the original, beloved cult series of 1990-1991 can make that claim; of its 29 episodes, only six were directed by Lynch.  There have been (extremely) rare seasons of shows that were all directed by the same person – 2014’s True Detective is a notable example – but never has the undertaking been done by someone of Lynch’s stature; a true auteur and one of the small handful of greatest filmmakers in the world, possibly the greatest.  The achievement is more relatable to Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) than to any past American television.  This introduction is all my way of explaining my decision to accept and review this film as a film and not as a TV show.

Lynch has been stewing, out of the public eye, for a long time.  His last real feature film was Mulholland Drive (2001), (itself originating as an abandoned TV pilot), and his last technical feature was Inland Empire (2006), an experimental, stream-of-consciousness, three-hour test of audience endurance that bore little to none of the director’s characteristic magic, poetry, humor and adherence to pure cinema ideals.  Since then, he has focused entirely on short videos intended for web distribution; in other words, only die-hard fans bothered to check them out.  (I, personally, was not impressed with those I watched, starting with the ugly and simplistic Dumbland.)  I considered him essentially retired for the past decade.  Lynch’s revival means something for cinema, at a time when a certain type of rigor in film is on an inexorable path to extinction, which will take place when a group of men in Lynch’s generation, now all in their 70s, either retire or pass on; (Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma, Michael Mann, Ridley Scott, Ken Loach, John Carpenter are some of the others in this group). 

“The Return” of Lynch signifies an important thing; that he and his brothers still have something to teach younger generations of filmmakers.  One of the thoughts that ran through my mind while watching Twin Peaks: The Return was about the extent to which it puts to shame other would-be artists of anxiety – such as Lars von Trier and Darren Aronofsky and a bunch of others of that type whom I could name.  What is unashamedly hawked as daring and controversial in their films seems downright juvenile and pretentious compared to the confident and fertile genius of David Lynch.  It is evident in every scene of this series/film that Lynch is overflowing with ideas; images, scenarios and effects that may have been gestating for years and the sheer volume of which required an 18-hour film in order to find a place for them all.  The film also makes it apparent that Lynch’s many imitators, by settling for some meager form of surreal quirkiness, not only fail to understand him but lack his courage in going farther.  Here, Lynch pushes abstraction in the narrative form to new limits, ones that critical darlings half his age would never seriously consider.

The Return is in some ways a vindication of Lynch’s legitimately controversial Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), which riled fans by being too purely Lynch instead of TV Lynch like the show was.  The show’s comical whimsy was replaced in the film with a nightmarish and harrowing tale of domestic abuse and madness.  The film was notoriously booed at Cannes and found itself on a short list of unloved films – like Heaven’s Gate or The Godfather, Part III – that suffer reputations manufactured by critics more than actual merit and are still slowly regaining the prestige they deserve.  Twin Peaks: The Return is much more like Fire Walk with Me than the original series, which in my opinion is for the best, as the show ran its course quickly and ended up straining to maintain plausibility as it careened back-and-forth between wacky soap opera plots and esoteric philosophical questions.  The weakness of the show’s second season, exacerbated by Lynch’s only periodic involvement, led to its cancellation, and Lynch subsequently tried to tie up some loose ends with Fire Walk with Me and ended up pleasing neither his own fans nor the show’s devotees.  The Return succeeds in preserving the hardness of Lynch’s vision, as expressed in Fire Walk with Me, while also restoring some of the contemplation and humanism that people missed from the show, (and which are also so beautifully on display in Lynch’s masterpiece, The Straight Story, 1999).

A summary of its many characters, locations, plots and subplots could take as long to write as the film itself.  Let it suffice to say that it chronicles the grueling quest of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), left stranded in the “Black Lodge” at the end of the series, to reclaim his identify in the real world, which can only happen by supplanting his own doppelgänger, who has been enjoying life as a superhuman master criminal for the past 25 years.  The confluence of supernatural activity as Cooper and his double vie to remain in the mortal dimension catches the attention of his old comrades in the Bureau who specialize in cases involving paranormal phenomena.  It becomes a priority of many different people to either protect or eliminate one or the other of the two Coopers.  Along with a fair share of newcomers, a great many popular faces return from the old series, most importantly Sheryl Lee as Laura Palma, the solving of whose murder was the focus of the series’ first season.  There are many others, most of whom have rarely, if ever, been seen on screen since the series’ finale; including Grace Zabriskie, Ray Wise, Dana Ashbrook, Mädchen Amick, Michael Horse, Harry Goaz, Kimmy Robertson, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Everett McGill, Wendy Robie, Peggy Lipton, Alicia Witt, Warren Frost, Miguel Ferrer, James Marshall, David Duchovny, Al Strobel, Phoebe Augustine, Sherilyn Fenn, David Lynch himself, and Catherine “the Log Lady” Coulson, who filmed her scenes mere days before dying of cancer in 2015.

Aging, death and the passage of time are the key themes of Twin Peaks: The Return; embodied in the lined faces and slower gaits of the film’s many actors returning to their roles after 25 years.  Rarely has a film’s themes been so dictated by, and inseparable from, the element of time.  It is as interlaced with the plot as in Coppola’s Godfather films or Richard Linklater’s Before series and Boyhood.  Not only Coulson, but Ferrer, Frost and Harry Dean Stanton have all died since production started, and the late David Bowie opted out due to his failing health, and would have died mid-production if he had participated.  As in the alternate dimension identified as the “Black Lodge” in the story, death may or may not be a permanent state of affairs in the Twin Peaks universe.  Important characters played by actors who have passed away in the intervening years – in particular Bowie as Phillip Jeffries, Don S. Davis as Major Briggs and Frank Silva as BOB – participate just as freely as those played by living actors.  Others, meanwhile, are missing despite the fact that the actors who played them are alive; (Michael Ontkean, Kenneth Welsh, Lara Flynn Boyle, Michael J. Anderson, Chris Isaak, and Piper Laurie, among others, who all opted out, or were not asked, for one reason or another).  One actor, Walter Olkewicz, whose character died in the series, reappears as the same character’s relative.  Both the living and the dead are resurrected via footage from the old series or the feature film, and others are left to rest in peace whether the actors or their characters are living or dead.

The question of doppelgängers and the possibility of cheating death allow for an exploration of existential issues common in Lynch’s films.  This is especially true in the story involving Cooper’s accidental or temporary incarnation as Las Vegas insurance salesman Dougie Jones.  It is simultaneously funny and tragic that despite Jones being nearly speechless and comatose, and losing 30 pounds in the blink of an eye when he swaps bodies with Cooper, not one person in his life, at work or at home, deals with the issue directly; they all merely lead and nudge him along to go about his routine as a working stiff.  It seems that not even undergoing a radical overnight change in personality and appearance can interfere with a man’s duty to function as an employee and provider.

I can’t think of another instance when experimental techniques have been used so aggressively in a narrative structure.  It’s as if Eraserhead had been edited into Blue Velvet with some of Lynch’s student films interspersed throughout.  Entire sequences could function as abstract shorts apart from the Twin Peaks storyline.  At the same time, in the “real world” scenes, slowness and inactivity of Antonionian proportions cause the camera to dwell motionlessly on various settings, creating suspense, tension or even amusement.  Lynch does not intend for us to be annoyed or to wonder what the relevance is between certain things; it is all merely part of the fabric of the piece.  Scenes are included because Lynch intuitively felt they fit, not because they propel the plot from point A to point B.  One gets the impression that sometimes there may be an explanation that can be articulated, but just as often, there may not be, and that pursuing an answer is just as doomed to frustration as Cooper’s attempts to navigate between dimensions.  The logic of this film, like most of Lynch’s work, is not comparable to the logic of journalists and scholars; it is dream logic.  All films are dreams; only this film seems to understand that better than most. 

With this film, crucially and admirably, Lynch takes direct aim at the single largest failing in modern movies; the obsessive and debilitating dependence on exposition.  We have deteriorated to the point where entire first acts, third acts, and sometimes entire films are comprised of little more than endless, repetitive and mind-numbingly thorough explanations of everything that happens and what it all means.  In attempting to be critic-proof, most films go off the deep end making sure that the most simple-minded viewer imaginable won’t possibly have a question about anything or be confused in any way.  To make a film that no one has a question about is considered the highest of priorities; the inclusion of open-ended elements is regarded as evidence of sloppiness and amateurism.  Lynch never bought into that before and he obviously didn’t convert during all those dormant years between his last features and Twin Peaks: The Return.  And we are better off for it, and cinema in general will be better off still if filmmakers embrace Lynch’s philosophy and follow his lead.  It is not really a contrary nature that has resulted in Lynch’s style; it is merely an acceptance of the fact that magic and mystery are better than snappy resolutions.  Lynch loves mystery and is content to enjoy – along with his audience, ideally – the pleasures of reflection, wonderment and admiration.  (If Lynch were to direct an adaptation of an Agatha Christie story, he would surely postpone the climactic announcement of the villain’s identity as long as possible, perhaps indefinitely.)

As an artist, like the best of his contemporaries, Lynch follows what Ray Bradbury once described as “the middle way,” as opposed to the political way or the commercial way.  That is exactly why he is a true artist.  He makes films because he feels compelled to and because he loves the properties of the medium; not because he has bills to pay or because he wants an easy award for taking a stand against injustice.