Metamorphia wrote:It being "ugly" cinematographically: well yes, it looks nowhere near as cinematic or polished as shows like Fargo or True Detective etc. But from the early 00s forward Lynch has embraced the very raw look of digital, dating right back to its consumer beginnings. And complaints about bad CGI are imo completely worthless ones, because he's using CGI in exactly the same way he's used practical effects and paint and clay right back from Eraserhead through into the terrible composite face shots in the Twin Peaks pilot into Robert Blake in Lost Highway into the jitterbug in MD... it's just done digitally instead. When Dougie's melted into the little gold ball it is meant to look as crude and ridiculous as it does.
Yes, Lynch embraces the raw look of digital, and instead of color grading the image to look as fantastic as his movies shot on film from the 1980 - 2000 (including the original Twin Peaks), he just slaps on an strange color filter, like yellow or blue on the raw digital picture.
And what effect has that had?
Well, IMO, the ugly, ungraded, flat, dead digital picture in The Return, makes it look like a staged, amatuerish and boring documentary behind the scene kind of thing, or even just feel artificial. That kind of look is absolutely devoiding any mood/atmosphere in the show, which the original run (and Lynch movies shot on film) is so famous for capturing and communicating.
Even when The Return seemingly tries to set some kind of mood/atmosphere by showing misty woods or mountains, it all look so boring and flat, and unengaging.
Hasn't David Lynch talked about how essential it is to have a mood, that in all his films the mood is very important? (Something of those lines).
In The Return, I almost feel no mood whatsoever; no old mood, no new mood. Just nothingness and emptiness. I almost get no emotional reaction to anything, except for irritation on how the show is designed. And that I believe is in large part due to the digital artificial picture (and lack of music too, btw).
As for your view on the special effects, I disagree completely.
Eraserhead – he did what he could with the little budget that he had. Dune, he actually wanted better effects, but the budget was already stretched.
And what do you mean by the terrible composite face shots in the Pilot? I don't really see any bad effects in The Pilot. Lost Highway had good effects IMO, nothing there that was seemingly made to actually look artificial by Lynch. MD didn't have any bad special effects eighter, IMO.
The Return, however, is full of irritating "bad effects", and along with the flat digital picture it's ruining the viewing experience. I'm left as a viewer cringing or laughing. When you deliberately show ridiculously bad effects, and jerky framrate, are you not then just telling the viewer to not take it seriously, that the whole thing is just a joke? Is that what Lynch wanted? And the new look of the Red Room...jeez, has Lynch ruined that place.
The viewer needs to be rewarded and the reward is not coming, the heavens are empty. Another wild goose chase?
