Video tribute to Lynch (how did Laura Palmer change Lynch?)

[LostInTheMovies]

I've created a video piece examining Lynch's treatment of abuse and evil in Twin Peaks and his first 6 films, starting here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=mrT-67_9h10. I'm also interested in Lynch & Peaks fans' views about how Laura Palmer changed Lynch as a filmmaker and storyteller. I've already shared my own thoughts on the subject (the video also addresses the subject indirectly, using juxtaposition of clips rather than narration) and will cross-post them here:

From what I gather, Laura Palmer was initially intended to be simply a MacGuffin on the show. Her murder would be solved eventually, but both Lynch & Frost conceived her as a mysterious hook into this strange world. And that's how she was presented at first, both on the show and especially the media, which had a field day fetishizing her "wrapped in plastic" corpse. It was all very Hitchcockian and playful, though of course the series treated her death with seriousness at times too (most notably her parents' grieved reaction, although this is often interpreted as camp, and in small moments like when Cooper gently places her hand back on the morgue table after a played-for-laughs fight which ends with Agent Rosenfield mounting her).

I'm not sure exactly when the change began to take place - perhaps it was Jennifer Lynch writing the diary as a raw tale of sexual abuse (though she doubts her father actually read the book), perhaps it was the network forcing Frost & Lynch to resolve the storyline and thus focus more heavily on Laura, perhaps it was something offscreen we'll never know, but clearly at some point Lynch became more and more fascinated with Laura as a character, an individual, not just a story device.

Beginning with the first episode of season 2, which flashes back to her grisly murder, we begin to get a better sense of Laura not as a "bad girl" but an abuse victim and Lynch's tone and focus begins to shift subtly. I'm not just talking about the series here, but his whole body of work. Up until season 2 of Twin Peaks, every Lynch film featured a heroic male figure/redeemer, usually perceived as pure (even Henry in Eraserhead has childlike aspects), who intervenes to rescue victims of abuse (the only exception is Eraserhead, in which Henry himself could be seen as the abuser, though the film doesn't really present it that way and indeed encourages you to sympathize with him).

Meanwhile, the villains in these movies, at least from The Elephant Man on, were usually lower-class, caricatured and somewhat exaggerated in their evil - a point that Lynch addresses in the Rolling Stone interview published before season 2. He's asked, "What I'm wondering is whether, outside the films, you see the world as having these very strong dichotomies between Good and Evil as opposed to a kind of complex, integrated -" And he responds, "No, I know it's complex. Everybody's got many threads of both running through them. But I think in a film, white gets a little whiter, and black gets a little bit blacker, for the sake of the story. That's part of the beauty of it, that contrast, that power of it. Maybe it would be very beautiful to have a character that had an equal mixture of both. Where the forces were fighting equally. But maybe they would just stand still."

Well, within a few weeks of this interview being published (perhaps before, depending on when the second season was shot) we are actually seeing these forces fighting inside someone. As evil is re-located in the home and the family, stripping our identification with authority figures and conventional heroes, Lynch's sympathy and identification drifts toward the victim instead. We see this process completed, of course, with Fire Walk With Me, a film that was reviled upon its release precisely for focusing on and identifying with Laura Palmer and her story.

Lynch said, wearing his heart on his sleeve more than usual, "At the end of the series, I felt sad. I couldn't get myself to leave the world of Twin Peaks. I was in love with the character of Laura Palmer and her contradictions: radiant on the surface but dying inside. I wanted to see her live, move, and talk. I was in love with that world and I hadn't finished with it." Ironically, his motives were construed as cynical; people couldn't seem to accept that Lynch was sincerely attached to this character. Just as she's won over the various townspeople of Twin Peaks, and left them stranded after she died, so Lynch himself had become captivated by his own creation.

It's worth noting too that Sheryl Lee played a part in Lynch's capitulation to Laura. When he discovered her in Seattle, she was chosen simply to play a corpse but, impressed with her acting in the brief video sequence he invented the part of Maddy for her. In interviews, Lee almost appears like a character in Lynch films, a sweet, good-natured person who is able to go to deep, dark places in dedication to her mission (in this case, the art of performance). Lynch was deeply impressed by her ability and commitment (especially at a time when other actors were beginning to flake out on him - to be fair, many would accuse him of flaking out on them first by getting distracted from the show when it was in trouble).

Yet even as late as the production of Fire Walk With Me, Lynch still didn't quite seem to know what he had in his hands. The screenplay (as the "Missing Pieces" will soon remind us) made time for various other characters and subplots, and even in the finished film we wait 45 minutes or so to meet Laura. As written, Laura also didn't play a very active role in her own climax, something the use of the ring was intended to rectify (some have even speculated that the ring footage was added in post-production and that the scene was shot more or less as written, with Laura more passive). Clearly the process of making the movie - watching Lee completely invest in this part, spending time each day exploring Laura's world and character - only committed Lynch further to the idea that Laura Palmer was at the heart of Twin Peaks and everything he wanted to say in this movie.

The film came out and was, of course, a flop and critical disaster. But diving deeply into Laura's perspective changed Lynch as a filmmaker and storyteller. All of his subsequent films have mixed light & dark within the same character (although often these characters themselves fragment into different personalities). He has also preferred female to male protagonists, focused on emotionally vulnerable and psychologically fragile characters, and located evil inside home & family instead of outside.

There's much more to be said, but I'll wait to see what others have to offer before pitching in. You can respond here, or on my site: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogI ... 2023781564

[Mb3]

I know I should have responded to this thread earlier but I just stumbled across it last night for the first time by searching through the forum. Basically what I want to say is that I love the whole montage of film sequences that you put together, it's fantastic. I also would have joined the whole discussuion that you started on the blog but I'm afraid that my english isn't good enough to get my point across. I guess I've got some kind of a complex when it comes to my english knowledge because I'm always afraid that I sound like a child when I want to express some of my thoughts. Whatever, I enjoy reading the things that you posted on this forum and also some of the links that you posted on here. The Cooper and Laura tribute that you did is also great. And I also agree with what you wrote in another thread about Sheryl Lees performance in FWWM since I also was fascinated by it. I already mentioned in one of my first posts on this forum, I think it was six years ago or maybe longer than that, that I didn't expect much of FWWM before I watched it for the first time since I've mainly read negative reviews about it on the internet but after watching it I was mesmerized by this film.

[LostInTheMovies]

I know I should have responded to this thread earlier but I just stumbled across it last night for the first time by searching through the forum. Basically what I want to say is that I love the whole montage of film sequences that you put together, it's fantastic. I also would have joined the whole discussuion that you started on the blog but I'm afraid that my english isn't good enough to get my point across. I guess I've got some kind of a complex when it comes to my english knowledge because I'm always afraid that I sound like a child when I want to express some of my thoughts. Whatever, I enjoy reading the things that you posted on this forum and also some of the links that you posted on here. The Cooper and Laura tribute that you did is also great. And I also agree with what you wrote in another thread about Sheryl Lees performance in FWWM since I also was fascinated by it. I already mentioned in one of my first posts on this forum, I think it was six years ago or maybe longer than that, that I didn't expect much of FWWM before I watched it for the first time since I've mainly read negative reviews about it on the internet but after watching it I was mesmerized by this film.

Thanks! And your English sound (reads) fine to me so feel free to contribute/discuss wherever! I'm really glad you liked the video, as it's in some ways my favorite of my Lynch pieces. I may do another one soon but it will probably be narrated and more analytical (focused on Twin Peaks alone).

When I saw the film I had no idea just how poorly it had been received. Reading the reviews I was astonished by the vitriol. I had some issues with it on first viewing but I knew it was a masterful piece of filmmaking and emotionally overwhelming so I couldn't figure out what the hell the critics were talking about. Still can't, really...

[Fernanda]

https://berkeley.academia.edu/JenniferPranolo

"Existing scholarship on Lynch has noted the incessant thematization of women and death in his work. Martha Nochimson suggests that the central conflict in Lynch’s films is between the ‘imbalances of phallocentric aggression’ and his faith in the sacrificial ‘openness’ of a ‘feminine, labial receptivity’. Michel Chion, in contrast, sidesteps this hagiographic recuperation to point out that Lynch unmistakably ‘enjoys manipulating the subject of women to elicit a reaction’, rousing them to ‘live, move, and talk’ even after he has killed them off. ‘In Lynch’s films,’ Chion writes, ‘it is hard to die for real’. Indeed, his female victims inevitably find themselves in a dream-like or nightmarish ‘beyond’. While Nochimson valorizes this cryptic state of transcendence as redemptive, Chion regards it, in a more sinister cast, to be ‘clearly designated … as a place where one never dies’."

[LostInTheMovies]

https://berkeley.academia.edu/JenniferPranolo

"Existing scholarship on Lynch has noted the incessant thematization of women and death in his work. Martha Nochimson suggests that the central conflict in Lynch’s films is between the ‘imbalances of phallocentric aggression’ and his faith in the sacrificial ‘openness’ of a ‘feminine, labial receptivity’. Michel Chion, in contrast, sidesteps this hagiographic recuperation to point out that Lynch unmistakably ‘enjoys manipulating the subject of women to elicit a reaction’, rousing them to ‘live, move, and talk’ even after he has killed them off. ‘In Lynch’s films,’ Chion writes, ‘it is hard to die for real’. Indeed, his female victims inevitably find themselves in a dream-like or nightmarish ‘beyond’. While Nochimson valorizes this cryptic state of transcendence as redemptive, Chion regards it, in a more sinister cast, to be ‘clearly designated … as a place where one never dies’."

This is an interesting point. At first I could only think of Laura, but Nikki Grace, Camilla/Rita, and Renee/Alice also kind of fit the bill. The Elephant Man's mother appears to him in visions (and says "no one really dies") but she is not (as far as we know) a victim. I guess one could say Dorothy Valens exists in a sort of surreal 'beyond' but this stretches the point since she isn't ever supposed to be dead (although I guess you could throw in Frank's comment "Stay alive" as putting her in some kind of limbo).

Wish I could read more of the piece to see where she's heading with the argument, though; I'm not sure Nochimson and Chion are at odds here. Do "his faith in the sacrificial 'openness' of a 'feminine, labial receptivity'" and "enjoys manipulating the subject of women to elicit a reaction', rousing them to 'live, move, and talk'" necessarily contradict one another? One description certainly sounds more approving than the other but in art, especially intuitive art like Lynch's, the effect is probably more important than the intent.

[Fernanda]

I guess one could say Dorothy Valens exists in a sort of surreal 'beyond' but this stretches the point since she isn't ever supposed to be dead (although I guess you could throw in Frank's comment "Stay alive" as putting her in some kind of limbo).

pp. 25 (ii)
https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/handle/11375/11893

Wish I could read more of the piece to see where she's heading with the argument, though; I'm not sure Nochimson and Chion are at odds here.

http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/5 ... e-pdf.html

[LostInTheMovies]

I guess one could say Dorothy Valens exists in a sort of surreal 'beyond' but this stretches the point since she isn't ever supposed to be dead (although I guess you could throw in Frank's comment "Stay alive" as putting her in some kind of limbo).

pp. 25
http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/cgi/v ... sertations

Wish I could read more of the piece to see where she's heading with the argument, though; I'm not sure Nochimson and Chion are at odds here.

http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/5 ... e-pdf.html

Thanks - 2nd one didn't work for me but I will check out the 1st.

[Fernanda]

"Laura Dern’s eternal return"

"For his part, after his initiation into the production capabilities of the digital, Lynch has emphatically declared that ‘Film is dead’. Coming from a director who regularly employs death as just another trick ending, this statement may be considered suspect."

I couldn't disagree more.

[Mb3]

When I saw the film I had no idea just how poorly it had been received. Reading the reviews I was astonished by the vitriol. I had some issues with it on first viewing but I knew it was a masterful piece of filmmaking and emotionally overwhelming so I couldn't figure out what the hell the critics were talking about. Still can't, really...

Exactly, for me a good example how hateful some critics were during this time is this quote by Tarantino: “After I saw Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me at Cannes, David Lynch had disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see another David Lynch movie until I hear something different. And you know, I loved him. I loved him.”

I understand that a lot of people probably expected something different for this movie but if you regard the fact that MacLachlan only wanted to do a cameo in it, I think Lynch and Engels did a good job in restructuring the plot.

Another thing that I always found kind of strange is the fact that so many of the actors/actresses of the show and the movie never got any other big roles after it.

[LostInTheMovies]

"Laura Dern’s eternal return"

"For his part, after his initiation into the production capabilities of the digital, Lynch has emphatically declared that ‘Film is dead’. Coming from a director who regularly employs death as just another trick ending, this statement may be considered suspect."

I couldn't disagree more.

With him regularly employing death as just another trick ending, or with the statement being suspect? (Or with the statement itself?)

[Fernanda]

With him regularly employing death as just another trick ending, or with the statement being suspect? (Or with the statement itself?)

With him regularly employing death as just another trick ending. I hardly think that was the case in FWWM or in Episode 8 either, there's a clear 'humanistic' streak in all of his work (Mulholland Drive's Bob Brooker). Also, he meant celluloid is dead; he wasn't speaking like Godard in that case.

http://billmadison.blogspot.com.br/2011 ... inema.html

(Cocteau)
http://books.google.com.br/books?id=Xj7 ... ad&f=false pp. 207

Rivette on FWWM.
http://sensesofcinema.com/2001/french-c ... rivette-2/

[LostInTheMovies]

When I saw the film I had no idea just how poorly it had been received. Reading the reviews I was astonished by the vitriol. I had some issues with it on first viewing but I knew it was a masterful piece of filmmaking and emotionally overwhelming so I couldn't figure out what the hell the critics were talking about. Still can't, really...

Exactly, for me a good example how hateful some critics were during this time is this quote by Tarantino: “After I saw Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me at Cannes, David Lynch had disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see another David Lynch movie until I hear something different. And you know, I loved him. I loved him.”

I understand that a lot of people probably expected something different for this movie but if you regard the fact that MacLachlan only wanted to do a cameo in it, I think Lynch and Engels did a good job in restructuring the plot.

Another thing that I always found kind of strange is the fact that so many of the actors/actresses of the show and the movie never got any other big roles after it.

Yeah I sometimes get the sense there's like a mass hallucination when it comes to FWWM. It really gets under people's skin for some reason. I mean it got under mine too on first viewing, but I knew I'd seen something extremely powerful.

For Tarantino to say that - Tarantino, who likes movies a million times more self-indulgent than FWWM and who himself is about as far from a paragon of humility as one can get - just shows something was up with this movie.

And there is a weird "curse of Twin Peaks" vibe which even affected Lynch for a half-decade (or arguably longer, since it wasn't till The Straight Story that most critics got back on the bandwagon). Although Frost had some success with books, he never had success in TV again (after Lynch/Frost dissolves it looks like he was only able to launch one more series - the short-lived Buddy Faro in '98). The actors, so many of whom seemed to have stardom in their sights, mostly faltered or flickered except for Lara Flynn Boyle (at least in the 90s) and late additions like Billy Zane and Heather Graham (MacLachlan did ok although one might have expected more). Sheryl Lee ends up appearing mostly in B-movies and minor TV guest roles after giving one of the performances of the century; hard to think of a greater gap between career and talent than hers. Such a shame.

It's odd too how few of the actors ended up working with Lynch again, especially since he is so prone to re-using actors (albeit moreso in the first phase of his career). Everett McGill has a cameo in The Straight Story, Grace Zabriskie pops up very memorably in Inland Empire, and of course the late Jack Nance appears one last time in Lost Highway. And of course Michael J. Anderson in Mulholland Drive! But MacLachlan, after 3 films, never works with Lynch again and neither does Lee.

I'd love to see a real revival of interest in these people especially with the buzz around Twin Peaks lately (although I have to say I was a bit disappointed by the reception, or lack thereof, to The Entire Mystery in the press). Twin Peaks is definitely fashionable again. It would be nice to see more fallout from that.

[LostInTheMovies]

With him regularly employing death as just another trick ending, or with the statement being suspect? (Or with the statement itself?)

With him regularly employing death as just another trick ending. I hardly think that was the case in FWWM or in Episode 8 either. Also, he meant celluloid is dead. He wasn't speaking like Godard in that case.

http://billmadison.blogspot.com.br/2011 ... inema.html

(Cocteau)
http://books.google.com.br/books?id=Xj7 ... ad&f=false pp. 207

Rivette on FWWM.
http://sensesofcinema.com/2001/french-c ... rivette-2/

I've gotta say, I LOVE that Rivette loved Fire Walk With Me! Makes me feel all kind of warm and fuzzy inside.

[Fernanda]

Céline et Julie, Duelle, Noroît, Merry-Go-Round, etc. are all great, and very close to Lynch's (impressionistic) style.

Pranolo's discussion of the parasitic aspects of camp and the uncanny as it relates to Inland Empire is interesting to an understanding beyond the Leland/Bob/Laura possession.

"While Lynch is not campy in the tongue-in-cheek spirit of John Waters, Robert Aldrich or Billy Wilder, his retro carnivalesque fetishization of the female star does reduce her to a code or abstract system to be viciously parodied and, indeed, camped." (Lil)

"The unheimlich is not the inverse of the familiar, but the familiar parasitized by an anxiety that disperses it. In the same way, one would readily say that in the modern universe, there is no distinction between the domain of the infinite and the domain of the finite, but that the infinite perpetually parasitizes the finite insofar as everything infinite is fundamentally posed as able to be infinitely other than it is. …In a similar manner in psychoanalysis, the unconscious perpetually parasitizes consciousness, thereby manifesting how consciousness can be other than it is, yet not without a cost."

"This ‘mind-fuck’ could be, from one perspective, the aftermath of the abuse inflicted upon her. Dern’s character appears powerless to construct a coherent chronology from the sheer quantitative overload of physical assaults she has endured. From another perspective, it is the inescapable manifestation of the uncanny temporal structure of the film itself. Lynch inserts this episode – the first one shot with Dern for the film – as a looping interlude throughout the latter half of Inland Empire. Excerpted in discontinuous fragments, it is impossible to determine when it begins or ends, or whether it is Nikki or Susan that is speaking. Through the constant chiasmus of Dern’s doubles, Lynch chronically advances our doubt – as he does hers – about which one is in fact parasitizing the other. In yet another uncanny merging of the ‘on’ and ‘off’-screen – one that leaches into our reality – Dern pinpoints what we ourselves might be thinking when she compares her hallucinatory shock to being a spectator of her own life: ‘I was watching everything going around me’, she says, ‘while standing in the middle, watching it, like in a dark theatre before they bring up the lights up. I’m sitting there, wondering how can this be.’ Dern’s reflection on the circularity of her world is itself an uncanny reflection on the temporal and spatial disphasure of Lynch’s interweaving of media upon media, identity upon identity." (Caroline/Annie)

"Tellingly, there is a cinematic tenor to Dern’s professed splitting of the self. Dern stumbles upon the awareness that she may not be who she thinks she is but may in fact be ‘seized’ by a ‘wicked dream’ of someone else’s making." (Above the Convenience Store)

"The ‘un’ of the uncanny, as Milner takes pains to distinguish, is not the inverse of, but a surplus that attaches itself to, the familiar. The familiar does not become unfamiliar, but strange in its overfamiliarity. Similarly, if the uncanny parasitizes the familiar, camp likewise parasitizes the ‘cliché, surface, image.'" (The Blue Rose)