the Missing Pieces

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sparco1979
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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

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Whatever would happen if someone whore the Ring INVERTED - white lodge sign?


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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

Post by StealThisCorn »

Was I the only one surprised and maybe a little disappointed that a lot of the dialogue for the Convenience Store scene in the shooting script looks like it wasn't actually shot on film, since it's not part of the scene seen in the Missing Pieces on the blu-ray? Don't get me wrong I loved what we did get, but I was just kind of surprised when I first watched them not to see many of the things I had read in the script. Also a few lines are said differently and by different people.

In the Missing Piece, the LMFAP says "The chrome reflects our image". This is not even in the shooting script, except later the LMFAP says, "With chrome. And everything will proceed cyclically," which wasn't shot, apparently. Also the LMFAP, not the First Woodsman, now says, "We have descended from pure air." Which is too bad because I wanted to hear what their voices sounded like too. Sadly, Frank Silva never does backwards talk for "Light of new discoveries" or later "Fire walk with me". I really wanted to hear BOB say the poem at some point in his own voice. And we don't get to hear Mrs. Tremond ask, "Why not be composed of materials and combinations of atoms?" The First Woodsman never says that the Formica table represents "Our world" either.

Also, unlike in the script, we still never see a separate entity "MIKE" (or do we?) who says, "Yes, find the middle place" or leaps in after BOB into the Red Room yelling at him.

Just some things I noticed.
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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

Post by Fernanda »

Also, unlike in the script, we still never see a separate entity "MIKE" (or do we?)
"In the foreground the Man From Another Place (Mike) and BOB sit at a formica table."

LMFAP = "MIKE"
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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

Post by StealThisCorn »

LMFAP = "Mike"
I'm not so sure because in the script, we have:

MAN FROM ANOTHER PLACE
(subtitled)
With chrome. Any everything will
proceed cyclically.

SECOND WOODSMAN
(subtitled)
Boneless.

MIKE
(subtitled)
Yes, find the middle place.

Bob begins to scream with anger.


Why differentiate the dialogue between "MIKE" and the "Man From Another Place" if it's as simple as that? Later in the script when BOB gives up the garmonbozia after Laura's murder, we see:

Gerard and the Man From Another Place speak in unison.

GERARD/THE MAN FROM
ANOTHER PLACE
(subtitled)
(in unison)
Bob, you're not going home without me. I
want all my garmonbozia. (corn)


It makes me wonder if there was originally going to be another, distinct, entity in the Convenience Store scene representing MIKE or if the "Jumping Man" actually does represent MIKE when he was whole, but his brief speaking lines never made it to shoot.

It doesn't help that David Lynch can be heard in tv interviews or shots on set referring to the LMFAP as "Little Mike", because the actor's name of course is Michael J. Anderson. It actually makes me wonder if that inspired him to later reveal when making the film the that the LMFAP is "the Arm", given that his identity in the series remained a mystery.
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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

Post by StealThisCorn »

SIX PEOPLE in a large, barren, filthy room. (Bob, Little Mike, Grandson, Grandmother, Two Woodsmen)
But it ended up being more than six people. The Electrician and the Jumping Man were added.
However their proximity doesn't indicate a complete reunion as the original MIKE's killing instinct (which he shared with BOB) is not reinstated. He just wants to go home. The big one's able to contain the little one's capriciousness precisely because they are not a single entity anymore (as if they're joined by chewing gum as opposed to stitched together). They are a single conciousness but separated by space.
But it "Big MIKE" still consumes garmonbozia (pain and sorrow), then how is he not the same as BOB (or "similar to [him]")? I took his claim of having "seen the face of God" and been "changed" (you might be on to something that he saw a "larger being walking with all the stars within") to mean that he no longer fed on such wicked food. Yet clearly he still does, or at least he is mad about BOB stealing it and helps "Little MIKE/LMFAP/the Arm" eat it.

He wants to "go home"? To the endless fields of corn, creamed or otherwise? Why did he/they leave? In the script, he warns BOB that he's "not going home without [him]". It makes it seem as if BOB is the one restless to go home. But then, if so, then why do BOB and Little MIKE leave the Room Above the Store for the Red Room to "fell" victims?
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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

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He wants to "go home"? To the endless fields of corn, creamed or otherwise? Why did he/they leave? In the script, he warns BOB that he's "not going home without [him]". It makes it seem as if BOB is the one restless to go home. But then, if so, then why do BOB and Little MIKE leave the Room Above the Store for the Red Room to "fell" victims?
JT:,,We also hear the Little Man say, "With this ring I thee wed" to Bob. What does this mean?"
RE:,,It is intentionally ambiguous. But it plays on the fact, that he's from another world and that he can't get back to that world."
But it "Big MIKE" still consumes garmonbozia (pain and sorrow), then how is he not the same as BOB (or "similar to [him]")? I took his claim of having "seen the face of God" and been "changed" (you might be on to something that he saw a "larger being walking with all the stars within") to mean that he no longer fed on such wicked food. Yet clearly he still does, or at least he is mad about BOB stealing it and helps "Little MIKE/LMFAP/the Arm" eat it.
"In the scene in the Red Room, Mike and Bob perform a ritual of transubstantiation that redeems all of the chaos of the rational space of ordinary reality. The return to wholeness of the masculine creative potential occurs when Bob heals Leland's wound. This healing is represented as the return of "garmonbozia", pain and sorrow, to Mike and the Little Man. This bodes well since feeling returns to the masculine creative potential from which it has been disconnected in Bob's unfeeling, unrepentant acts of brutality. Surely some parallel exists here with Laura's numb arm in her dream and the use of Annie as a replacement for that arm."
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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

Post by Fernanda »

Lynch seems to work more on an intuitive level, getting inspiration from something (like "leaning against the side of the hot car"=the Red Room) and using it without even knowing where it fits in to the larger narrative and tying it in later ("MARK, THERE'S A GIANT IN COOPER'S ROOM!"), which ends up creating some truly bizarre, but compellingly unique identifying marks.
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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

Post by StealThisCorn »

I was watching the Missing Pieces again and a few more details I hadn't noticed before sparked some new curiosities I thought I might as well share.

We all already know there seems to be some kind of connection in the series with the trees and the spirit-like entities ("Ghostwood", Log Lady's log, Josie in the drawer pull?). There's that shot of the Lodge entities dissolving into the forest tree line too at the end of the extended Convenience Store scene. Whereas in the FWWM film there is a new emphasis on electricity that comes "out of the blue", with shots of power lines, frequent electrical humming, flashing light, static, and the mysterious Electrician entity of course. Right at the beginning of the extended Convenience Store scene, there is a zoom in of the Number 6 powerline/telephone pole and something suddenly occurred to me. In the living woods, maybe the spirits use the web of life as a conduit of some kind, but in areas of civilization where the woods have been cleared to make room for human development, what is there? Rows and rows of power lines and telephone poles! Made from trees and connected by wires that stretch all over continents. So maybe that is what is going on with the power line thing, they are like the trees of the city, connected by electricity rather than organic life.

EDIT: I just thought, maybe Lynch took another look at the zig-zag floor of the Red Room before filming the movie and thought to himself, 'you know, those kind of remind me of something else too...thunder bolts! Electricity!'

When Leland first calls Teresa Banks, if you look closely, you'll see she doesn't have the ring on her finger. But she does when she calls him from the telephone booth to blackmail him. I hadn't noticed this before. So maybe Mrs. Chalfont (or the One-Armed Man perhaps?) gave her the ring after Leland started having an affair with her, knowing that BOB, inside Leland, had taken notice of her, and scheming to claim her garmonbozia for the Lodge, which BOB later stole of course.

The scene with Hawk, Andy and Harry is, of course, a nice cameo. But I realized I think maybe this scene was meant to explain why neither the Sheriff's Department nor the Bookhouse Boys had any knowledge of Jacques partying with Laura and Ronette up in cabin or of Leland going there that night. In the series, Harry explained they had, for months, been working on a big drug bust, top to bottom, so nobody would walk. So by giving the order to stop watching Jacques, and target Bernard, ironically, Harry missed an opportunity to catch both Jacques and Leo, stop Leland and save Laura and Ronette from being attacked. Ouch.

I think some people have mentioned this as a mistake already, but when Annie is being rushed through the hospital, she is wearing Caroline's floral pattern dress from the Black Lodge, rather than the black Miss Twin Peaks dress she wore to Glastonbury Grove. Now at the end of Episode 29 when Cooper and Annie reappear outside the Sycamore circle unconscious, it does look like Annie is wearing her Miss Twin Peaks dress, but the scene of her in the hospital in the floral one we only saw in the Black Lodge suddenly made me wonder, what if Annie's doppelganger is who escaped the Black Lodge too, like Cooper? Two BOB-possessed doppelgangers? Unlikely, but that would be a weird twist.
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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

Post by LostInTheMovies »

StealThisCorn wrote:I was watching the Missing Pieces again and a few more details I hadn't noticed before sparked some new curiosities I thought I might as well share.

There seems to be some kind of connection in the series with the trees and spirits ("Ghostwood", Log Lady, Josie in the drawer pull?). There's that shot of the Lodge entities dissolving into the forest tree line too. Whereas in the film there is a new emphasis on electricity, with shots of power lines, frequent electrical humming, static, and the mysterious Electrician spirit of course. Right at the beginning of the "Above the Convenience Store" extended scene, there is a zoom in of the Number 6 powerline/telephone pole and something suddenly occurred to me. In the living woods, maybe the spirits use the web of life as a conduit of some kind, but in areas of civilization where the woods have been cleared to make room for human development, what is there? Power lines and telephone poles! Made from trees and connected by wires that stretch all over continents. So maybe that is what is going on with the power line thing, they are like the trees of the city, connected by electricity rather than organic life.
Love this.

And for the moment I'll play Fernanda's role with a quote & link (though in this case I don't think they are particularly revealing, except of Lynch's love for wood and I guess some vague sense of artistic creation and assembling different objects from the same source):
"There is an abundance of fish in the sea but tonight I would like to speak about wood. There are many times in the world when the phone rings and someone is inquiring about wood. This happens primarily at lumberyards and in this case it is necessary to have a phone. It is only natural that trees are growing and that they are made of wood. Much happiness can from observing a tree and the same can be said about observing the many shapes fashioned out of wood. Quite often when we are talking about beauty, we are talking about wood." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmXkTNJzawo
When Leland first calls Teresa Banks, if you look closely, you'll see she doesn't have the ring on her finger. But she does when she calls him from the telephone booth to blackmail him. I hadn't noticed this before. So maybe Mrs. Chalfont (or the One-Armed Man perhaps?) gave her the ring after Leland started having an affair with her, knowing that BOB, inside Leland, had taken notice of her, and scheming to claim her garmonbozia for the Lodge, which BOB later stole.
Increasingly, especially watching ep. 16 a few more times and noticing the role Cooper's ring plays there, I think the ring = knowledge/wisdom/truth.

Teresa wears it when she realizes Leland's relationship to Laura. Laura receives it in a dream after coming perilously close to discovering her father is Bob (and vice-versa). The one-armed man waves it in both Leland's and Laura's faces after Leland remembers seeing Laura & Ronette in the motel room and just before Laura forces him to admit that he was home the other day when she saw Bob. Later that night, we cut between Laura remembering Teresa's ring and Leland remembering her murder. And Cooper tells Laura not to take the ring which is consistent with him being imprisoned in the Lodge by his own confusion. Hell, even the now-canonical scene of the nurse and Annie could be read in that light. The nurse takes the ring from Annie after hearing her say the bit about Cooper being in the Lodge, just like Laura did: she is now the only living, conscious person to have full knowledge of Cooper/Bob's situation even if she doesn't yet understand it. Does Teresa wear the ring when she sees Leland leave the motel? Or does it only appear on her finger when she goes back inside and cuddles with Laura and Ronette on the bed (i.e. AFTER she's put 2 and 2 together w/ Leland and she/we have seen the boy with the mask come out of the bushes and dance). If the latter, that's further confirmation of the ring's significance.

It gets trickier at the end of the film when the ring rolls into the train car and saves Laura from possession/delivers her to death (something I suspect was added in post-production with inserts and tricky editing). What new knowledge would it represent at this point? It arrives when Ronette is freed by the angel and opens the door to let the ring in so, indirectly, the appearance of a good spirit (which Laura had earlier seen disappear from her picture/life) is what delivers the ring to Laura. One could say that it is knowledge of this goodness, until now absent from Laura's world, which triggers the ring's final and crucial appearance. As I've already noted on these boards, the angel's rescue of Ronette in the train car visually and dramatically echoes Laura's rescue of Donna in the Pink Room. And Ronette and Donna have been established several times as mirrors of one another and, in turn, representatives of Laura's two sides. With that in mind, I think the appearance of the angel, the liberation of Ronette, and the delivery of the ring are Laura's realization not only of a general out-there goodness but a goodness within herself, a knowledge of the power of her own love and compassion which in this case save Ronette (& simultaneously her own "bad side").

This is consistent with love being continuously posited as the opposite of fear in Twin Peaks: Leland, along with many of the other townspeople and even Cooper himself fall or fail not because of hate, but because of fear (even when they love as well - in Cooper's case the two seem to be mixed together, but fear ultimately wins out and traps him in the Lodge). The only characters to survive the story unscathed are Andy & Lucy, Maj. & Mrs. Briggs, Bobby & Shelly...the lovers. (Bobby & Shelly's bills is even explicitly contrasted with Leo's state of primal fear in Lynch's cutaway to Leo in the cabin holding the spider-string.) The song which plays over the ending is called The Voice of Love and in the film's final movement the delivery of pain and suffering is contrasted with the delivery of love and grace with the angel's appearance.

So I think the ring is an embodiment (I'll try to avoid the loaded term "symbol") of knowledge and that the ultimate knowledge, which saves Laura, is knowledge of her own goodness, its power, and the larger goodness of the universe. This also goes well with what she says Between Two Worlds and is certainly consistent with Lynch's vision, which depicts the universe as, for all its darkness, confusion, and unhappiness, ultimately a place of great and serene beauty.

EDIT: Just checked up on FWWM. Teresa IS wearing the ring in the scene with Leland outside the motel. However, she's also carrying a tray of ice which mostly blocks our view of her left hand as she approaches Leland (I only noticed the ring by freeze-framing) and when she stops to talk to him the frame line is, conspicuously, just above where the ring would be. You can then very fleetingly see the ring on her finger as she walks away from Leland and turns back to look in his direction. Also worth noting that in the earlier Leland/Teresa scene, when he covers her eyes and asks her who he is, her left hand is also hidden (in fact her entire arm is under Leland's body). There appears to be a ring on her finger in the Flesh World photo but it looks like it's on another finger and is a simple band.

Is all of this part of Lynch's visual strategy to reveal Teresa's ring only after she learns the truth about Leland (in which case the brief one- or two-frame slip as she approaches is just a flub)? If so, it's rather brilliant and completely consistent with his unwillingness to delineate between the natural and supernatural (since the ring doesn't "magically" appear on her finger with new knowledge but rather isn't seen by us until that point; it could be or not be there). If not, I guess it's a contradiction to the idea that Teresa's ring is triggered by her knowledge of Leland.
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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

Post by StealThisCorn »

I don't disagree with you that the ring seems to embody knowledge in the scenes you referenced. I've never been sold though that Cooper's warning not to take the ring was in error. I mean, we hear the Little Man say to Bob, "With this ring, I thee wed" and they both laugh evilly. People who have come into contact with the ring--Judy? Presumably Jeffries, Desmond, Teresa and Laura seem to either disappear or are killed which seems like an unfortunate fate. Though it's true, Laura would rather have that than let Bob come inside. But I'm not so sure if it wasn't just her own strength of character and determination and self-sacrifice in those last moments which made Bob realize he couldn't win and would have to kill her. I don't know if it's that the ring had some magical power which specifically prevented her from being possessed. Or, since it came from Phillip Gerard's finger, and we see the "garmonbozia" fed to the Little Man/MIKE later, maybe it marks or claims her for him somehow.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot, I think the scene where Gerard flashes the ring was meant, not just to remind Laura of Teresa's ring while saying "it's your father!", but when he's talking about the corn he had "canned above the store" and the "look on her face when it was opened--there was a stillness", I thought he was showing the ring to remind Bob of his authority or their mutual covenant/pact/vow too ("With this ring, I thee wed"). Though again, I'm confused why Mike, if he's supposed to be good now, is messing around with evil like Bob, garmonbozia, the ring or the his Arm, the Little Man.
Increasingly, watching episode 16 more...
Don't forget thought that Mike in that episode also mentions a "ring" of sorts--the golden circle of appetite and satisfaction he shared with Bob. I always thought that was part of the idea of the green ring as a "replacement" of sorts, between the Little Man/Arm and Bob after the golden circle between Mike and Bob had, apparently, been broken.

It is certainly true that Laura is able to have a realization of sorts upon remembering that both Teresa and Phillip Gerard had the same ring that the Little Man offered her in the dream, though, in the script, Bob says it's "not important".
something I suspect was added in post-production with inserts and tricky editing
I don't know, it looks very convincing to me.

I've recently been collecting various issues of the Wrapped In Plastic fanzine I can find online, and in Issue #11 there's a 6 page interview with Al Strobel. It's a great read but at one point he said he was under the impression that the symbol on the ring was a powerful evil symbol and that it acted as a magical talisman of the "other place" they come from somehow.

I just find it very confusing trying to figure out the ring's purpose in its various appearances and references and what it means for each of them. Maybe it acts as something slightly different for each wearer? Just like with MIKE/Gerard/the Little Man, I can't seem to come up with an idea that reconciles all the different pieces of information together into a whole that makes complete sense to me.
If not, I guess it's a contradiction to the idea that Teresa's ring is triggered by her knowledge of Leland.
I tend to, or maybe prefer to, think Lynch didn't have any accidents like that and that if we see the Ring somewhere it was meant to be there and has some kind of meaning to the story. Yeah I rewatched the scene and you can definitely see it when she is walking away with her back towards the camera (what were those ice cube trays for though lol?). So I think she must have received the ring some time between receiving Leland's first call and him arriving at the hotel to party with her girlfriends.
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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

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Re: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - analysis/thoughts etc

Post by LostInTheMovies »

StealThisCorn wrote:I don't disagree with you that the ring seems to embody knowledge in the scenes you referenced. I've never been sold though that Cooper's warning not to take the ring was in error. I mean, we hear the Little Man say to Bob, "With this ring, I thee wed" and they both laugh evilly. People who have come into contact with the ring--Judy? Presumably Jeffries, Desmond, Teresa and Laura seem to either disappear or are killed which seems like an unfortunate fate. Though it's true, Laura would rather have that than let Bob come inside. But I'm not so sure if it wasn't just her own strength of character and determination and self-sacrifice in those last moments which made Bob realize he couldn't win and would have to kill her. I don't know if it's that the ring had some magical power which specifically prevented her from being possessed. Or, since it came from Phillip Gerard's finger, and we see the "garmonbozia" fed to the Little Man/MIKE later, maybe it marks or claims her for him somehow.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot, I think the scene where Gerard flashes the ring was meant, not just to remind Laura of Teresa's ring while saying "it's your father!", but when he's talking about the corn he had "canned above the store" and the "look on her face when it was opened--there was a stillness", I thought he was showing the ring to remind Bob of his authority or their mutual covenant/pact/vow too ("With this ring, I thee wed"). Though again, I'm confused why Mike, if he's supposed to be good now, is messing around with evil like Bob, garmonbozia, the ring or the his Arm, the Little Man.
Increasingly, watching episode 16 more...
Don't forget thought that Mike in that episode also mentions a "ring" of sorts--the golden circle of appetite and satisfaction he shared with Bob. I always thought that was part of the idea of the green ring as a "replacement" of sorts, between the Little Man/Arm and Bob after the golden circle between Mike and Bob had, apparently, been broken.

It is certainly true that Laura is able to have a realization of sorts upon remembering that both Teresa and Phillip Gerard had the same ring that the Little Man offered her in the dream, though, in the script, Bob says it's "not important".
something I suspect was added in post-production with inserts and tricky editing
I don't know, it looks very convincing to me.

I've recently been collecting various issues of the Wrapped In Plastic fanzine I can find online, and in Issue #11 there's a 6 page interview with Al Strobel. It's a great read but at one point he said he was under the impression that the symbol on the ring was a powerful evil symbol and that it acted as a magical talisman of the "other place" they come from somehow.

I just find it very confusing trying to figure out the ring's purpose in its various appearances and references and what it means for each of them. Maybe it acts as something slightly different for each wearer? Just like with MIKE/Gerard/the Little Man, I can't seem to come up with an idea that reconciles all the different pieces of information together into a whole that makes complete sense to me.
If not, I guess it's a contradiction to the idea that Teresa's ring is triggered by her knowledge of Leland.
I tend to, or maybe prefer to, think Lynch didn't have any accidents like that and that if we see the Ring somewhere it was meant to be there and has some kind of meaning to the story. Yeah I rewatched the scene and you can definitely see it when she is walking away with her back towards the camera (what were those ice cube trays for though lol?). So I think she must have received the ring some time between receiving Leland's first call and him arriving at the hotel to party with her girlfriends.
Hey, tried to respond to this but my response was very convoluted and I kept messing up the quote brackets so I'm starting over! To quickly address your specific points: 1) The danger of the ring needn't contradict its truth-seeking function. In Lynch's world the truth is as dangerous as it is necessary. 2) The theory of Laura's ring being added in post is actually also from Wrapped in Plastic and based on John Thorne's interviews with Strobel and others who were on set. That said, I just re-watched that part of the train car scene and I agree that Laura's reaction shot to the ring seems "pretty convincing" (i.e. it's hard to imagine it being shot for some other purpose). That said, we never see Lee's face and the ring in the same shot so Thorne's theory is possible if not necessarily likely. Either way, the essential point is not so much when Lynch added the ring's "good" function (and it's clearly good in this sequence, saving Laura from possession), but the fact that it represented a deviation from the intended course, in which Laura verbally demands her father kill her. That's what was scripted, while the ring itself didn't appear in the train car sequence on the page. We can parse out the reasons for this but, along with the unscripted angels, it represents a detour in Lynch's thinking which must have some significance. 3) We do see the ring as Teresa walks away from Leland but that's not necessarily the problem (since she's already had her suspicion raised by his hasty exit); the issue is that we can briefly see it as she approaches him! But it's clearly not intentional as we only catch a glimpse when Gidley's hand bobs up for a moment while walking. The ice tray (and the position of Teresa's hand in the frame) definitely serve to keep Teresa's left hand out of view. It seems that Lynch did not want us to notice Teresa's ring (we only see it because we're closely scrutinizing the footage to catch it for a frame or two) until after Leland leaves, possibly not till after Laura sees it herself. Whether this was simply for dramatic impact or for mythological/allegorical reasons is unclear but either way it wasn't a big enough deal for him to compromise performance and composition too much. That's my hunch, and it seems consistent with how he works though maybe I'm just overthinking it!

As for the larger discussion, I don't think the literal and allegorical readings of the ring and the Lodge are contradictory or exclusionary. To me the key is finding the ways in which the two correspond (if they diverge at any point, I tend to think I'm missing something). In other words, "Mike telling Bob he stole creamed corn" = "Phillip telling Leland he murdered Teresa." The supernatural and psychological reading of any given event or character should go hand in glove. Think of it as a relationship between plot (the Lodge creatures providing physical objects and actions to move the narrative forward) and meaning (the actual significance & resonance of those objects and actions). Most movies provide us with a clear plot and then we have to tease out the meaning but in Lynch both plot and meaning can be equally obscure and mysterious!

I will say that I don't think anything the Lodge creatures do is without a deeper psychological/spiritual significance for Laura, Leland and the other "human" characters. The difference between Fire Walk With Me and later Lynch films like Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive, is that it arrives with mythological baggage from the show, which does try to explain how the natural and supernatural interact as separate realms. That's never really been a theme that interests Lynch, and I believe in Fire Walk With Me he is trying to draw the two worlds closer together, to intertwine them so that they become inseparable. In that sense it's a path to the later films which don't at all concern themselves with questions of, say, how the Mystery Man travels through time or what entities fashioned the Blue Box. Just as people interpret Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive as entirely internal fantasies (which I'm coming to suspect may be a mistake), so viewers coming to FWWM without having seen the show often interpret all the supernatural elements as psychological projections of Laura. Meanwhile, viewers coming from the series have the opposite problem - they already see the Lodge creatures as having a real, physical, tangible existence and so they tend to neglect the degree to which these entities DO reflect or express psychological or spiritual phenomena. I think the truth of what Lynch is going for is somewhere between these two interpretations, though I'm still trying to figure out how this works. But just as I can't accept that the Lodge creatures are "imaginary" in the sense that there is a physical, material world whose laws they don't actually violate, I also can't accept that they have an entirely independent existence from their human hosts/victims. Increasingly, I view the people as (perhaps subconsciously) using these spirits for their purposes at least as much as vice-versa.
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