StealThisCorn wrote:It's ok, it happens to the best of us! I haven't read that one that. In the one I have, Strobel was asked if Mike meant to give the ring to Laura, and Al said that it wasn't intentional, he was just there to stop Bob, and it just kind of happened that the ring went to Laura. Whatever that means!
Unfortunately I haven't yet got my hands on any Wrapped in Plastic issues (though I'm gonna be working on that!) so what I've read comes from John Thorne himself (I recently did an interview with him which should be going up soon). As he paraphrased it, Strobel said that if Laura got the ring it didn't come from Mike meaning I guess that there was no shot of him throwing the ring into the train (implying that Lynch added it later). Personally, I think Mike DOES give Laura the ring but that it probably was not shot that way, another reason I suspect the material was added later. Maybe Sheryl Lee and the train car set were still available so Lynch was able to shoot a more complex sequence, but obviously it wouldn't have been possible to go back up to Snoqualmie to shoot Strobel throwing the ring in, so Lynch implies it instead. That's my reading. Thorne thinks that Mike does NOT give Laura the ring but rather that she takes it, essentially stealing it from the Lodge people and reversing its original meaning. I don't agree with this idea, but it has definitely had a big influence on my own theory (shared in another thread but briefly: Laura frees Ronette by summoning the angel, perhaps subconsciously, this good deed delivers the ring to Laura - the ring being the embodiment of Laura's refusal to allow Bob inside, perhaps through the newfound knowledge of her own goodness/power).
I agree and I am so curious what factors led to such a detour in Lynch's thinking. I do feel that what we saw was more powerful than Laura just asking Leland to kill her. Though it might have been even more impressive to see some kind of test of wills between Laura and Bob, with Laura clearly emerging the victor (like her screaming back in his face defiantly or something). But that whole ending sequence felt somewhat rushed as it was, just getting them from the cabin to the train car.
I agree the film's conclusion, while powerful, also has a rushed and confused feel to it. You can really sense Lynch struggling against the material; he's bound by film's prequel nature to end with Laura's grisly murder yet he also wants her to be the heroine of the movie, someone who achieves something and doesn't just die miserably. Does he ever resolve this contradiction? Sometimes I've felt he hasn't, liking the film regardless but feeling somewhat let down by the end. More recently I've come to suspect that he has resolved it (see above) although there are still some gaps in my theory (as well as, if this is what was intended, why not make it more clear - though of course this is Lynch we're talking about, and intention may be entirely beside the point). Ultimately, I guess it's open to inerpretation!
But it's like, there's nothing showing that the human Phillip even knows the human Leland or would have any idea he killed Teresa.
Good point so perhaps I have stated the parallel inelegantly. That said, this is clearly what's happening in the scene. Leland is confronted by the screaming one-armed man who accuses him of stealing the corn and then when the one-armed man drives off...Laura and Leland don't discuss creamed corn at all (and they barely discuss the one-armed man, though that's who Leland wants to focus on). Instead Leland flashes back to his encounter with Teresa and then Laura presses him on his visit to the house last week, with both revelations seemingly triggered somehow by Mike's/Phillip's appearance. If they aren't, this would just be sloppy, pointless screenwriting! The link works in emotional/aesthetic terms - the barrage of noise somehow leads inexorably to the sense of revelation. With Lynch, who works from mood, the emotional/aesthetic always precedes narrative...but he usually makes it consistent with the narrative as well. For me, the idea of Mike being summoned by Leland's guilty conscience and Laura's sneaking suspicions works well, but that still leaves the question of why they're able to "summon" someone who is not only a spirit but a flesh-and-blood person.
Someone once compared Lynch to Escher and I think that may be valid here. There may simply be no way to describe the film's mythology in concrete terms, to get a "fix" on it so to speak. Instead it functions however Lynch needs it to function at a given moment and only works if you concentrate on the scene at hand. Or maybe there is some larger explanation, dunno...
I think you may be right there in terms of what Lynch probably finds more interesting, but I guess that's less exciting for me. I did see the series first and the mythology and supernatural stuff was what hooked me. I just found it so unique and strange, with its own style unlike anything I had ever seen before. Bob, Mike, the Red Room, the doppelgangers--they are all one of a kind and really get under your skin by appropriating images and concepts which wouldn't otherwise stand out like ceiling fans or creamed corn or a Formica tabletop. I love the idea of weirdo old people being possessed by inhabiting spirits and not understanding where they are or why they're there half the time. That said, I can't forget the fact that Lynch was the one who introduced elements like the Giant or the Grandson teleporting creamed corn across the room and the whole idea of the Owls not being what they seem, all of which were way more overtly supernatural then had been in the series till then. I mean, if it were me, I would have written out that there was a literal portal to the Red Room/Black Lodge called Glastonbury Grove which just happens to be in the woods aroud Twin Peaks, but he kept it and worked with it. Or, for example, what's the psychological significance to Laura or Leland of David Bowie physically teleporting from Argentina to Philadelphia and back in an elevator? Or of Desmond physically disappearing from reality? Or Cooper seeing himself frozen on the monitor? Or really, most of the Convenience Store scene entirely?
I loved the supernatural mythology on the show too (albeit more when Lynch was at the helm, and it remained eerie and somehow intangible, like a dream, than when it was made rather more literal in the latter part of the series, which to me is more concrete and thus far less unsettling). That said, when I saw the movie I got really uncomfortable with all the stuff I used to like - the Red Room, the Little Man, the spooky spirit world of the woods. The Laura Palmer stuff was simply way too powerful and upsetting, and everything else began to seem like a distraction, maybe even a trivialization. That was my first reaction, after which I decided the movie was a flawed masterpiece. But over the years, upon reflection and eventual re-viewing (it took me five years to watch it again!) I appreciated the mythology more and saw it as complementary rather than contradictory to the psychological reading of the film. But I also saw the film and TV show as more or less separate phenomena, connected but not the same, with different strengths and sources of appeal. Only recently, after The Missing Pieces, have I sought to see series and film as being entirely of a piece. Which, of course, leads to all kinds of trouble...and fun.
My main issues with a too-heavily-supernatural reading (i.e. one that sees the supernatural beings as fully "in charge" and Leland as a helpless victim only) were laid out in the Bob/Leland thread. To reiterate quickly, I think it robs the characters of agency and complexity, and trivializes both the subject of incest and the gravity of Sheryl Lee's performance. The campfire-tale aspects worked for me on the show because the trauma was presented from a distance and the acting was more stylized, but to mix a fun ghost story with really brutal and seemingly honest depictions of an abuse feels like a cop-out and cheap trick. The supernatural elements in FWWM only work for me if they expand my understanding of Twin Peaks' darkness, rather than constrict it by making it too otherworldly.
That said, the supernatural or something that looks an awful lot like it - undeniably exists in the worlds of Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me. It's a part of the world and the texture, but what is it there to achieve? That's the question that most interests me, I guess!
I wrote an essay about this a while back (while, just in the spring actually, but it feels like eons ago haha - my take on Twin Peaks is constantly evolving!) called "Back Door to the Black Lodge":
http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/201 ... black.html
And this is my first review of the film which captures my first gut reaction to it, even if I don't necessarily agree anymore:
http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/200 ... me_09.html