What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

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LateReg
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

Post by LateReg »

Re: those last two posts about the cosmic implications...

I think it's important not to take them too seriously, because your interpretation may not be THE intended interpretation, so it's best not to get hung up on it and instead let it flow through you as the beautiful thing it is; is Laura's essence created by the Fireman, or is he just observing her as a being that he knows is part of a larger fight? I say this partly because the beauty of the multiple iterations of Twin Peaks (the original series, FWWM, The Return) is that each seems to both expand the lore and stand as its own thing - a different point of view of the same subject. The cosmic implications of a Laura orb should in no way take away from whatever you saw in Laura in the original series and film; she's still the human being you know and love and feel sorry for, and her cosmic meaning can co-exist and not exist at the same time, and I don't mean because you can choose to ignore it. Rather, one can see it differently from different perspectives: the town's view, her own view, the viewer's view, the fireman's view, etc. None of it has to be taken literally. The cosmic stuff is great because it allows us to pull back and ponder the world from a different scale and perspective that doesn't/should not negate the ones that came before.
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Jonah
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

Post by Jonah »

I agree. Either don't read too much into it or ignore it/your interpretations of it to some extent (not so much ignore, but don't necessarily let it reshape your views of the earlier events - unless you like it and want to of course!).
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

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Jonah wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 7:57 am I agree. Either don't read too much into it or ignore it/your interpretations of it to some extent (not so much ignore, but don't necessarily let it reshape your views of the earlier events - unless you like it and want to of course!).
Haha, I mean, I guess that's what I meant but also not really. I literally meant that it's designed so that it all coexists, explorable on multiple levels. Cosmic stuff is clearly happening right now as we speak, but we only think in terms of the down to earth, day to day, because that's all we can know. In this life, we have no idea how we're being manipulated, but we very well may be. So I believe it's not so much about ignoring it but understanding that we're seeing the story from different, coexisting points of view, and one does not negate the other. For me, ignoring has little to do with it.

As far as Sarah, I like that the evil is centralized in the Palmer house. That's one of those things that, for me, makes sense on all of the multiple, coexisting levels I'm talking about. Then again, as I've said before, I have less interest in the plot per se than I do in just feeling the piece. The plot is obviously one major level of this thing, but since nobody knows what that plot actually is - is this all "real", or taking place in the mind, and whose mind? - I'm more into the way it all fits together on an intuitive, thematic, mood-based level. From a strictly plot-based perspective I might think that Sarah ripping out a throat and containing Judy is a bit much, but I can't strictly see it on that level; even so I think she was obviously implicit in Leland's crimes and a life of grief, rage and remorse made her susceptible to inhabitation, and I think that's the point, so it makes sense...especially in this art-piece of a thing.

One thing's for sure, though: "Knowing" that she's Judy and Leland's BOB makes all the sense in the world when you rewatch the end of episode 8 of the original series and glimpse how dysfunctional Leland and Sarah look during that dinner sequence with the Haywards.
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JackwithOneEye
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

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I'm not a big fantasy person, so I choose to look at a lot of cosmic/supernatural stuff in TP as abstraction, metaphor, magical realism/ magical thinking.

when I first saw the nuclear explosion, my first thought was of Naido, and I thought maybe she was an allusion to Hiroshima/Nagasaki
and the 'ugly american', the white man now asserting dominance all over the world (which ties in with Frost's book, white settlers
grabbing and stealing land, greed, capitalism, raping the land, allusions to manufacturing and refining oil and gas , scorched engine oil )

I was disappointed that Naido seemed to just be an aspect of Diane.
LateReg
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

Post by LateReg »

JackwithOneEye wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 8:43 am look at a lot of cosmic/supernatural stuff in TP as abstraction, metaphor, magical realism/ magical thinking.
That's more or less what I'm saying, too. (I also do think that Naido does have a bit to do with the bomb beyond her affiliation with Diane, at least intuitively.)
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JackwithOneEye
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

Post by JackwithOneEye »

I agree with you on the Hayward dinner scene.

I think that season 2 opener is my favorite ep of the original after the pilot, one great scene after another.

I love the scene too where Hank Jennings is telling the Hornes that Leo was chopping wood inside when he shot him, and Jerry keeps questioning it,
" he was chopping wood INSIDE ?", and Hank's insistence; "yeah, you know Leo"

it's a funny scene, but it supports so much of Lynch's themes. a person having a certain perspective, or only seeing a part of the picture, he didn't see Bobby on the floor, so just assumed it was wood he was chopping, and Jerry is trying to bring logic/ reasoning / explanation into it, and it gets brushed aside.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

I’m not a big fan of Hank, but that is by far his greatest scene on the show IMO. He comes across as genuinely menacing for once, and I love the Horne brothers circling him like sharks.
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Cappy
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

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Not sure if I have any hot takes or unpopular opinions about Twin Peaks...

But I do have one about another Lynch work. I don't particularly care for Lost Highway. I could list a lot of reasons to support my feelings, but ultimately I think its just a case of either it resonates with you or it doesn't. And it just doesn't work for me. I love almost everything else in Lynch's filmography, except this and maybe Dune and Elephant Man.

In Lost Highway's defense though, I will admit there are some aesthetically stunning sequences which are on par with Lynch's other works. And the general structure of it, Fred Madison's dissociative change into Pete Dayton, and the specific way the film makes itself a little more obvious than other Lynch works, has been really helpful in my approach to Lynch's movies. The tension (and flight from tension) in LH creates a really useful framework for understanding (or attempting to understand) Diane Selwyn and Betty in Mulholland Drive, BOB/Leland in Twin Peaks, Agent Cooper's various personas in The Return, etc.

Lost Highway might be my least favorite of Lynch's major works, but it has functioned as something of a Rosetta Stone for my engagement with his films + tv work.
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

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Cappy wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 11:43 am But I do have one about another Lynch work. I don't particularly care for Lost Highway. I could list a lot of reasons to support my feelings, but ultimately I think its just a case of either it resonates with you or it doesn't. And it just doesn't work for me. I love almost everything else in Lynch's filmography, except this and maybe Dune and Elephant Man.

In Lost Highway's defense though, I will admit there are some aesthetically stunning sequences which are on par with Lynch's other works. And the general structure of it, Fred Madison's dissociative change into Pete Dayton, and the specific way the film makes itself a little more obvious than other Lynch works, has been really helpful in my approach to Lynch's movies. The tension (and flight from tension) in LH creates a really useful framework for understanding (or attempting to understand) Diane Selwyn and Betty in Mulholland Drive, BOB/Leland in Twin Peaks, Agent Cooper's various personas in The Return, etc.

Lost Highway might be my least favorite of Lynch's major works, but it has functioned as something of a Rosetta Stone for my engagement with his films + tv work.
That's very interesting. Certainly, many critics did not like it at first...some had a problem with the heavy metal aspect, which is part of its bizarre and weirdly funny style, of course.

But anyway, what I find interesting about that is that for me, each Lynch work serves to clarify the one before it, as well as after it...but mostly before it. So, it was Lost Highway that opened me to Fire Walk With Me, Mulholland Drive that opened me to Lost Highway, and bizarrely, INLAND EMPIRE that further opened up Mulholland Drive for me. But it works backward and forward for sure. Yet it's certainly Mulholland Drive that I find easiest and most Rosetta Stone-ish of the bunch - I still have a lot more questions about the twin personas of Lost Highway, for example. But then again the exact focus you put on the tension and flight from tension to understand character is very interesting.
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JackwithOneEye
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

Post by JackwithOneEye »

yeah, LH is a tricky setup in some regards, since it's like jealous and angry wife murderer-as-protagonist.
it's like making Leo Johnson or Hank Jennings the main character.
but i still like it.

Diane's unrequited love in Mullholland is quite palpable, and beautifully portrayed by Naomi W,
bit of an extreme step to hire a hitman to kill the person who rejected you,
so i guess Diane isn't that morally superior to Fred Madison,
but the jealousy/anger, feeling left out at the party, it's made easier to relate to emotionally than in LH.
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AXX°N N.
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

Post by AXX°N N. »

Cappy wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 11:43 amI don't particularly care for Lost Highway.
Me neither. It's my least favorite, even behind Hotel Room.

Your reasonings & the discussion about killer as protag are all sensible. However, I think my inability to fully get into it is kind of odd & simple; I think it's too masculine for me. It seems deeply embedded in some kind of particularly male psychological place. And I think it inhabits it well, I just can't relate to it emotionally.
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JackwithOneEye
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

Post by JackwithOneEye »

yeah, LH is a very male movie.

Fred's "read ? read what ?" lines at the intro is a softer, more impotent confrontation than Leo looking at the cigarettes in the TP pilot,
declaring "i only want to see one brand of cigarettes in this house." but it's still about masculine domination.

jealousy, paranoia, suspicion everyone experiences, but quite pointedly male/masculine in LH.
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JackwithOneEye
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

Post by JackwithOneEye »

Joel Siegel's Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me review from 1992 -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNvD4oQZ_QI&t=6s
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

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Mr. Reindeer wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 9:36 am I’m not a big fan of Hank, but that is by far his greatest scene on the show IMO. He comes across as genuinely menacing for once, and I love the Horne brothers circling him like sharks.
Hank Jennings = HANK Williams + Waylon JENNINGS, right?

I mean, there is even a direct reference to Hank Williams at some point when, I think, Ed tells Norma a line that is a quote from Hey, Good Lookin', but I'm not sure which exactly, maybe even the title.
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JackwithOneEye
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Re: What is your Twin Peaks unpopular opinion?

Post by JackwithOneEye »

whenever David Lynch talks about the origins of Lost Highway,
he mentions the words Lost Highway in Barry Gifford's Night People being an inspiration,
but just about never mentions that when Gifford used it in Night People, it was in reference to Hank Williams' song on the radio.
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