Isn't the acting a bit off in that 'who was that?' scene? It could be described as a little bit laughable infact...Similarly, the acting in the scene between Shelley and Leo does look amateur. You can almost look at this as a parody of bad soap acting. I am not sure if that was intentional though.
It's more akin to the hilarious bad acting in a still really great film Carnival of Souls.
I don't think it's laughable at all. Sheryl Lee's performance tends to polarise the fan base, and that's partly because a lot of the film she's "guilty" of what a lot of people today would call overacting. Personally I think it's perfectly appropriate for the melodrama of the story, and her expression in that scene works brilliantly. Greil Marcus has compared Sheryl's performance - he's a fan, btw - to silent movie acting. A lot of the acting is in her face only, and like Gloria Swanson says in Sunset Blvd: "We had faces then".
"What credit card do you want to put that on?"
"Caash, prease."
and like Gloria Swanson says in Sunset Blvd: "We had faces then".And cinematography to underscore the mood.
Haha, exactly.
"What credit card do you want to put that on?"
"Caash, prease."
I'm not yet done with the series, and the only other Lynch film I have seen is Dune (HUGE Dune fan since I was 14, 25 now)... that being said.
After reading (and scanning) the posts in this thread I am suprised at some of the comments. Weren't expecting Lynch to be short tempered? I get the general sense from the first season, and the parts of season two I have watched that he is making fun of humanity. The only people in this series that aren't a parody of a bad villian are the "stupid" ones. The cheesy, yet eerie soap opera music in most the scenes could show that he isn't even taking their plights seriously.
I can just see someone writing and producing this thinking "Look what I'm gonna make you watch and ENJOY now... stupid humans...!" That trend has continued in film.
Though, I'm really enjoying it ;) I can't say it's making me think, and try to figure out what is going to happen next. I already knew it was Laura's father that killed her, just not how. I read a spoiler years ago when I thought I would never watch the series.
Maybe the fact that I watched it after hearing years of hype, and exited my more impressionable ages, is one of the reasons I haven't fallen in love with the series quite as much as others have.
Oh, and to address the many anti-Dune sentiments on this forum. Dune was made for Dune fans, not David Lynch fans. Dune has a rather large cult following of it's own, and kudos to Lynch for sticking with their vision and not turning in into a story of his making.
Like many of you collect Lynch movies, zines, etc... I have read every Frank Herbert Book.. watched all of the movie/mini series adaptions. I can't say I've gotten the board game, but I do have the computer game.
David Lynch probably has a love/hate relationship with the Twin Peaks universe. This is apparent in FWWM, but even more so in the Season Two Finale of the show. As brilliant as the final episode is, at the same time you can feel the disdain Lynch must have felt for what Twin Peaks had become by that time. I suppose it was his way of reclaiming what had been stolen from him. Even if the network had ever greenlighted a third season, the bleak finale pretty much killed off any chances of a decent storyline right then and there.
FWWM seems to have been his way of making up for it, but I think the movie was misread by a lot of people, as a sort of insult to injury. True, the movie sorely lacks humour, but otherwise I think it's fairly successful at 1) being a coherent prequel (take a lesson from thát George Lucas!), 2) providing an emotionally satisfying conclusion to the show, and 3) mining the untapped potential left in the series.
With regards the last point: sure, we don't get to see many of the TP townsfolk in FWWM, but what was there left to say that wasn't explored "ad nauseam" in the series? The Black Lodge mythos was clearly the most intriguing aspect left in Twin Peaks, and we get plenty of that in the movie.
As for the second point: I think the real genius behind FWWM (while still admitting it's not a truly great movie) is how it bends a seemingly unending police procedural (the show), into the story of how two wounded souls ultimately find comfort with each other (Cooper and Laura) in a world of chaos and madness (TP, the Black Lodge). FWWM effectively turns Cooper's downfall into Laura's salvation.
Still, Lynch had some room for parody on his own show in FWWM, as evidenced by the whole Deer Meadow sequence: the local authorities are completely uncooperative, the autopsy on Theresa Banks takes place in a wooden shed, the local diner is a rundown dump, and even the coffee tastes bad... Deer Meadow is like the anti-Twin Peaks :)
I totally agree with tp3 that IE's endless shots of Laura Dern walking down darkened corridors were boring as pants, contributing too much empty, musty space to an already overlong film. However, I want to defend the film from the accusations of its narrative looseness; it seems to me that the whole film is about the desire to escape from an enforced narrative. The best narrative fiction authors (Kafka, Borges, Auster... and many more...) recognise that narrative is a trap. Laura Dern anchor's the film with a great performance(s) of someone desperately looking for an escape, an opening. And of course she shares this quest with other characters, including the Phantom and the Lost Girl from the original Polish movie. The Phantom is an interesting example of Lynch's ever-present manipulative masculine monsters because he's like Frank or a Man behind Winkie's who's had enough of his status. (A Lynck proxy?) He doesn't want to control things/narratives/people any more. This is why the last few scenes of IE are so powerful, with first The Phantom getting his wish and all the sick little desires and interweaving stories spilling out of the opening in his head, then the Lost Girl getting out of her TV-saturated motel room (and back to her family?); then, finally, Nikki's reward in the final scene, the greatest scene in Lynch's recent work; a joyous female celebration of just being, and being together - to the tune of "Sinnerman". With all of Lynch's obsesssions, characters and icons - the monkey, the woodsman etc. bundled together like that it also feels like a momentous release for the director himself; a crazed, imaginative genius letting everything go. Surely this is his last "woman in trouble" film? Surely his next project has to go somewhere different? I'd like to see him do something set in the White House.
I always skip the last scene of IE. And FWWM, for the same reasons, but somehow the understated eschaton of FWWM is more bearable.
I always skip the last scene of IE. And FWWM, for the same reasons, but somehow the understated eschaton of FWWM is more bearable.
lol
"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this." -Dale Cooper