Saturday, July 4, 2015

Film Review: Fire Walk With Me


Release Year: 1992
Genre: Horror, mystery, thriller
Writers: Davin Lynch, Richard Engels, Mark Frost


I reserved Fire Walk With Me after a three week Twin Peaks marathon with my mom. I was particularly interested in watching this film because, for the first time in the Twin Peaks franchise, Laura Palmer would be alive and ready to tell the story of her short-lived life. Or at least I thought she would. While Laura was, in fact, alive, I found myself extremely disappointed. Yes the film remained true to its tv start, the creepy just off key jazz music was there, the horrible acting was there, even the over the top teenage angst was there. However, what wasn’t there was Laura’s voice. She wasn’t telling her story, she wasn’t claiming her narrative. She was placed in the backseat, yet again.


Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the melodrama in the film. The unmistakable “soap-opera-esque” vibe running in and out of the dialouge. I think this is one of the reasons for the series’ cult following. While it covers serious topics such as rape, incest, and murder, the film, and franchise in general, never takes itself too seriously. In the moments when Laura deals with these serious issues, Sheryl Lee delivers thoroughly overacted performance that could be ripped directly from your mother’s favorite soap opera star. The result is this eerie mix of the macabre and the absurd that I’m a little unsure how to handle.


My main problem with this film is its point-of-view. Throughout the Twin Peaks television series, the audience gets to know Laura Palmer through the residents of Twin Peaks. Laura was brave, strong-willed, and kind in some moments, and dismissive, cruel and self-destructive in others. The mystery of Laura Palmer is a large part of the appeal of the series. After all, ‘who killed Laura Palmer’ is the tagline of the show. While the audience learned of the killer in the series, the mystery of Laura still evades us. Fire Walk With Me presented Lynch with the perfect opportunity to provide an answer to Laura through her personal narrative, to give her a voice in her own story. Instead, the film is filled with gratuitous scenes that focus solely on Laura’s sexual exploits. By no means are these moments untouchable, Laura Palmer’s Secret Diary, written by Jennifer Lynch, revolves around Laura’s sexual experiences. However, Fire Walk With Me feels very voyeuristic and at moments, violating.


After reading Laura Palmer’s Secret Diary, I can’t help but feel enraged. Here’s a girl whose whole life has been a string of violating sexual experiences, a victim of rape and sexual assault at twelve who decides to become all the things that older men and women want her to be. Roles that range from the mother, the virgin, the high school slut, the little girl, the list goes on. Her life is a story of survival, of ultimate adaptation, of extreme strength and courage, yet the film chooses to ignore that narrative for a “sexier” version of Laura Palmer. Laura Palmer as drug addict, Laura Palmer as prostitute, Laura Palmer as unrepentant accomplice to murder. She’s still forced to put on a show for us. She cannot be who she truly was, a teenaged girl who, due to the circumstances of her life, was forced to become her worst nightmare in order to survive. A girl who sought out drugs as a way to numb herself to the horrors of her life. A girl who was truly living in a horror story of proportions few would understand.


Why Lynch chose this image of Laura is a question I can’t seem to answer. Why would he do such a disservice to the woman who garnered him so many followers? Why? Part of me reaches for the obvious and readily available answer, sexism. It’s littered everywhere. Who is at the receiving end of almost all the violence in this franchise? Women. Theresa. Ronnette. Maddy. Annie. Audrey. Shelly. The list continues. When you think about it, Nadine and Josie are the only female characters that inflict any damage on men and both were framed to be heartless (Nadine was shown mistreating Ed, and Josie was painted to be a black widow instead of focusing on her past as a victim of sexual abuse and prostitution.)


Maybe I’m reaching? Maybe Lynch meant to explain more about Laura as the series progressed but never got the chance to? Who knows? What I can suggest is to read Laura Palmer’s Secret Diary. The diary shows a more complete version of Laura, a version curated by Laura herself. (And surprise, surprise it happens to be written by Jennifer Lynch, a woman). After reading this, I felt such a strong connection to her character. In Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me, Laura hardly feels real, she feels constructed, immaterial, incomplete. But in her diary, Laura comes alive. I can feel her presence in the words. If you want to feel some closure about Laura, read her diary, read her words and stay away from Fire Walk With Me.

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