One of the most memorable moments of the original Twin Peaks comes at the end of “Lonely Souls,” the 7th episode of the 2nd season, the murder of Madeline “Maddy” Ferguson by BOB who had just been revealed to be Leland Palmer. BOB beating Maddy to death, often shown in slow motion with her and his screams distorted to sound unnatural and unearthly, is the most brutal and horrific scene ever shown in the original Twin Peaks, possibly in all of David Lynch’s work. However, it is the crosscuts with the Roadhouse that makes the scene so powerful and isn’t given the attention it deserves. The Giant appears to Special Agent Dale Cooper in a vision saying “It is happening again.” After the murder, a figure simply known as “Waiter” comes up to Cooper and says “I am so sorry.” We also see a look of despair on Bobby Briggs face, and Donna Hayward bursts into tears and must be comforted by her boyfriend James Hurley, all while Julee Cruise mournfully sings “The World Spins” on the stage. Somehow all these people are feeling the exact same pain and lose that the audience is even though they haven’t seen what we just have. Somehow, they just know, they just know that something is wrong and the world is darker than it was a second ago.
David Lynch has always been a controversial figure. Famously, after a test screening of Blue Velvet, someone wrote on a response card, “David Lynch should be shot.” Roger Ebert hated most of Lynch’s early work, especially Blue Velvet, writing this about Isabella Rossellini’s character in his review, “She is degraded, slapped around, humiliated and undressed in front of the camera. And when you ask an actress to endure those experiences, you should keep your side of the bargain by putting her in an important film.” Lynch is obsessed with the darker side of humanity, of the violence inside of us, the animalist desire to kill.
This isn’t what makes the
collective work of David Lynch so powerful though. It’s the moments like the
response to Maddy’s murder. It’s the tears that people shed as they learn about
the murder of Laura Palmer in the pilot of Twin Peaks and beyond. It’s in the
affection Betty and Rita share in Mulholland Drive. It’s Sailor singing Love Me
Tender to Lula in Wild at Heart. It’s in the decency Dr. Frederick Treves sees
in John Merrick where everyone else just sees an animal in The Elephant Man. Everyone
remembers and talks about the brutality that he depicts, but forget he balances
those out with acts of love. He loves his characters and hates to put them
through what he does, but he knows there is no avoiding the darkness of the
world.
One of the best
depictions of Lynch’s humanity is in one of his least talked about movies, The
Straight Story. A Disney movie, co-written by Mary Sweeney, a longtime
collaborator and now ex-wife of Lynch, it tells story of Alvin Straight, a
73-year-old man from a small rural town in Iowa who learns his brother, whom he
hasn’t spoken in 10 years because of a falling out, has had a stroke. Alvin
needs two canes to walk and has had his driver license taken away because he
can’t see very well, but he decides to take the 300-mile journey to see his
brother by hooking up a trailer to his lawn mower and taking it on the road. It
seems like it should just be your average cheesy Disney family movie, but Lynch
and Sweeney turn it into so much more. Strange things happen throughout, but
nothing unnatural or violent, just an old man who knows he’s near death who’s
haunted by much of his past and wants to at least fix this one relationship.
It’s never explained what happened between the brothers, and it doesn’t really
matter, humans are stubborn and squabble over the dumbest things. The film
doesn’t even show us much of their reunion, all that matters is that they are
now old enough to know that whatever happened to them wasn’t all that important
in the first place, what really matters is family.
Lynch is an imperfect
director who has some considerable blind spots, not surprising for a 71-year-old
man, but also important to point out. One very noticeable aspect of his work is
the whiteness of the cast, his work rarely features actors of color and almost
never in prominent roles. Wild at Heart features an interracial couple and
makes it seem almost unnatural, in Twin Peaks: The Return there is an extended
scene where a black prostitute is shown fully nude, and black people are often
cast as criminals in his films. He also casts little people in his work a lot
including in Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, The Elephant Man and his unproduced
film Ronnie Rocket, but they are almost always depicted as unnatural or
supernatural.
The issue that gets most
discussed in his work is his depiction of violence against women. One of the
most common themes in Lynch’s films is the violence that lies in the hearts of
men and too often he shows it by having a man attack or sexually assault a
woman. Normally he balances this out by having the women who are attacked be
fully formed characters and show the affect it has on them, but it still can
feel exploitative at times, like in Twin Peaks: The Return when he shows a
woman in her underwear brutally murdered just so we can understand the guy
she’s with is evil. Its partially why I feel Blue Velvet isn’t quite one of his
best films, because Blue Velvet concerned about men who do women harm, how the
hero Jeffrey Beaumont isn’t all that different from the monstrous Frank Booth,
and isn’t as interested in the woman herself.
This is what makes
Lynch’s greatest creation so special, the character of Laura Palmer. When Twin
Peaks begins, Laura Palmer is just a sexist cliché, another dead, beautiful
woman who we know nothing about. However, as the show goes on we do learn about
her, we see the affect her murder has on the town, how almost everyone on the
show inexplicably bursts into tears whenever her name comes up, and throughout
we slowly learn more and more about her. Lynch was fascinated by her, which is
why after the show was cancelled and he had a chance to make a Twin Peaks
movie, instead of continuing the story like everyone wanted, he made a prequel
about Laura Palmer. When Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me was shown at Cannes it
was followed by boos, audiences hated it and it flopped at the box office. In retrospect,
it’s actually one of Lynch’s best movies. Audiences had fallen in love with
Laura Palmer, but they never wanted to admit to the cruelty that she faced,
they just saw a beautiful all-American girl who’s live was sadly taken to soon.
In Fire Walk with Me, Lynch showed us everything that happened to her, how her
father raped and abused her, how the demonic presence BOB tried to drive her
insane so that he could feed off her pain and eventually possess her, how she
coped with drugs and sex with a variety of men, and possibly women, fluctuating
between being sexually dominant and being sexually dominated.
More so with Laura Palmer
than any other character does Lynch show us just how cruel men can be, but it’s
not this that makes Laura Palmer so special. What makes her special is her
strength and inherent goodness, no matter how much pain she suffers she never
gives in and the goodness in her is never corrupted. This is why everyone in
town cries whenever she comes up and continue to cry even 25 years later in
Twin Peak: The Return, because they realize someone truly special had been
taken away and it wasn’t fair. That’s why the movie ends not with her death,
but with her spirit being lifted up and comforted by Agent Cooper and an angel.
This is the image that should define Lynch’s work. Lynch’s work may get dark
and violent but that’s not what he’s about, he loves these characters just as
we do. He’s a humanist who realizes that the world is a cruel place filled with
pain, but he never gives up hope that things will get better; if not in this
life then the next.
By: Ben Ritter
