On DVD and Blu-ray - TWIN PEAKS (David Lynch, Mark Frost, USA, 2017)

I must be preaching to the converted when I confess that I finally got round to giving the 2017 edition of Twin Peaks a good go round. The last person to get to that one, I’m almost sure.

That was followed by a quick look at Wikipedia to try and work out some of the casting. I read there that Cahiers du Cinema voted it Best Film of 2017 and Sight and Sound voted it second best. Those things may or may not be true. There are plenty of times when someone will say something like “Cahiers said that Roger Vadim was the greatest of all nouvelle vague directors” and the source is some obscure piece by someone who indeed said that once somewhere, probably referring to a great man’s sad decline….or somesuch. And I cant be bothered checking.

But I do remember much enthusiasm by all especially in the Facebook chatter last year. 

David Lynch as FBI Director Gordon Cole,
Twin Peaks 

But as I watched, hence the Wikipedia consultation, it occurred to me that my memory was playing tricks, I had simply forgotten things or Lynch and co-writer Mark Frost were playing tricks. I now have to pronounce that before you embark on the 2017 Twin Peaks (subtitled on the box but nowhere else, “A Limited Event Series”, whatever that may mean or intend to mean) the smartest thing to do would be watch the whole 29 eps, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me again before you embark on the 2017 iteration. It's worth the trouble.

Naomi Watts as Janey-E Jones, Kyle
McLachlan as Dougie Jones
Twin Peaks

Then, with a reasonable memory, you would know just who’s who, who’s gone (Sheriff Harry Truman, Michael Ontkean, being the main one) who’s appeared (Diane, Laura Dern in wigs, being the main one) who’s new (FBI Agent Tammy Preston, Bushnell Mullins, Janey-E Jones and the Mitchum Brothers, played by Chrysta Bell, Don Murray(!), Naomi Watts, James Belushi and Robert Knepper respectively). Don Murray, I hear you mutter. My God. All the way back to Bus Stop  and Advise and Consent. 

The new Twin Peaks is a wild ride, full of bursts of scenes that take time to make sense if they make sense at all. It reaches some sort of peak in Episode 8, the one done entirely in black and white, which starts with a nuclear explosion in 1945 and meanders along up to 1956. My friend David Hare suggested one unravelling thought about the whole ep when he remarked “It all wiped me out but I think Chapter 8 which is the black and white Atom bomb test ep in which it opens the portal to the other world with the guy who channels life was probably the most out there.” Well that’s some sort of clue. 

Laura Dern as Diane, Twin Peaks

Lynch may well be the truest inheritor of Cocteau’s dizzying take on the world – a poet, a storyteller, an inventor of mad schemes, a creator of characters and narratives that don’t fit together in any rational way but keep you gripped throughout.

The Twin Peaks Box Set however is worth the purchase and notwithstanding the increasing emerging disdain for the ‘old technology’ of DVD, it still offers pleasures that only DVD can provide, at least in the current market. Disc 8 is made up entirely of special features. All up there are eight separate films, all made by the same team of young Germans and including all new music. These are called by Lynch himself, in an on set moment, as  ‘Behind the Scenes’ and they give a more vivid and acute picture of the actual process of modern film-making than I have ever seen. 

Lynch’s attention to detail is remarkable. The crew are apparently totally efficient. The DOP gets exactly the effects that Lynch himself calls for. Some actors have no idea what he’s up to. Others, Robert Forster, the new Sheriff Frank Truman in particular, are right on top of things both with the mechanics of the scene and the meaning Lynch is trying to impart. You also get one superb glimpse of Kyle McLachlan’s technical skills as he works up a scene. Worth half the price of admission alone.

I’m saying it late, and in the wrong year, but it’s the best thing I’ve seen on screen this year, in fact for many years.