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The Dot As Identity or The Films of Jane Arden and Jack Bond

Watching, thinking and studying from all perspectives.
Separation
Jane Arden
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography| Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

The collaborative work between artists and lovers, Jack Bond and Jane Arden, had become the thing of legend. While all three of their feature length films had been acclaimed and considered to represent two of the most important voices in British Cinema, this was largely thanks to the film reviews that lingered on long after they had screened. Jack Bond was coasting on the British New Wave film scene of the 1960’s seemingly destined for great success when he met Jane Arden. She proved to be the perfect match for the talented filmmaker both personally and professionally. Jane Arden was an actor and frequent BBC talking head when she met Jack Bond. Eccentric, intellectual, beautiful, talented, innovative and always controversial — Jane Arden flourished to great heights after she met Bond. Neither of these artists were content to go with the flow of their time. Arden proved to be an outspoken Feminist, provocateur and filmmaker. Jack Bond’s views often matched hers and while every bit as experimental as Arden, he seems to have possessed a key eye for editing that lent itself to giving shape to Arden’s visionary work.

Pain, Rage and Sanity are pushed to extreme limits.
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Jane Arden committed suicide in 1982. Devastated by her death, Jack Bond quickly set out to secure and store all copies of their 3 feature length films and impressive short feature within the vaults of the British Film Institute. He did so with the legal restriction that none could be screened or released. It is easy to imagine most film artists rushing to promote and celebrate their work, but for Jack Bond these films were far too intimate, personal and revelatory. It was not until some 20+ years had passed that one of Jane Arden’s children contacted Jack Bond. It was her youngest son who convinced him to reconsider his infamous decision to lock away the films. It would not be until 2009 that these three films would be screened and another one to two years before BFI could distribute the newly restored prints to DVD/Blu-ray. Even still, this work remains largely lost to American audiences — and a good many Europeans as well. It was only in the last several months that I began to slip into the worlds that Arden-Bond co-created.

A totally unique cinematic language form this disorienting and disturbing psychological thriller…
Anti-Clock
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

These films are all available via the British Film Institute on region-free Blu-ray. They can be found on Amazon or BFI‘s own website. If you truly love innovative, challenging and remarkable Film Art — viewing these three films is essential. Each film stands alone, but all three share a common thread of searching for equality, understanding and full formation of identity. The purpose of this blog post is to promote this work so that it can reach the audience who has not yet discovered it.

Transcendental Meditation and Video Experimentation lend toward an attempt to understand self and environment.
VIBRATION
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1975

I will do my best to not provide spoilers. I will also do my best to restrain my enthusiasm so that this is shorter. I will rely upon more than a couple of images from the work. It is key to note that imagery is of utmost importance to the work of Arden-Bond. But it is also crucial to note that their work was not style over content. The content of these films is rich and urges repeated viewings. These films were made by rebellious thinkers and none fit neatly into categorization.

Separation

London’s Swinging ’60’s is explored with equal amounts of intellectualism, style and unique innovation.
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography | Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

While Jack Bond is credited as this film’s director, it is clear that Jane Arden was closely involved with almost every aspect of the film. Considered to be one of England’s first truly avant-garde films, Separation is actually a great deal more. Once the viewer adjusts to the film’s often dated but striking innovative method of storytelling, this experimental movie is a highly effective study of a woman falling apart — or away from life. A middle-aged woman’s emotional and mental crisis results not so much from a failed marriage or poor choices — but from the societal and cultural judgements made against women as they age. Ideas of “reality” and “fantasy” are constantly blurred. Most certainly surreal but never dislodged from logic or realism.

The future, the present and the past all whisper our leading lady further into conflict…
Iain Quarrier, Jane Arden and David de Keyser
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography| Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

This is as close as Arden-Bond got to “light cinema.” It could be argued that the majority of this film takes place in the female protagonist’s inner self. As viewers we can only ever be certain of her past. Her present and future slip between what feels like cerebral fantasy to an alienated realism. Has she left her husband or has she left what appears to her idea of an out-dated Patriarchal Institution? Has she abandoned her child or has she lost the child? Is this good-looking, young and eagerly hip dude her new lover or imagined? And what of this other women who populate the film’s non-linear storyline?

Forever late or too early…
Jane Arden
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography| Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

For a film shot on the streets of the ever-styling streets of late 1960’s London, Separation does not look like most of the British films that came out of this period. The editing is never self-conscious or overtly eager to confuse the eye. Procul Harum provide a good deal of the film’s music and Mark Boyle’s celebrated Pop Art lava lamp-like projections jolt the film with sporadic uses of vivid color. Unlike most movies of this era and place, these are not used to trip us out — but almost more to stumble us further into the protagonist’s crisis. Much of the film is filmed in lush black and white.

Groving by force or choice?
Jane Arden
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography| Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

At turns naturalistic and stiffly artificial, Separation brims over with ideas and theories. Jane Arden’s Feminist Theory has started to take form but is still growing. This is largely a film of questions, doubts and fear. Our character is falling apart, but it is unclear if this is headed toward Nihilism or hope. There is a strong possibility that Jane Arden’s character is not so much falling apart but might have already broken into pieces. She might actually be in the process of reformation from the ruins of oppression and conformity. This magical film is sharply focused toward the struggle of Feminist Equality. It is sometimes sad, but often quite funny. Separation offers more insight than can be caught in one viewing. The film’s power grows with repeated viewings. It is a cinematic work of surprises and insights.

Looking deeper into the self than the viewer might anticipate.
Jane Arden
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography| Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

In many ways, Separation can be viewed as Jane Arden’s first step into understanding the self from both the intimate and cultural perspectives. She has latched on to the ideas and the importance of Feminism, but is still aching to understand how to grab it without breaking into a million tiny pieces. Jane Arden wrote the film and stars. Jack Bond’s hand as a filmmaker pulls all of it together into a cohesive cinematic work. Truly brilliant and way ahead of its time.

The battle of the sexes takes a darkly comical turn…
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography | Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

An artistic and Nihilistic study in Feminist Theory takes a truly cinematic dive into a woman’s subconscious. This film is fascinating, intellectual and surprisingly current. Tragically it was given a rather limited release after it was made. It says a great deal that the reputation of this film survived as the movie itself sat on shelves in the dark corner of The British Film Institute‘s vault. If you like films that make you think and take you to unexpected places, this is not a film to be missed.

A man’s death offers a woman a way out. She put a pretty ribbon on “it”
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography | Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

Whether Jane Arden’s fictionalized Self is falling together or apart is debatable, but one thing is most certainly clear: she is separating herself from the constraints of her society and culture. She is looking outward for equality and refusal of oppression. She is looking inward for understanding her self and why her identity is so fragmented and torn. Another important element which has already taken form in Arden and Bonds’ philosophy is the teachings and theories of Jacques Lucan. Most correctly called Lucan Theory is most often referred to as The Anti-Therapy Ideology. This rejection of typical Freudian and psychoanalytical thought is certainly hinted at within the frames of Separation. Ideas of symbology, the real, the imaginary and the power of the mirror are present thought the film, but Arden-Bond would soon be pulling their audience full-on into these concepts with their next film.

Symbology, projection, imaginary and real mix to form not only a film, but an entire philosophical approach to the art of filmmaking.
Iain Quarrier, Jane Arden and home movies…
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography| Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

As I’ve already mentioned, Separation was a critical hit at the time of release. Arden-Bond made a film that captured the Counter-Culture and Swinging London of the day but made something far more than a time capsule piece or celebratory work. It could have pushed both forward into the world of cinema, yet neither chose to go in that direction. Instead both continued their mutual and individual personal journeys. It would be over four years before they re-entered the filmmaking world. Arden focused on theatre. Her focus was the thing of legend. Never afraid or shy of controversy or public self-examination that she felt was important for other women as well as men, she wrote, directed and acted in several notorious experimental theatrical productions.

The most important of these were Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven and, most importantly, Holocaust: A New Communion for Freaks, Prophets and Witches. While these plays were carefully scripted, Arden loved collaboration. She encouraged her actors to follow their instincts. Improvisation and audience participation happened. These experimental pieces were controversial and pushed well past the British Theatre boundaries. Yet they were successful. Constantly on the verge of being banned and/or jeered, these performances are as discussed as the work of Joan Littlewood. Yet whereas Littlewood was concerned with finding ways for lost teens of East London to channel their anger, boredom and frustration into art, Arden was deeply and profoundly concerned with pushing forward Feminist Theory.

What is identity?
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Tied up within Lacan Theory as well as her own personal demons she felt and saw reflected back to her from the Self-Mirror, this Feminist work was more focused on shaking off the pain, rage and cruelty of centuries patriarchal oppression. Sexuality was discussed full-on and often turned from sex objectivity to sexual confrontation. Pain and Rage were explored from both the practical and a growing ideology of Arden’s in which she connected the oppression of women directly to colonialism. These two plays would lay the groundwork for a number of important artists and careers. Of the artists, Sheila Allen was become the most prominent. Natasha Morgan would go on to play a crucial role in the British Women’s Liberation Movement and is now a respected and sought-after psychotherapist. Both of these women gave oral histories for BFI at the time that Arden-Bonds’ next film was restored and re-issued. And what a film it is…

The Other Side of the Underneath

Born out of both of her successful experimental theatre pieces, this film was intended to a combination of both plays. Jane Arden wrote the screenplay and insisted that Jack Bond give her full reign as the film’s director. He would go on to participate as cinematographer and “actor.” He would hire David Mingay as the film’s editor. Both Arden and Bond worked closely with Mingay as the film was pulled together. Bond would also take on the responsibility of getting the funding and all the required “items” for filming. These “items” included a brown bear, participation of local Wales coal miners, community members, a band of roaming gypsies, participation of actual mental hospital patients, several mentally/physically challenged individual from government institutions and most famously — Bond would secure a steady supply of LSD. The production of this film is notorious.

Centuries of Cruelty projected on to the face of a bride…
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Most shocking is the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any distortion or untruth in its infamy. The bear would break free and threaten the safety of the tripping cast, the locals would break into fist fights, the mental patient and the mentally retarded would run away. And the actors would trip out. Led by a drunken but self-assured Jane Arden, these trips often took dark turns. She seems to have been able to lead them all through it. The ethics of this film production are most certainly questionable. But this was also what Arden-Bond and friends were after: A deadly pursuit of understanding the pain and rage of the oppressed and repressed.

“Mine! Mine! Mine!”
“She has a pretty face!!!”
Sheila Allen taunts with her human puppet…
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Armed with an endless supply of wine and cigarettes, Jane Arden secured a number of volunteers to appear with her in front of the cameras. Both Sheila Allen and Natasha Morgan were present. The idea was that the entire cast and their director would live “on set” in a decaying old farm house for the duration of the filming. They also agreed to wear their costumes, Victorian Era type nighties, for the duration. Oh, and they also agreed to drop Acid repeatedly throughout all filming. Sheila Allen refused to live on set or to trip out on LSD. Accommodations were made for her to stay at an inn a few miles away. Natasha Morgan was initially hesitant to participate. She agreed to come along as the casts’ cook. However, she changed her mind and joined in. These two actors would figure prominently in the film. Penny Slinger was another actor and activist of import who participated. The lead role was given to an unknown woman who was new to the whole scene, Susanka Fraey. She would end up playing the leading character of the piece.

Susanna Fraey is the Protagonist…
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Sally Minford, a Cellist, and her daughter would also participate. Obviously the child did not receive drugs. And as far as I can tell, Ms. Minford declined to take part in the LSD tripping. However, her role was limited to that of Cellist. She would compose and perform the film’s musical score throughout. Clearly skilled, the musical goal here is not beauty or melody but danger and threat.

I do not view it as a bad thing that I have had to watch Jane Arden’s The Other Side of the Underneath three times before I could form a solid opinion. Quite the contrary, I love the fact that this film’s complexities run so deep that it requires a great deal of thought. There is nothing “easy” about this bold work of film art. This profoundly disturbing film goes places to which I’ve never seen filmed before. Reckless, Dangerous and Bad To Know, this movie rattles more than just cages. This film amps its way from frenzy to hysteria and on to a sort of free-form descent into hippie dystopian vagrancy. The film pulls no punches as it is far too busy bluntly plummeting the subject matter and the cast into a submission of unfettered pain and self-examination. This is a particularly collaborative work and everything in the film depends upon the female cast members who agreed to participate.

The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Decidedly not plot-driven, this film does present us with a protagonist. A young woman “played” by Susanka Fraey is “fished” from a lake where she has attempted suicide. She quickly finds herself in a sort of mental asylum where all the women are dressed in Victorian style nightgowns and roam about freely. Both patients and gate keepers, it almost appears as if this insane asylum is self-contained. Only one person seems to be “in charge” within this madhouse and that is a firm psychiatrist played by Jane Arden herself.

While the film is largely concerned with the Anti-Psychiatry Movement evolved from Jacques Lacan, it is actually far more concerned with the seemingly unbearable rage repressed within the women that takes on an epic level. The strong feeling is that this rage and pain has been individually and universal-shared history of oppression and patriarchal cruelty. Our unnamed protagonist is forever roaming the corridors, hidden spaces and grounds of a madhouse that is truly “mad” and in mortal danger from the pain it all seems to inflict. She along with her fellow inmates are searching through the wreckage of self and shared identity / identities. There is a constant and unrelenting energy conveyed which is full of menace and danger. Nothing feels “acted” and everything we see takes on an importance that is hard to grasp and often even more challenging to watch.

LSD Manipulated to project the deepest pain…
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Sheila Allen serves is a sort of evil Court Jester who uses patients as a puppets and torments everyone with mind-numbing insanity. She also morphs into a Burlesque Stripper From Hell who uses her sexuality and body as a threat instead of an object. Her voice and performance haunt the entire film. This was a long way from The BBC or Harry Potter. Susanna Fraey is almost ever present and carries a great deal of presence on the screen. Possessed with a haunting face and effortless beauty, she is at once victim and victimizer. Penny Slinger gives a particularly potent and oddly focused performance. It is opposite Slinger that we see our protagonist’s as a source of danger.

A Mirror Identity Game to the Death…
Penny Slinger & Susanka Fraey
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Utilizing the Lucan Mirror Theory, the two young women sit opposite each other with large splinters of mirror all around them. What begins as a sort of Identity Game to the death, it is clear that Slinger is intending to murder Fraey, but with a sneak of a tender kiss she is able to throw Slinger off course. Intended killing swept away by tenderness, Fraey had trapped her in her own glass web. Just as the kiss ends, her knife slips into Slinger.

The film is built around a long sequence that is a sort of support group / open therapy. Tripping out on acid and under the guidance of the project built from the stage productions — these women have been led to a place while in mind-expansion mode. The melt-downs are intense, horrific and almost unbearable. It is here that Natasha Morgan’s participation would become most valuable. Her emotional break is at once horrific, painful and almost unbearable. At the same time, it is here that the film presents itself at its most human. Mixing with all of the production challenges, these pseudo group therapy sessions add to the movie’s intention of pure hysteria.

A victim of her own game…
Penny Slinger
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

As these women demonstrate their emotional pain and personal rages/horrors — our protagonist is led into a danger game of mirrors, sexuality, psychic death and crucifixion. Sexuality is explored in various ways. At times the female body is shown as an object for men to rape or harm. Other times it is shown as pleasure born from pain and fear. And then it is also shown as something beautiful, pleasing and erotic. According to the record of production, Arden decided late in the filming to have her lover/collaborator make love to actress, Penny Slinger. Pushing them to extremities, this scene is tender, soft and erotic. Jack Bond’s “character” clearly understands female anatomy and brings pleasure — not threat, rape or pain.

Unscripted, Arden has her lover make love to one of the inmates.
Jack Bond & Penny Slinger
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

As the film amps its way to conclusion, the protagonist’s journey feels more ours than hers. We follow her through a house and landscape of pain, horror and sometimes promise to abject confusion. In the end the question of identity and self-acceptance is tossed onto a dirty cold slab of a floor. Is there to be redemption or healing? More likely it is a struggle that has only just been recognized and has a very long way to go.

As erotic desire is expressed the audience holds its breath only to discover that the male lover understands the woman’s body.
Jack Bond & Penny Slinger
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Intentionally unpleasant and contradictory, Jane Arden created a film that demands your attention. This is less a movie and more of a cinematic experience. Not for the faint of heart, this is a grim and repulsive study of female identity that refuses to let you go. Strange, darkly comical, surreal, horrifying, raw and truly unforgettable — Jane Arden’s film floats somewhere between Jean-luc Goddard and Ken Russell, but with an entirely different goal in mind. The horrors she and Jack Bond captured are all the more devastating because we realize that beneath the surface — what we see is real.

Going mad…
Sheila Allen
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

The next couple of years found Jane Arden and Jack Bond exploring further into the self with use of Transcendental Meditation, Chanting and the aid of Gurus and other mystics. One gets the sense that Jack Bond followed his love on her quest to grapple with her own depression. The result of these mystical exorcises would be put to use in their short film, VIBRATION. To 21st Century eyes, the videography feels grounded and dated. However when one realizes this film was made in 1975, the artistry must be admired.

Jane Arden had developed her own theory regarding the self and coping against repression and anxiety. I will not go into detail, but she called this idea RAT. Essentially the idea was to reject all rational thought. Arden’s life’s journey begin to slip away from Feminism and toward The New Age ideology of Humanism. The problem was that both she and Bond could see how this ideology was not only threatened by a larger control — plans seemed to already be falling into place to control not only individual actions, but our thoughts as well. What might have seemed paranoia rising above the slams of inflation and PUNK, turned out to be somewhat prophetic.

“This is my Anxiety Survival Broadcast ensuring a past future programing. My brain is recreating a negative repeat pattern.”
Sebastian Saville
Anti-Clock
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

Keep in mind that the final film made by Arden-Bond was before anyone in England knew about CCTV which would soon be filming almost every human movement in the country.

Anti-Clock

Unlike Separation and The Other Side of the Underneath, Anti-Clock less concerned with Feminist Theory than that of retaining humanity in the face of cultural and societal oppression as the standpoint for understanding identity. The exploration of Self had culminated toward a Humanist ideology. The central character of this highly experimental “thriller” is a suicidal man played by Arden’s son, Sebastian Saville.

“Life force cannot be controlled by your little brain machine.”
Anti-Clock
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

Filmed in London during Great Britain’s dark economic dystopia and the rise of Punk Rock, this film is interestingly disengaged from that history. Even more interesting, is the contradiction that it would be hard to imagine a more “Punk” film. Decidedly more punk than anything Alex Cox or Derek Jarman made at the time, Arden and Bond had not let go of their anger and rebellion against societal and cultural repression, but this film crafted a whole new sort of cinematic language. A linguistically intelligent use of carefully filmed and found video/film material forms something altogether new and unique.

As our suicidal protagonist works toward trying to survive, he is “assisted” by an archetypal psychiatrist (also played by Saville) and a group of scientists, mathematicians and others who rely upon constant video surveillance to monitor his every movement. Most fantastically, they are using these transmissions as connection into his cerebral logic. It is fairly clear that these persons are connected to the government. Less assisting and more studying in an attempt to control their subject, Joseph Sapha. Joseph quickly becomes suspect of these who claim to want to help him. It is particularly chilling that this film was made just a few years prior to the creation of CCTV.

“open your eyes.”
“they are open.”
“then why can’t you see?”
Sebastian Saville
Anti-Clock
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

The style/styles of the film may not seem as cutting edge as they must have some 30+ years ago, but this film retains a subversive, disturbing and unsettling impact. It is also still very sharp. It is a film experience to be handled with a careful eye and ear. One missed action of sound and the viewer can become lost in Joseph Sapha’s delima. Watching Anti-Clock is not an easy film. But unlike I anticipated, it is NOT a pretentious work of art. It is a clever manipulation of the medium to convey a story that is not only horrifying but alarming relevant to the 21st Century.

“Thoughts hang around for a very long time. To be precise: forever.”
Sebastian Saville
Anti-Clock
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

A sort of Proto-Punk exploration into humanity and a government that dares to study, manipulate and control those who dwell within its borders. Joseph is a young sort of “Every Man” who, like many of us, has had a troubling childhood and life. As this experimental and innovative film pulls us into the video and sound-looped world, the experience is an intellectual, surreal and disorienting jolt to the senses. Slowly the viewer becomes a part of the film’s strange logic. As Joseph grapples with his sexuality, guilt, loneliness and vexing non-purpose in life — the past, present and future are filmed and played discordantly against the idea of order. In a profoundly confused and desperate state of identity crisis, the “help” being offered is not aiming to provide what he anticipates.

But “they” and “he” are all led to a truth that is chilling and unforgettable.

“The patterns inside me were beginning to disconnect. By patterns, I mean those cycles or spirals of thought or behavior which i have been taught to call ‘myself.’ This ‘I’ is simply space. And where the strands of energy costs is a dot. And this dot is the delusion called ‘my identity.'”
Sebastian Saville aims the gun.
Anti-Clock
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

NOTE: The BFI disc contains a newly re-edited version of this film by Jack Bond. Bond re-crafted the film in 2005 in an attempt to make the film more clear to modern viewers. Skip this version. Bond does not improve the film or create a more coherent film experience. If anything he saps a great deal of he and Ardens’ exceptional creativity. To be honest, his 2005 re-edit reminds us how crucial Jane Arden was the vision.

This movie may not be everyone’s idea of a thriller, but it is a powerful work of art. Anti-Clock also serves as a fitting end to the Arden-Bond collaboration. These three films form a logic circle of journey to Self. It is a provocative, controversial, difficult, dark and brilliant cinematic journey. It took Jack Bond close to two years to edit the film together. Filmed with various forms of media — largely 1970’s video cameras of different sorts. Very often he applied chemical “treatments” to video footage to gain new and very unique images. These are interlaced with old assembled footage of dictators, monarchs, war, propaganda and a constantly unrelenting manner of sound editing.

“There is a continuum which links all living things together so that the smallest cell does not pulsate without its effect being felt in the furtherest reaches of the solar system. So, everything being one is not some romantic ideal, but an indisputable scientific reality. When this information seeps into our consciousness, it must change the moral structure of society and destroy the value system of the rational world.”
Anti-Clock
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

The look of this film remains oddly potent and totally unique in the way it has been assembled. This odd and disturbing film was championed in 1979 as a brilliant psychological thriller. However, it only played in a few cities in the US and a very brief run in London. It also served as a connector to French Film Master, Claude Chabrol, with whom Arden was to work. By the time the film opened Jack Bond and Jane Arden had ended their relationship. It might have seemed that Jack Bond was lost while Jane Arden was on her way to a new artistic vision in France. This was not the case.

Jane Arden would take her own life in December of 1982 at the age of 55. Jack Bond would go on to work as a documentarian for the BBC. He remains an artist of note in Great Britain.

Anti-Clock Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979 Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

The film work they co-created remains vital, powerful and very much alive.

Matty Stanfield, 12.30.2015

Pushing Against Fear or Dealing With Identity Disordered

People always ask me why I like such dark and often surreal movies. For me, these strange cinematic explorations into the darkest corners of the human mind act as a sort cathartic entertainment. But perhaps on a deeper level they hold an interest for me that allows me to feel a bit lucky compared to the characters and images struggling through crisis of reality, circumstance and identity.

Roaming through an old house, a gangster faces dangers of memories and lingering ghosts…
Keyhole
Guy Maddin, 2011
Cinematography | Benjamin Kasulke

Struggle. This is what I have been doing on a daily basis for the last several years. It is not so much that I need to learn the techniques to calming my subconscious, I know them. The challenge is putting them into action so that these exorcises actually become tools I can use. It seems like a simple thing to master, but the subconscious is an alternate world filled with illogical concerns and masterful ways to impede the conscious state from doing what it needs to do. Finding the pathway into the subconscious takes a great deal of work all with an eye toward not making it think that the conscious is out to defeat it. While the process seems to lend itself to the idea of Zen Yoga Meditation, it is a great deal more complex.

Studying more than mental illness or simple concepts of identity, Paddy Chayefsky’s script was unfilmable, but Ken Russell speeded-up the dialogue. The sense of self, reality and identity are deconstructed to a whole new level.
Altered States
Ken Russell, 1980
Cinematography | Jordan Cronenweth

After three decades of a successful life, my subconscious coping skills began to fall apart. By the time I slammed into 42 years of age I was no longer successful. I was stumbling, falling and lost. Fast forward a couple of years and far too many doctors and tests later I found out with what I was dealing. I had known for some time that I was living with PTSD, but when two doctors and a therapist informed me I was actually living with a more extreme form of PTSD known as DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder.)

I was God-smacked. It would take me a full year before I could actually believe this diagnosis to be true. And it has taken a couple more to fully acknowledge and own it. In the last year I’ve become far better at turning technique into tool, but I am far from attaining Master – Level Use.

Sneaking a peak beyond the other side of a keyhole, “Ulysses Pick” sees far more than he can process.
Keyhole
Guy Maddin, 2011
Cinematography | Benjamin Kasulke

A life-long friend who I consider to be my sister is in The City for work. This is one of the dearest people in my world. There is no way I’m going to miss visiting and hanging with her. But challenges spring forward intent on preventing me from being out in public spaces. After the recent tragic terrorist attacks, my phobia of being in crowded spaces has morphed into full-blown clinical panic attacks. Suddenly driving downtown becomes as challenging for me as being told I must climb Mount Everest. But despite an unusual down pour and high winds, I was determined. I’m was also more than a little wary.

Groundbreaking and iconic, it is important to remember that this book and subsequent Sally Field TV Movie were “based” on a true story. Neither were “true.”

There are a lot of exaggerations around what DID is. Pop Culture has presented an odd view point. Certainly we’ve come a long way since the 1970’s Sybil idea. A recent entertainment examination of the disorder, The United States of Tara, attempted to be more realistic. But even here DID was presented in a painfully extreme and comedic way. Very few people who have DID exhibit such behaviors as “switching” into an alternate personality complete with different voices and wardrobes. And for those few who deal with it at such a level, none could manage to function as a safe parent or a remotely dependable spouse. Even still, it presented the character in some realistic ways with the support of those most close to her.

I’ve never kept my PTSD a secret. I’ve written a good deal about it. Once I understood DID, I did not keep that a secret. I do not write a great deal about it because it is an on-going challenge I’ve yet to fully meet. But when it does come up I can see the discomfort in peoples’ faces.

For the record: I do not have dueling identities. I do not have a secret wardrobe. I do not have a double life. I do not lie. I do not cheat. I am not a harm or threat for others or myself. In the past, when I did “switch” it was seldom if ever noticed by anyone. It quite simply is not that glamourous. In reality DID is tedious, defeating and a constant source of ever-growing self-defeating phobic tendencies that I’m constantly trying to beat.

No TV Show or book here. It is a condition with which one has to deal through therapy and anxiety-reducing exorcises. It is not particularly interesting. It is certainly not funny. There is nothing glamorous or theatrical about it.

Uh, oh. The Good Cop / Bad Cop: A toy w/ DID
The Lego Movie
Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, 2014

The truth is that most women dealing with DID will not realize that they even have a problem until into their late 20’s to mid 30’s. For men it is usually not until their late 30’s upward to their early 50’s before they fully notice that there is a problem. As strange as it sounds, the power of a mind that copes a person out of grim experiences so that she/he can survive is extremely skilled at getting that person through whatever challenges may or may not get in the way. The concept of an alternate personality is normally so nuanced that the individual and those near him/her will never notice. Nor will the individual. Time is lost, but the individual being protected in this manner by their subconscious will usually not notice. Or, as in my case, never really consciously note it.

While not altogether “untrue,” United States of Tara is a very exaggerated and unbelievable study of DID. It has value, but the main goal was to entertain.

DID is tricky and many think that there are more than a few folks walking around out there who do not know they have it — and most likely never will. I wish I were one of those folks. Surviving can come at a cost. A survivor is tough, but none of us are superheroes. Jessica Jones is an interesting and well crafted empowerment idea, but she is fantasy.

I’ve not fully switched or lost time in over 3 years now. My mastery of coping techniques as tools has improved dramatically. But I’m no Master of Myself. So this morning as the wind howled and the rain poured and I drove toward my destination filled with worry, I was on high alert. When an SUV failed to stop in time at an intersection, it skidded out onto California Street and briefly lost control. I was able to navigate my car out of its way without putting anyone else in danger.

Fictional Satire, Cultural Commentary, Mischief, Mayhem & Soap. Brad Pitt manifests as a fragment of identity bent on rebellion…
Fight Club
David Fincher, 1999
Cinematography | Jeff Cronenweth

Success! As the SUV got itself back on track and other drivers honked for no real reason, I pulled my car back into moving action. And then it happened. Familiar voices filled with fear and panic began whispering and speaking all at once. These voice seemed to be coming from the backseat.

I’m not crazy. Actually, I feel I am about as far from crazy as possible. Two years ago this sudden fury of voices from behind me would have freaked me out. But now, I know that there are no hidden passengers in my car. These, you see, are my alters.

I calmly pulled my car over to a safe parking spot. Put the gear into park. Took a deep breath and began utilizing calming techniques to use as tools. It probably took me about thirty minutes, but those voices began to move out of the backseat and into my mouth. I continued to tool away. In approximately ten minutes those voices moved out of my mouth and back into my brain. Then I spoke out loud in a normal tone to calm them (me) down. Within another ten minutes I was ok. I lit up a cig, turned the iPhone to some of my favorite music and just chilled. In all it took about 80 minutes before I was certain I was competent to drive. I turned around and came back home.

Completely spent, head hurting, legs aching — I knew I’d not be venturing back out today. Embarrassed I had to contact my friend/sister and let her know I would not be able to make it downtown. She knows of what I am dealing. She was supportive and kind. She is taking a cab here tonight and we’ll order take-out. But it feels as if I’ve let another person I love down. It sucks.

Identities merge, split, engage and threaten reality beyond recognition.
Laura Harring / Naomi Watts
Mulholland Drive
David Lynch, 2001
Cinematography | Peter Deming

Once I master these techniques into better tools, I will not be so exhausted. It might seem strange, but I was not freaked out. This is my current reality. I accept it, but I’m still deeply embarrassed by it. I am ashamed of not only the disorder but the fact that it has created so many phobias with which I have trouble fighting. Making plans to meet up with friends does not usually mean I’ll be able to carry them through. Just this past week there was an event at The Castro Theatre and I was unable to even contemplate attending. A few years back and you would had to fight me to prevent me from attending.

It just sucks.

I’ve not been able to go into a movie cinema since May of this year. A walk into a mall is a true challenge. Visits to the pharmacy, doctor or therapist are tough but I mange to do those. I can go to the grocery store and the local coffee shop without too much worry. However, I need to arrive to the store between 6:45 / 7:00 am to be sure I can do it without having to tool the process. I can do the coffee shop at about any time as long as I know I’m drinking the coffee outside while walking or back in my car. However, meeting up for dinner in a restaurant on a weekend night is almost an impossibility. My friends and family know that if we go out, I usually need to be outside to hang.

This is how my life “works” right now. It will be getting better. I push forward past the fear as best I can, but in the coming year I hope to be a better master of these coping techniques into full-on hardcore tools. Will I be able to return to full-time and rewarding employment? I have no idea.

Submerged, floating and ready to explore himself inside out to through to the core of earthly identity.
William Hurt
Altered States
Ken Russell, 1980
Cinematography | Jordan Cronenweth

At the moment the bigger picture must be pushed aside until the daily challenges are met. Currently, my main focus is on gaining better access to coping techniques. Upcoming plans involve visiting in-laws in Canada, a nephew on The Cape and a soon to be born nephew in NYC. All of which involve getting on crowded planes and being in crowded social situations. All of these upcoming visits are very important to me, but sometimes it is hard to view things as positive when I feel so threatened by the challenges involved.

“I like myself”
Edward Norton
Fight Club
David Fincher, 1999
Cinematography | Jeff Cronenweth

When I watch David Lynch’s Inland Empire or Mulholland Drive it is hard not to relate on some level to the plight of his heroines. An actress seemingly forever lost within her own identity and that of her roles. Which of her selves are real and which have been co-created for art? Which actress gets the part and which faces a tragic end? Or are they stuck in some cerebral horror logic that runs forever in circles? With each viewing of these two films I walk away with some new layer of meaning that confounds back to the meaning’s source. Mr. Lynch’s magical cinematic slight of hand.

Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Fight Club, was a fascinating read into confused ideas around masculinity, friendship, love and life as we moved toward the 21st Century. All of the ideas and concepts literally fighting each other till the book’s end. David Fincher’s film adaptation took that novel of societal commentary and crafted a darkly comical and satirical view of an identity crisis that grows to fantastical and horrifying size.

Our Narrator attempts to calm and talk some since into his alter-hero who upends not only his world but possibly that of his culture.
Brad Pitt / Edward Norton
Fight Club
David Fincher, 1999
Cinematography | Jeff Cronenweth

Like the novel, the film has bite. Unlike the novel, it pulsates into our mind as we watch a sort of white “Every Man” who can only accept himself by beating his damaged shell to a pulp of absolute submission and non-existence. Unrestrained, Absurdist by way of Surrealism gets a glam and bloody reboot in David Fincher’s 1999 Cult Film. This is a movie that amuses and amazes me every time I see it.

Another movie that has always fascinated me is Ken Russell’s final box office hit, Altered States. I suppose in reality it was more of a sleeper hit, but it was discussed and beloved by a Sci-Fi / Fantasy audiences that wanted a bit more for their money. Our Uncle Ken Russell had no idea what was in store for him when he accepted this American Film Studio “Job.” There is no question of Paddy Chayefsky’s talent, but his script’s goal was all but lost amidst some of the most laughable and intricate film dialogue ever put to page. Russell was intrigued by the philosophical ideas around identity and self-understanding via organic means, but how does one get to the meat of the film when bombarded by so much inexplicable intellectualized discussion? Ever innovative, Ken Russell instructed his profound Master Class Film Actors to speak their lines at top-notch speeds. William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban and Charles Haid speak at a speed which almost seems to reach that of light itself. It works.

Dr. Jessup likes what he sees. At first, anyway.
William Hurt
Altered States
Ken Russell, 1980
Cinematography | Jordan Cronenweth

The script’s dialogue could not be changed, but it was delivered with fast and masterful precession. But the winning card for Altered States is the fact that no one can deliver images to challenge notions of the human senses better than Ken Russell. Altered States soars when Russell is allowed to plunge the camera into Dr. Jessup‘s mind’s eye. At times stunningly beautiful, always symbolic to the concepts of The Human Condition, consistently horrific and magically tilting toward something beyond understanding — Ken Russell understood this film far better than the artist who wrote it.

One of many modern human symbols stretches, morphed and careening within the human psyche.
Altered States
Ken Russell, 1980
Cinematography | Jordan Cronenweth

Russell has no problem with the movie monster trope that Chayefsky ties to the Evolution Of Man, but he was far more interested in how that evolution has impacted not only our identities but our relationship to the present. Always at some sort of odds within itself, Altered States is entertaining and far more relevant than many care to admit. It is also is a very interesting bit of twisted cerebral fun. Ken Russell seems to be hiding just out of frame with his middle finger firmly up toward the overt intellectual spasms with which he had no choice but to work. Rebellious, but dead-on to the film’s core meaning.

Fears, symbology mix with neuro / intellectual impulses.
Altered States
Ken Russell, 1980
Cinematography | Jordan Cronenweth

David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is a Surreal Neo-Noir nightmare. A perverse fantasy of dreams tossed from both the dizzying heights of movie stardom and the Lower than Low of the Hollywood outcast. In Hollywood, nothing is more horrifying than failure. There are two girls here. One of them is a Movie Star and the other a Failed Wanna-Be. But which girl is which?

There is a mysterious blue box and a blue key that promises to unlock its secrets. However one is not likely to resolve the film’s essential mystery of who is who.

I’ve never believed that was the point. The point is that when it comes to the pursuit of dreams, love and the resulting guilt — there is often no where left to go but to retreat into the circular horror of a fragmented identity.

The key to the box…
Mulholland Drive
David Lynch, 2001
Cinematography | Peter Deming

This may be your film, but two things are most certainly true: This is the girl and This is not the girl.

Which girl is real? When you go this far for meaningless dreams and love as bitter as it is sweet, it really doesn’t matter.

Then we have Guy Maddin’s under appreciated brilliant experimental film, Keyhole. In an attempt to escape arrest, a gangster holds up in an old home with a mysterious hostage. Surrounded by police and with an unwilling hostage, the gangster, Ulysses Pick, soon finds himself wandering through the decaying house’s many corridors, rooms and memories. Is it ghosts who threaten his sanity? Not likely.

Looking for understanding…
Jason Patric
Keyhole
Guy Maddin, 2011
Cinematography | Benjamin Kasulke

The biggest threat in this decaying old house is our protagonists’ own identity. First as voyeur, then curious and finally desperate — Ulysses begins to interact with a troubled childhood, past crimes, buried love, guild and ultimately facing the truth of his mother. Splintered, confused, sad and spent — Maddin’s Ulysses is trapped within the fragmented and often disjointed aspects of himself.

A ghost isn’t nothing, but it also isn’t everything…
Keyhole
Guy Maddin, 2011

Like a perverse fable, he must stand in judgement. A judgement not to be delivered by ghosts or memories. A judgement issued from deep within the unknown self.

So while I do like to get lost in this dark, experimental, intelligent and surreal worlds that explore complex ideas around “identity” — I also gain break from the reality of actually sorting through my personal issues to regain the ability to function. There are a vast number of strange films dealing with identity. From the heights of Art House Cinema with Repulsion, Belle de Jour, 3 Women and Persona to the obscurity of films like Simon Killer, Bellflower, Hesher, Bullhead, Reality, Institute Benjamenta, Brazil or Performance.

The subject is himself, but the exploration takes him far deeper.
Altered States
Ken Russell, 1980

The question and exploration of identity and its meanings are limitless and often limiting.

Matty Stanfield, 12.13.2015

Where Stars Make Dreams And Dreams Make Stars or David Lynch’s Inland Empire

Laura Dern as a woman in deep trouble…
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

There is an early key scene in David Lynch’s Inland Empire. It is between one of several characters played by Laura Dern and another played by the great Grace Zabriskie. A neighbor has dropped in to introduce herself to her movie star neighbor. A bit uncomfortable, but friendly — Nikki invites the woman in for a cup of coffee. After the neighbor sips a bit, she begins to enquire about Nikki’s next movie role. A role that the neighbor feels Nikki has most certainly secured Though it is clear that Nikki is unaware she has been cast.

It only takes a few minutes before Ms. Zabriskie gets to the actual reason for her unannounced visit:

“Is there a murder in your film?”
“Uh, no. It’s not part of the story.”
“No, I think you are wrong about that.”
“No.”
“Brutal fucking murder!“
“I don’t like this kind of talk; the things you’ve been saying. I think you should go now.”
“Yes. Me, I… I can’t seem to remember if it’s today, two days from now, or yesterday. I suppose if it was 9:45, I’d think it was after midnight! For instance, if today was tomorrow, you wouldn’t even remember that you owed on an unpaid bill. Actions do have consequences. And yet, there is the magic. If it was tomorrow, you would be sitting over there.”

Her finger points across the room. Laura Dern’s Nikki’s eyes turn following the direction of her neighbor’s finger. And with a turning pan of the cheap digital camera we and Nikki are transported to a different time. Maybe even a different side of reality. Maybe…

Grace Zabriskie points toward the unknown brutality…
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

Way back in 2006 after experiencing David Lynch’s Inland Empire for the first time I wrote this:

Well, kids — I saw the new David Lynch movie today. Yes, INLAND EMPIRE is almost a full 3 hours of Lynchian assault.

Did I like it? Yes, I think I did. Actually, I may love it. I think I am still processing the experience. Trust me. This is a cinematic experience.

While I did find it a bit long, I was never bored. My eyes, ears and mind were stuck to the screen the entire duration. There were more than a few people in the audience who had seen it twice already. I have to agree with those audience members — this is a film which seems to require multiple viewings.

I am still trying to figure it all out in my head. What did all those symbols mean? Most importantly, what does it symbolize to have Nastassja Kinski sit on a sofa while Suicide Girl types dance and lip sync to the late/great Nina Simone? I guess she and them could symbolize a lot of things. And, why the Beck song?

Word to the wise: if you do see it — stay thru the final credits.

I love that the cinema in which I saw the movie was playing selections from the new Tom Waits compilation CD, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards. This turned out to be quite right for setting the tiny San Francisco cinema’s atmosphere.

Hypnotic, oddly gorgeous, without linear thought/plot and featuring a brilliant performance from Laura Dern — INLAND EMPIRE is horrific, beautiful, confusing, perverse, sad, funny, lost and ultimately a brilliant cinematic slight of hand. If you like David Lynch you will not want to miss it. I plan on seeing it again with a couple of my pals.

“Come on, baby
Jump up
Jump back
Well, now, I think you’ve got the knack
Wow, wow!”
Laura Dern & Friends(?)
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

Three years later, I wrote this:

David Lynch at his very best. This is the first film he has made which rivals the brilliance of Blue Velvet. Tho quite long, the movie is NOT dull.

Blessed with an incredible acting turn by Laura Dern who seems to be wandering through the consciousness of an actor in way over her head and possibly sharing that space with a demented film maker, INLAND EMPIRE is almost impossible to describe.

This experimental film shows how much a filmmaker can do with equipment available to all of us. It also serves as a reminder that just because we have access to the equipment — no one without such untethered genius can use it as well.

Sound and image have seldom merged better.

INLAND EMPIRE is a puzzle of a film that will be pulling in viewers for decades to come. Without question, this is an important film.

“Ye-ye-ye-yeah
Move around the floor in a Loco-motion!”
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

Not too long ago on Letterboxd I wrote:

One of my all-time favorite films is also one of the most experimental I’ve ever seen. This is a brilliant motion picture experience captured with cheap video cameras.

Interpretation is certainly open-ended. Even still, I’ve always viewed this as an actor who has lost her identity in a role.

But even more unsettling is the proposition that manipulation of “identity” could potential lead one into some horrific alternate realities. Are they real or are they each operating in some sort of parallel universe?

Best to just pretend you’re seated in dark cinema.

Turn out the lights. Turn up the volume. Just watch and listen. Allow Inland Empire to wash over you. As it does, you are probably going to discover some vague connection that is as surreal as the film itself.

If you are not someone who does not appreciates David Lynch, experimental art or if you’re afraid of the dark — do not even attempt to watch it.

Laura Dern
On the run and lost…
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

Having recently watched Inland Empire the other night on a pristine German-imported blu-ray, the film remains fresh, disturbing and enigmatic as ever.

The film floods over me like some sort of brilliant wave of sound, paint and amplified humanity. I find it difficult to articulate what grabs me. But it grabs me every time I see it.

As someone who has dealt with panic attacks and disorientation, there is a spastic sort of resonation. However, this would be me, a member of the audience, projecting myself onto David Lynch’s carefully crafted and often grubby Epic of Surreal Cinematic Masterpiece.

Yes, that is what I wrote. I used the “masterpiece” word. For me, Inland Empire is a cinematic masterpiece.

I refuse to be swayed.

It is filled with odd sort of “clues” that seem to dangle and blow like thin strings refusing to tie together.

The logic is circular and filled with menace.

There is more symbology going on than one can ever hope to rattle even with the sturdiest of sticks.

A meta-film to beat all meta. A cinematic experiment without a clearly stated thesis beyond the posters tagline: “A Woman In Trouble.”

“What the fuck happened here?” I say: “He come to a reapin’ what he had been sowin’, that’s what.” They say: “Fucker been sowing some kind of heavy shit…”
Laura Dern
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

As the woman (or women) in trouble, Laura Dern was given an amazing task as an actor. A task that she not only managed to achieve — Laura Dern rose above any sort of expectation. The lines between acting and reality are simultaneously drawn, twisted, subverted and blurred beyond recognition. Dern seems to literally become entwined with digital signals that form the movie itself. By stating this, I mean to write that this actress is not simply the focus of most of the film’s images — Laura Dern’s performance and presence folds into digital images that David Lynch’s cameras capture.

This performance even amps itself beyond Dennis Hopper’s brilliant turn in Blue Velvet. The only reason it has never been given similar credit is because of the often exasperating “lengths” to which Inland Empire stretches, bends, loops and merges to form and invert itself.

For various reasons, I’ve found myself spending time with this particular movie.

I have to confess I was relieved when viewings were no longer required. But with the arrival of this blu-ray, I jumped back into the surreal madness of Lynchian Vision. I did so without request or hesitation.

“So, you have a new role to play, I hear?”
Laura Dern
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

In the end, for me Inland Empire is a complex exploration of human identity. The identity of an artist who finds her non-professional actor’s life begins to morph, twitch, mingle and merge with those of her roles. So vested in her performance, the complexity of a new film’s character splinters into creation of multiple versions and films. The ultimate artistic nightmare.

Forever chasing her selves through horrific and dismal set-ups. Just as she might be about to latch on to the core of herself she is sent running after another lost figment. A rambling psychological, visceral, emotional and dangerous trap. Her identity becomes so fragmented and polarized that the audience shares in her existential conundrum.

“This is a story that happened yesterday. But I know it’s tomorrow.”
Laura Dern
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

I could not help but feel slightly alarmed when a person on Twitter, known as The Movie Shrink, sent me a link to a new viewpoint regarding a movie. The movie happened to be Inland Empire. @Plisskenboon’s translation of David Lynch’s strange epic is precise and self-assured.

I can’t state that I’m in full agreement, but it is an impressive deconstruction and evaluation of this Lynchian World that forever runs about within the confines of The Inland Empire. Um, yeah, it is a real place.

(You would be surprised how many people do not realize this.)

Splintered, fragmented and distorted…
Laura Dern
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

Check it out. …if you dare:

http://plisskensmovies.blogspot.co.nz/2015/03/inland-empire.html

A person, a woman, an actor, her character(s) and shared identities are forever trapped…
Laura Dern
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

“This is a story that happened yesterday. But I know it’s tomorrow.”

Matty Stanfield, 11.20.15

Fire Walk With Me or Like A Turkey In The Corn: Lynchian Cinema Unbridled

When David Lynch and Mark Frost initially pitched the concept that would become the TV series, Twin Peaks, the idea was really about creating a satire on American small town culture. The show’s mystery of “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” was intended to take a backseat to the show’s plot once the quirky characters identities and respective double lives gained the audiences’ interest. Starting off with a two hour special pilot that truly brought a whole new level of quality and subversion to the firmly entrenched ideology of small town American life. It was during the run of Twin Peak‘s first season that the idea of “Lynchian” would truly take form. This series was less a satire of soap opera and television mysteries as it was a subversive and highly experimental experience.

“In a town like Twin Peaks, no one is innocent.”
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992

To the eyes of 21st Century eyes, this series might seem tame. But in 1990, this was shocking and pushed the boundaries of what was being shown on television. It was also far more “cinematic” than standard television. The pilot was a slam-dunk hit. The ratings took a significant drop after the two hour pilot. The ratings for the rest of season one were not consistent, but never truly low.

This show was being, watched, discussed, analyzed and studied. Twin Peaks gained an almost instant cult following. Contrary to Lynch and Frosts’ idea, the mystery of Laura Palmer’s death never moved to the background. Despite already being dead and presented only in the now iconic photograph and limited POV screen captures, Laura Palmer was the driving force of the show. There a number of logical reasons that the idea of each character’s dual personas never became the vital interest(s) of the viewers. For those of us old enough to remember when this ground-breaking television show premiered, there was something alluring about that image of the seemingly perfect All-American Prom Queen captured in a High School year book photograph. There something intriguing about the beautiful yet somehow ethereally strange look of Sheryl Lee’s photograph as Laura Palmer. Like every other character roaming the streets and dirt roads of Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer had a double life. And both sides of Laura’s identity seemed to serve as a trigger for every other character on the show. The fact that we slowly gained information that she may not have been the sweet Girl-Next-Door or the earnest Meal-On-Wheels volunteer was far more curious than any of the living characters on the show.

The public wanted to know more about her and most of all wanted to know who killed her.

This, of course, would be the show’s undoing. Lynch and Frost had never really solved this mystery. Resolution of Laura Palmer’s killer was filmed in several different ways. It quickly became a an odd Pop-Culture Moment. A moment in which much of the audience was watching closely to see where all of the many clues being offered between, above, under and around all of the disturbing, comical, supernatural and off-kilter perspectives were pointing.

The final episode of season one had a huge rating. I can remember sitting in a room full of fellow college students to see who “iced” Laura. But Lynch and Frost did not reveal the killer. Simply more intense clues. It would not be until season two that Laura’s killer was finally revealed to be her father. The mystery’s ultimate resolution made perfect sense for David Lynch’s continuing artistic examination beneath the tainted soil upon which Middle America stood, but was also somehow unsatisfying. It also made all the hints toward the paranormal suspect.

The Good Witch descends to offer some advice for Sailor…
Sheryl Lee
Wild At Heart
David Lynch, 1990
Cinematography | Frederick Elmes

Lynch remained involved with the TV series, but in many ways he might as well have left.

Twin Peaks was really a stunningly brilliant artistic experiment, but David Lynch’s true interest was/is grounded in cinema. While it may not be his finest hour as a filmmaker, 1990’s Wild At Heart, remains my personal favorite David Lynch film. A road movie from Hell, the adventures of Sailor & Lula almost felt like Lynch had been given free reign to create this gleefully surreal and perverse exploration. And wait. Isn’t that Laura Palmer giving Sailor advice? Advise which led his character to deliver a perversely politically-incorrect apology to those thugs?!?! When we saw Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) come down from the heaven’s to help Sailor get back on track, it seemed like possibly another clue.

As die-hard Twin Peaks fans were now sorting through Jennifer Lynch’s clever The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer to sort out the show’s red herrings from true relations, the iconic television series took a quick downward spiral. Twin Peaks‘ first season directors were hand-picked by both Lynch and Frost. But the with the doomed second season the show’s director choices were disjointed and ill-fitting to the original concept. Everyone from Uli Edel to Diane Keaton took the director’s chair. It was canceled and ended in June of 1991. I had just graduated from University and relocated across the country as the second series started. I had no TV, but my interest in the show had faded to disappointment.

Wild At Heart was an Art House film. It was far from a box office blockbuster, but it added value to the director’s reputation. It was also the hit of that years Cannes Film Festival. And even though the industry may have viewed Twin Peaks as a sort of Cult TV Oddity that had ultimately failed, Lynch was in a fairly good position professionally.

Where would he go next?

What new strange world would he create for the cinema?

As it turns out Twin Peaks was still strong on his mind. Many of the ideas he had originally had for Twin Peaks had to be pushed aside to sort of conform to the standards and regulations of Network Television. He had the funding both from America and France to do what he wanted. And he could do it the way he wanted. David Lynch decided to return to the world of Twin Peaks, but this “re-visit” would be a prequel.

How does a cinematic genius top a TV Series that changed the face of network television? He breaks it…
David Lynch as FBI Agent Gordon Cole
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

This would be the opportunity for the show’s legion of fans to actually meet that beautiful High School Prom Queen gone wrong. It would also offer David Lynch the opportunity to actually work with the actress who had set so many hearts and minds a-flutter. Sheryl Lee was more than a simple, engagingly beautiful face — She possessed charisma and an interesting on-screen energy. She was and is an extremely talented actor. Lynch was to make a motion picture focused on the final week in the life of Twin Peak‘s most alluring citizen, Laura Palmer. To the film’s backers, this seemed the perfect idea. To the legion of Twin Peaks fans news of the film set hearts aflame.

What no one seemed to think about was that this was not going to be a normal sort of prequel. And for those of us who thought Wild At Heart presented David Lynch at his most unfiltered and unrestrained, we were about to discover we were wrong.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was not so concerned with much from the original series and this film presented David Lynch’s cinematic vision completely unbridled. He had no plans of returning the audience to the same beautiful but provocatively seedy small town. Without censor, without a Major Television Network breathing down his neck, Mr. Lynch took us back to the same town. But now we saw it from a completely different vantage point.

“If I had a nickel for every cigarette your mom smoked, I’d be dead.”
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

Now working my way up the corporate ladder in Boston, I stood in line with two new friends to catch a 1992 midnight premier screening of the film. We had all heard it had been met with jeers and booing at The Cannes Film Festival, but it just didn’t seem possible that the movie could be bad. Fire Walk With Me may not have been the movie the television show’s cult following wanted to see, but it was one hell of a cinematic ride. A sort of hot-dripping Freudian fever dream. Or perhaps more accurately, seeing this experimental film on a big screen was like being dropped into an Edvard Munch painting gone very wrong.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me didn’t just take the iconic TV Series to a new level, it jolted that quirky universe into a whole new cinematic galaxy.

The opening moments of the film feature a television screen on scramble. A vision we no longer see in the 21st Century. The opening scene of this television’s screening scrambled mess indicates that we are on a dead channel or that the National Anthem has already played and the channel has closed for the viewing day. But then, just as Angelo Badalamenti’s potent score finally seems to reach a clear volume and credits have screened — this television is literally destroyed. A sharp and horrifying woman’s scream and the TV is obliterated.

David Lynch has just destroyed the restrictions and limitations of not only his TV series, he has broken out of the very concept of television itself.

As the film starts we realize that the murder of Teresa Banks has just taken place. Her body wrapped exactly like that of Laura Palmer floats on the water. The film’s first iconic image or scene is one that is never explained, but it carries an odd and comical impact. We first see Special Agent Chester Desmond arresting two grown women at the side of a school bus filled with screaming and crying children. The bus seems to be parked in an open field. Nothing about this scene is treated by the adult characters as odd or strange. Yet it is an unforgettable little scene that sets the film’s space.

Unexplained situation: An FBI drug bust and a school bus full of terrified children…
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

While nothing was as it appeared on Twin Peaks the TV show — in the movie’s Twin Peaks the same holds true with a major difference: Nothing even appears “right” or “normal.”

There is a constant auditory and visual discord at work. Surrealism and Absurdism is closely tied to whatever “reality” we may be shown. In the television series, actors played their characters with an edge of hamminess and often camp. In the Twin Peaks film, the actors are performing as if stuck in some vacuum that is constantly threatening to suck them up into oblivion. The acting here is not so much about “camp” as much as it is about keeping in step with the energy of David Lynch’s subversive, perverse and often hysterical vision.

David Lynch re-creates his own character from the TV series. The hearing-impaired Agent Gordon Cole summons Chris Isaak’s Special Agent Desmond to meet him. In typical Twin Peaks‘ logic, this meeting is simple and yet complicated.

“Her name is ‘Lil'”
Kimberly Ann Cole
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

Gordon Cole leads Agent Desmond over to meet an odd woman who seems to be hiding inside a small airplane hanger. As she emerges, Gordon explains that this is his “mother’s sister’s girl, Lil“. Lil proceeds to make a sour face.

What’s a sour face? Well, that is a face that has a sour look on it.

Lil keeps one hand in a pocket of her ill-fitting dress. Opens and clenches her other hand into a fist and stomps in place. Later Special Agent Chester Desmond explains to the confused Forensic Pathologists what this meeting of Lil actually meant:

Sour Face = problems with local authority awaits

Both Eyes Blinking = trouble with the higher-ups

One Hand in Pocket = something is being hidden from the FBI

Fist = there is a whole lotta beligerence

Walking In Place = there’s going to be a lot of legwork

Dress Tailored To Fit = this is code for drugs

Blue Rose Pinned To Lil’s Dress = “I can’t tell you about that…” Meaning that the agent is not comfortable revealing this meaning to Kiefer Sutherland’s befuddled pathologist.

What was missing in Agent Cole’s introduction for Lil? …No uncle is mentioned.
Kimberly Ann Cole
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

Already well over ten minutes into the film and David Lynch has yet to bring us back to Twin Peaks. It is not far away, but as we watch the Special Agent and Forensic Pathologist navigate the odd waters of their location it feels more like the familiar world we knew in the television series. After a particularly grueling autopsy of Ms. Banks, the intrepid men go to a local all-night cafe. The same cafe that had employed Teresa Banks. A comical question and answer with Teresa’s former co-worker reveals that Teresa was involved in drugs.

“Who’s the towhead?”
Sandra Kinder as “Irene” That is her name and it is night. Don’t go any further with it. There’s nothing good about it.”
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

Then we follow them to the Big Trout Trailer Park where we are led by a hilarious Harry Dean Stanton as the park’s manager to Teresa Banks’ home trailer. It is here that Surrealism and an ever-menacing level of horror creeps onto the screen.

Loose ends from the series continue to pop up. The hanging electric lines seem to emit a sort of horrific transmission or energy. This is new.

Poor Special Agent Chester Desmond vanishes into an unexplained sort of paranormal vortex. As Kyle MacLachlan enters the film as Special Agent Dale Cooper we finally are treated to feeling like we may be back in the familiar territory.

Special Agent Chester Desmond’s abandoned car.
“Let’s Rock”
Kyle MacLachlan and Harry Dean Stanton
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

Special Agent Dale Cooper also pays a visit to The Big Trout Trailer Park, but his reasoning doesn’t seem to match-up.

It is not too long after he and Harry Dean Stanton look at Agent Desmond’s forgotten car and study a lip-stick written message on the windshield that we will soon hear Badalamenti’s familiar theme song and see the famous opening to the TV series.

Pulses raced as the film came to this point. At long last we would finally actually meet Sheryl Lee’s Laura Palmer. Since the TV series began she had been seen only as photographs or brief glimpses. Or most annoyingly, as a doppelganger brunette cousin.

But now we will see, hear and get to know Laura Palmer.

And now, Ladies & Gentlemen, meet your all-American Prom Queen: Laura Palmer. Beautiful, dazed, confused and abused.
Sheryl Lee
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

The actual return to Twin Peaks and meeting Laura Palmer was not what anyone quite expected.

Just like the high school Prom Queen photograph, that charismatic look does transform into an even stranger mix of beauty and somehow perverse energy all channeled brilliantly by Sheryl Lee.

Within what we now call Lynchian Cinema, his female actors are essential keys. Both Laura Dern and Naomi Watts are pitch-perfect actors for David Lynch. Both are deeply skilled actors, have on-screen presence / charisma and have the ability to at once convey an All-American kind of blond beauty and ambition. They also are fairly fearless performers who are unafraid to tap into the darker and obscure aspects of humanity without crossing the line into “camp.” Isabella Rossellini was also a key actor for David Lynch. She may not be the greatest in level of skill, but she carries a bizarre mix of beauty, innocence and with a strange lean toward the perverse. Rossellini fit into Lynchian Cinema with ease. Sadly, due to complication of a romantic relationship we were only able to enjoy her within this world twice.

However, Grace Zabriskie is without question the ultimate David Lynch actor. In Fire Walk With Me, we see Mrs. Palmer before one of life’s truest devastating losses has caused her to become unhinged in her despair, sorrow, guild and grief. Here Zabriskie is given a surprisingly small but difficult challenge: establishing Mrs. Palmer as a damaged person. Of course, this fine actor was more than up for the challenge.

Mom knows something is very wrong, but she is Dad’s victim too.
Grace Zabriskie is Mrs. Palmer
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

Already a solidly employed and respected actress, when David Lynch first cast her, she found the perfect film artist to assist her in channeling her unforgettable energy and presence. A highly skilled actor, Zabriskie is able to easily convey human emotion realistically — but most importantly, she can access them in the most inappropriate, perverse and hysterical of ways.

She walks the tight rope with ease: Camp and B-Movie Exploitation Horror await her slip and fall, but she never loses her balance. She straddles the lines between Realism, Surrealism and Absurdism without any sputtering or error. Like the other three actors, she is beautiful. Also like the other three, her beauty is somewhat convulsive. Unafraid of aging, this actress can summon a great degree of sexual allure in the strangest and most menacing of ways. Another shared gift all four of these actresses: they are likable. It is almost impossible not to root for Ms. Zabriskie even in the darkest and evil of roles.

While those four actors have experienced amazing success working for David Lynch, the same luck did not hold true for Sheryl Lee. It is perhaps the greatest fail of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me that Sheryl Lee’s career was that it almost completely de-railed it.

It is impossible to watch this film and not note the incredible Movie Star Presence she exudes. Sheryl Lee also presents a chillingly accurate performance. This is an actor with a great deal of skill. And, like Zabriskie, she is able to easily walk that line between Realism and The Surreal. Like all of the above mentioned actresses, she is very likable on screen. And, in reality, there is probably only one of the four who could rival her beauty and that would be Rossellini.

However Sheryl Lee possesses an easy access to eroticism that is not quite as easy for the other actors mentioned. Sheryl Lee was and remains a hot-looking actress. Never extreme, convulsive or too thin — her shape is always right on form with erotic ideal. And even when she flaunts it and teases, there is something fragile at play that makes the viewer want to protect her.

High school journal keeping has never been this erotic or perverse…
Sheryl Lee
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

Another key trait for a David Lynch actress, Sheryl Lee has no fear. In Fire Walk With Me she goes for broke in some of the most uncomfortable scenes. Most if not all of her scenes in this film act almost as individual Cinematic Abstract Art Pieces. She is given some of the oddest and most difficult lines of any Lynchian character. In an early scene we see an in-between classes sexual encounter between Laura and her love-sick suitor, James. James attempts to make her understand how much he loves her and that he can protect her from anything. The lines in this scene are intentionally comical, but at the same time carry an skewed sense of tragic truth within this warped film:

Laura refuses James’ love.

“I’m gone. Long gone. Like a turkey in the corn.”
“You’re not a turkey. A turkey is one of the dumbest birds on earth.”
“Gobble-gobble. Gobble-gobble.”

Even though you will find yourself chuckling or laughing, Sheryl Lee manages to evoke a damaged sort of “gobble” that haunts.

While the actor playing James handles the scene like a bad soap opera, Lee takes the wording and invests them with meaning. Yet, she never allows her skill to get in Lynch’s way. Sheryl Lee “gets it” and she takes that understanding and runs with it throughout Lynch’s experimental exploration of human cruelty, horror and abuse via means of the human psyche.

Having just had the rare opportunity to rematch the film via a pristine and new 4K transfer that will hopefully find it’s way to US distribution. It is miles ahead of the Region-Free German Blu-Ray and certainly far better than the treatment it received by Paramount in last year’s Twin Peaks box set. Criterion, are you there?

Prom Queen, a diary, some booze, a bit of coke and a lot of eroticism.
Sheryl Lee
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

Sheryl Lee should have become a major player in the world of filmmaking. Yet the film’s failure and her achingly-inter-connected performance was misjudged. Sheryl Lee’s work in this film is an exact match to Lynchian negative energy and dire need of redemption. Like the film itself, Sheryl Lee never falters as both she and the film go exactly where David Lynch wanted it to go.

Grace Zabriskie has stated that she felt that Lee gave so much to David Lynch and the character while filming the movie that it took her several years to find her way back to herself. This might seem like an “over-the-top” statement, but when discussing the art of Method Acting and The Method Actor, it is painfully accurate. As hard as Sheryl Lee worked to give Lynch what he needed, he would push her even harder. The film obviously left the young actor exhausted, but the film’s critical and commercial failure were most likely like receiving a universal gut punch.

The Log Lady offers a bit of comfort and a warning that serves as key to the strange world in which we roam…
Sheryl Lee & Catherine E. Coulson
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

When the midnight screening I attended in 1992 reached the closing credits, I felt as if I had been on some strange metaphysical trip of a cinematic ride. I had been entertained, horrified, engaged and left in awe. However, my two friends and what felt like the entire sold-out audience had hated it.

People in the cinema literally Boo’d at the screen. A couple of folks even threw their popcorn containers at the screen. I was confused. As I stumbled back into the reality of a hot New England evening, I was equally disoriented and excited.

The Boston bars had closed, so the three of us retreated to a now long-gone sort of coffee-house that served the homeless, the collegiate and hipsters in equal fashion. It was a favorite hang-out. We had some cookies and coffee and discussed the movie.

Is Laura Palmer living in a very bad dream? Here she walks into a room that is more than a little too familiar.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

All three of us holding degrees in English, we all shared a love for deconstructing art. Each of us had a different read on what we had seen:

One of my friend’s felt it was an “Anti-Movie” through which David Lynch was laughing and giving the finger to his audience.

My other friend felt it was a sort of cinematic mistake. She pointed out that the use of Surrealism and Absurdism was pointless if neither had meaning. Unlike my first friend, she saw some merit to the movie. But I can remember her drawing her long orange finger nail between herself and me stating that the film’s flaws out-weighed the few points Lynch had made correctly.

I disagreed with both opinion. I felt they were being too superficial and lazy.

I sipped my coffee and told them that I felt the film was a spectacular experiment in exploring the psyche of a pedophile incest rapist and most alarmingly the psyche of his victim. I explained that the entire theme of the film had been quite poetically summed up by Catherine E. Coulson’s Log Lady. This film had pulled us into a confusing vortex of insane human cruelty, confusion caused by child abuse, the impact resulting in a family / friends all living in a faked level of love, conformity and insincere sincerity. The despair, the pain, the guilt and the sorrow of both the victim and the victimizer are identities constantly walking with a fire that threatens to consume them at any moment.

My two friends sat with this for a few minutes. One started to laugh. The other’s head seemed tilted all the way on our respective walks to Muni, dorm and home.

A dream captured in a frame…
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

If you’re wondering why I recall so well what we discussed and how we discussed it — it is because I have been a chronicle journal keeper since I was 18. Upon arriving back to my tiny basement apartment at 4am, I opted to write the experience down instead of sleeping. As I had to be at work for 7am it seemed a more rational use of my time. It staggers my mind to think that I could function at work without any sleep. Ah, youth.

But I digress.

Many view the movie as a complicated mess of a prequel with no other aim than to inform the Twin Peaks fans of Laura Palmer’s last week of life. This seems far too simplistic. David Lynch is far too intelligent a filmmaker to have discarded almost all of the television series atmosphere and style had this been his intent. If this were all he wanted to do the film would have been shorter and no TV set would have required breaking.

Others view it as an admirable cinematic error. One can’t really argue with this view-point. This film is so untethered, it is impossible to anticipate that everyone will like or even passively accept it. But I still stand by my opinion formed in 1992.

The angels never really went away. Laura’s salvation descends…
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

Essentially this film is examining the ways in which “we” absorb the horrors of our lives into our psyches so that we can simply continue moving forward. Full acceptance of truth is far easier said than done. Anyone who has fallen victim to someone we should have been able to trust — or, more simply put, anyone who has been sexually abused by a family member or a trusted family friend will understand that “owning” the reality of pain/sorrow caused by sexual violation/abuse is actually more difficult than the violation itself. And PTSD is not just limited to survivors of war. PTSD can kick your ass. And it kicks it in really strange and often metaphorical ways that can cause a person to mask their own personal truth as well as take on the guilt that they have no business absorbing. The victim has done nothing wrong, but under the reality of life’s light — it can feel quite the opposite for the victim who survives.

Most of the time that monster in the closet or under the bed is just normal childhood fears, but other times there really has been a monster there.

When The Log Lady runs into Laura Palmer about to enter the Twin Peaks Townie Bar, she gently touches Laura’s face and offers a parable that applies to the entire film:

“When this kind of fire starts, it is very hard to put out. The tender boughs of innocence burn first, and the wind rises, and then all goodness is in jeopardy.”

Is “Bob” Dad’s creation or one of his daughter? Worse yet, is Bob a demon? The American Family gets a horrifying surreal deconstruction.
Ray Wise as Mr. Palmer
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

There is an-ongoing “discussion” of pain and sorrow, fire and angels throughout the film. It begins when Laura and her best friend contemplate life. Laying in the living room, Donna shares a dream-thought and then an odd question:

“Do you think that if you were falling in space that you would slow down after a while, or go faster and faster?”

Laura suddenly seems to be miles away from Donna as she stares off into some doomed distance, yet she has heard her friend and answers, “Faster and faster. And for a long time you wouldn’t feel anything. And then you’d burst into fire. Forever. And the angel’s wouldn’t help you. Because they’ve all gone away.”

The Angel feeds and watches over the children.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992

Later, Laura will see an angel represented in a childhood framed image in her bedroom vanish before her eyes. The three children in the painting are no longer fed or protected by the watchful angel.

The Angel has gone away
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992

And of course there is that strange room that appears in Laura’s dreams and is presented to her by an old woman in a framed photograph. And The Other Place where The Man gives information with backward masked commentary. These visions are shared. The Lynchian concept of creamed corn comes into play. Referred to as “garmonbozia.”

The meaning of this term has been much analyzed by the legions of Twin Peaks fans as well as Lynch Heads. Creamed corn is mentioned in relation to Laura’s role as Meals-On-Wheels volunteer, Mr. Palmer is accused of stealing a can of it and it appears in visions. Garmonbozia is a demented symbol of pain and sorrow. A pain and sorrow both inflicted and inflicting. The normal thought is that there are two things that all inhabitants of Twin Peaks share:

A darker / hidden aspect of their individual identities
They each feed and give off pain and sorrow

Fire Walk With Me consumes itself with symbology and metaphors of fire, angels, masks, identity, a seemingly extra-dimensional red-curtained room, an owl ring, a one-armed man and most importantly the character of BoB.

The danger of the owl ring may be the only way out…
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

Bob is Laura’s monster hiding just outside her bedroom. As she confesses to her Meals-On-Wheels home-bound client, Bob has been having her since she was twelve. As the film progresses Laura becomes aware that Bob might be “real” but he might not be who or what he appears to be. In Laura’s self-deception, Bob is tearing out pages from her diary to exert his power. He knows everything about her — Bob knows all. Most repulsive for Laura is that as afraid as she is of Bob and the rapes, she has reached a point where the attacks are expected and she now seems to be finding some sort of sadistic sexual pleasure from these unwanted attacks. In a particularly disturbing scene as Bob takes her body, she begins to reach orgasm.

She moans, “Who are you? Who are you?!?!” Just as she slips into orgasm Bob turns into her father.

Her father’s behavior has become highly suspect for Laura and her her mother. Mr. Palmer seems to be forcing Laura into uncomfortable confrontations.

In one of the films more Extreme/Absurdist moments, Laura and her father are in his car. Suddenly the One-Armed Man is tailing them. Mr. Palmer begins to panic. The One-Armed Man is furiously attempting to communicate with Laura. Her father keeps the car racing even at a dead stop to drown out the man’s voice. A dog’s barking becomes as loud as the car, the One-Armed Man and the frenzied musical score. The impact of this scene is equally disturbing, annoying and almost funny.

During the strangely hysterical and frenzied scene, Laura thinks she smells fire.

Screaming above it all with increasing panic, “Dad! Something’s burning! Are we on fire??!?!?”

In a world of horror, it is easier to face Bob than Dad. This is the All-American Girl Next Door’s only way out.
Bob Silva & Sheryl Lee
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

Just before Mr. Palmer is able to shake the One Armed Man, he is able to reach Laura’s ear with information she does not want to have:

Holding out his one arm and a finger wearing the familiar owl ring, “It’s him! It’s your father!”

When we see Mr. Palmer drug his wife in their bedroom, Laura is jumping off James’ motorcycle off to her fate deep in the woods. We have reached the final night of Laura Palmer’s life.

Beaten, tied and dragged into an empty train freight car — Laura at first thinks she is facing Bob, the man who has abused her since she was twelve. But she quickly sees through her psyche’s self-deception: This is not Bob screaming at her. This is her father.

Brutally raped and threatened, is that Angel pointing toward an owl ring?
Sheryl Lee
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

And there lies the owl ring.

Most importantly, for the first time since the film has begun to unspool — Laura receives a sign of hope: An angel seems to be descending into the train car.

In what appears to be an act of ultimate rebellion, Laura scrambles for the owl ring. As her father pleads with her not to make him do “it,” Laura slips the ring onto her finger. It is as if this ring allows both the victim and the victimizer to gain full awareness. As the angel hoovers somewhere above them, Mr. Palmer kills his daughter.

Metaphorically, she has won. She has escaped and left him with his guilt, pain and sorrow. The creamed corn is now his and his alone. He must live with what he has done. As he wraps Laura’s body in plastic to set her into the lake, we see his face from Laura’s body’s POV and it switches back and forth between Bob and himself.

Mr. Palmer must accept what is to come. The dream or vision becomes a sort of reality as his entry to The Other Places emerges in the woods.

A pedophile, rapist and murderer: Dad prepares to have his torment, pain, sorrow and human cruelty.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

He steps through an opening in the red curtains and enters that extra-deminsional room. The Man From The Other Place and the One-Armed Man are waiting for him. Soon Bob is standing next to Mr. Plamer. As Mr. Palmer begins to levitate, Bob is instructed to take away Mr. Palmer’s Garmonbozia.

Like some internal cancer, Bob removes the blood soaked pain and sorrow from Mr. Plamer’s gut and tosses it on the floor.

Faced with The One Armed Man and The Man From Another Place, is Dad releasing his own pain and sorrow? Or is Bob about to take care of that for him? Subconscious metaphor…
Frank Silva & Ray Wise
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

Of course the meaning of this scene has always been debated among Twin Peaks followers.

Is this an imaginary way for Mr. Palmer to once again to slip into his self-deception?

Is this a sort of heaven in which Mr. Palmer is freed of demonic power, Bob?

Or is this something loaded with a more universal way of dealing with guilt and the unforgivable?

In a strange and hyper-intensive scene early in the film we have seen David Bowie appear at Gordon’s FBI office. He is a long missing special agent and has come to give David Lynch’s Gordon a message. A series of jump cuts and audio editing led us to The Man From Another Place, the One-Armed Man, Bob and The Chalfonts. (you will need to see the film to know these two characters) — This is of particular note as it hints to where we might be going in the upcoming Showtime Twin Peaks re-boot.

Together in a dream or some alternate universe. Laura Palmer has a worrying connection to Special Agent Cooper.
“I’ll see you again in 25 years. Meanwhile…”
Sheryl Lee & Kyle MacLachlan
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

Going back to 1991’s final episode of Twin Peaks, Special Agent Cooper finds himself in the extra-deminsional red-curtained room with a lovely and calm Laura. She informs him that she will see him again in 25 years.

While David Bowie’s long-missing special agent attempts to give a message to his near-deaf boss in Fire Walk With Me — we only catch bits and pieces of what he says. But we do see him point to Special Agent Cooper and bellow to Gordon,

“Who do you think this is here?!?!?”

This message almost insinuates that Agent Cooper is some sort of Evil Being. Toward the end of the original series we know that Agent Cooper had begun to see Bob’s reflection when he looked into mirrors. Hmmm…

It will be more than a little interesting to see what David Lynch and Mark Frost come up with for their limited Twin Peaks run on Showtime.

Written in blood. Never before in television history has the grammar and meaning of a phrase been so analyzed and debated.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
David Lynch, 1992
Cinematography | Ronald Victor Garcia

Whatever we do learn in this mini-series will have little to do with what David Lynch explored in Fire Walk With Me. This strange and much maligned Cult Film will most likely remain where it has always been. Sort of endlessly playing into subconscious in circular logic.

Take your creamed corn for what it is or what it isn’t. Fire Walk With Me is a message that lays on a mound of bloody soil. It might be confusing or even cryptic in meaning, but David Lynch wrote it in blood.

Matty Stanfield, 10.9.2015