Twin Peaks (2017)

Directed by: David Lynch | 1014 minutes | crime, drama | Actors: Kyle MacLachlan, Sheryl Lee, Michael Horse, David Lynch, Chrysta Bell, Miguel Ferrer, Robert Forster, Kimmy Robertson, Naomi Watts, Laura Dern, Harry Goaz, Al Strobel, Pierce Gagnon, John Pirruccello, Don Murray, Tim Roth, Dana Ashbrook, Mädchen Amick, Jim Belushi, Richard Beymer, Robert Knepper, Grace Zabriskie, Tom Sizemore, James Marshall, Peggy Lipton, Harry Dean Stanton, Ashley Judd, Amanda Seyfried, Everett McGill

With ‘Twin Peaks’, the creative minds David Lynch and David Frost were responsible for one of the most influential monuments in modern television history in the early 1990s. The atmospheric setting, balanced mix of thriller, murder mystery, humor and (light) horror and the spectrum of eccentric and memorable characters gave the series a true cult status in no time. With ‘Twin Peaks’ filmmaker Lynch succeeded wonderfully in translating his typical style, which often effortlessly combines surrealism with pure human drama, to the small screen.

A quarter of a century after the original ‘Twin Peaks’, the epic finally got a sequel. Reaction to the arrival of a new series was mixed; On the one hand, many fans were eagerly looking forward to the new creation by Lynch and Frost, but on the other hand there was also some skepticism. Could the new ‘Twin Peaks’ match the quality of the original or would we be presented with a rehash of the monumental cult series? Even after the release of the new series, the viewership remained divided. Many speak of a masterpiece, but qualifications such as ‘incoherent messy work’ and variants thereof are also not lacking on various internet forums.

Now “Twin Peaks” (and much of Lynch’s work in general) has never been a narrative for those who like a linear plot and ready-made answers. Playing with the viewer’s imagination to fill in certain parts of the story is precisely one of the elements that gives the series its strength and charm. The new series, however, takes that approach even further, even to the extreme. This undoubtedly has to do with the fact that this time David Lynch has been given complete creative freedom from the broadcasters and producers of pay channel Showtime. This move results in a confluence of circumstances that is hard to comprehend and an extremely high level of abstraction.

‘Twin Peaks: The Return’ opens with the Season 2 scene where Laura Palmer addresses the amiable FBI agent and lead protagonist Dale Cooper in the dream room of the Black Lodge. After the sentence ‘I’ll see you again in 25 years’ we indeed make that time jump. Cooper is still locked in the limbo that is the black lodge, while his evil alter ego (recognizable by his longer hair and leather jacket), possessed by the sardonic ghost Bob, now wreaks havoc in the real world . This overture is the start of a bizarre journey that takes us through different parts of the United States (including Las Vegas, New York, South Dakota). In this third season, Lynch and Frost paint with a broader brush – both geographically and narratively – than in the original. The number of storylines has expanded, while more characters appear on the scene. They are partly performed by big Hollywood names such as Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Tom Sizemore and Jim Belushi.

This broadening of the epic has advantages and disadvantages. Some storylines and subplots, especially those involving the dark forces beyond and dryly humorous humor, make undeniably captivating television with everlasting value. These glory moments effectively bring elements from the old series back to the modern television era. Angelo Badalamenti’s penetrating score, the distinctive dialogues, the woods and mists – which again leave their visual mark on the whole and symbolize the contrast between comfortable places or persons and the ugliness and depravity that lurks beneath the surface – or the hallucinatory trips and visions; they are unmistakable echoes of the Twin Peaks past that still work excellently today.

Despite those rock-solid moments, the third act of ‘Twin Peaks’ sometimes suffers from serious imbalance. Lynch now and then goes too far in his penchant for abstraction, surrealism and absurdity. The middle part of episode 8, in which we are, among other things, sucked into the eye of a nuclear explosion, is the low point in that regard and quickly presents itself as a visual and auditory torture. Some storylines also lack any relevance, do nothing for the plot and seem to have only been designed to give certain characters from the first hour a modest stage. In addition, ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’ is a lot colder, more sterile and less atmospheric than the original series due to the digital look that it takes on as a whole.

Despite the fact that ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’ at first sight seems like an unstructured cabinet of curiosities, there is indeed an underlying message. It seems to revolve mainly around decay and loss, a fact that fits well with the fact that several actors who play in the series (Miguel Ferrer, Harry Dean Stanton, the ‘log lady’ Catherine E. Coulson) before the premiere or not. died a long time after. The final apotheosis clearly breathes this theme, which in a sense also applies to the prominent storyline surrounding the insurance agent Dougie, whose body is taken over by the amnesiac ‘good Cooper’. The way Dougie/Cooper stumbles through life like a zombie in disguise is not just a morbid parody of conformist petty bourgeoisie: his condition also evokes memories of dementia, one of the worst forms of degeneration a person can suffer.

In ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’ Lynch and Frost pull out all the stops and the two create a richly varied and pitch-dark fairytale, a labyrinthine mystery game that combines the fantastic with the banality of the everyday and ultimately raises more questions than answers. It leads to a series that provides moments of ecstatic viewing pleasure, but occasionally loses itself in its own pretensions. As a result, ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’ just too often takes the form of a random collage of abstract and surrealistic visual elements.