Thursday, September 14, 2017

plato's cave forty seven (being a film journal) it is happening again

Mark Frost and David Lynch - Twin Peaks: The Return - 2017
Some radical visual disorientations from Part Two, starting with a passing train

The woods at night, lit by flashlight. Flares & circles of confusion, Angelo Badalamenti melody creeps out of the darkness, Hawk moves through the woods with flashlight and illuminates his path as he talks with Margaret Lanterman (née Coulson).  Circles of confusion everywhere, Hawk approaches Glastonbury Grove and backwards drones via Lynch sound design unbalance the viewer as the red curtains are superimposed over the trees. Fade to white. Curtains of Red Room appear.

Very disorienting effect as Mike is present in the Red Room, and then disappears. The camera is moved slightly between shots to heighten the strangeness of this disappearance. Images superimposed here to illuminate (3rd image: note corner of chair, left side).

Numerous very fucked up backwards blinks from Laura Palmer.

Cooper after exiting the glass box, realm of The Experiment.

Horrors of nature reflected in mirrors as Sarah Palmer inebriates herself.

On a side note, the only negative deal with the series (for this viewer) is much of the millennial pitchfork music. Here we are in Part Two with band number one, The Chromatics. It indeed has elements that fit in with Lynch's work : they are visually playing guitars but one hears only synths. They heavily borrow from Sonic Youth's Wish Fulfillment, a song I had not listened to since my sonic youth ("at night, I'm driving in your car, pretending that we'll leave this town").  The borrow seems more than an hommage. Other songs borrow but in a more interesting way, like The Nine Inch Nails apocalyptic guitar (the best part of the song) which sounds quite like Lustmord's Rising and other albums from him (compare NIN at 58 seconds with Lustmord at 1 minute 29 seconds and the majority of the album). The repetition of non poetic lyrics seems to be quite the thing with millennial music; like Ed Sheeran's I'm in love with your body nonsense.... we hear it often with bands in this series like Lissie and her I'm fine fine.... wouldn't it have been more interesting to see a techno set by Andy Stott or some MF Autechre than the one in Part Nine?

Hurley, Freddie Sykes, Shelly and Red in The Roadhouse make up for The Chromatics. James Marshall's child-like obsession with Renee (Jessica Szohr) as he moves through the bar is truly hypnotic, especially in contrast to Red's ultra cool flirting with Shelly. Re-watching the series after finishing Part Eighteen, Freddy's presence here in The Roadhouse is truly wondrous for a reason that is hard to put into words.

The best songs from the series for me were Edward Louis Severson's Out of Sand,  James Hurley's Just You (written by David Lynch, Angelo Badalamenti and James Marshall), Angelo Badalamenti’s Heartbreaking, Rebekah Del Rio, Moby And Nick Launay's No Stars (David Lynch Co-Written), Trouble's (Dean Hurley, Riley Lynch, and Alex Zhang Hungtai) Snake Eyes, Harry Dean Stanton's Red River Valley, and Julee Cruise' The World Spins. Seeing Alessandro Cortini in Part Eight was very a nice surprise as well.

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