Recommendations of the editorial team
On paper, “Twin Peaks” reads like a stink -ly-law crime thriller: FBI-Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle Maclachlan) is sent to the sleepy town of Twin Peaks to clarify the murder of 17-year-old Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). But the deeper he digs, the more often he realizes that in Twin Peaks pretty much everyone has to hide something.
Ultimately, the fact that the series moves far from any conventions does not surprise. Because we are not used to anything else from David Lynch. He packed his series fully with completely abstruse moments – and then left the room without comment. Because if Lynch didn’t do one, then it is to provide explanations. We take over and try to explain the essence of “Twin Peaks” in five strange moments.
Cooper’s dream
Agent Cooper has been accommodated in Twin Peaks in the Great Northern Hotel. He falls asleep and begins to dream immediately. He can be found in a room hung with red curtains. On the sofa opposite there is a small and a woman who looks like Laura Palmer, but should only be her cousin. Both talk confusing. In the end, the small person gets up and dances out of the room for jazz. Laura’s alleged cousin kisses Cooper and whispers a little in his ear. He then wakes up and thinks of knowing who Laura Palmer killed.
Cooper’s dream is the first stylistic key moment that David Lynch missed “Twin Peaks”. Up to this point, the series was nothing more than a mysterious thriller. But the dream moves in a supernatural level – and with what force! Lynch turned the scene backwards and then played it in the opposite direction, which gives dialogues and movements an eerie touch. The idea of the backdrop came when he leaned on the hood of a hot car, Lynch once said. This also expresses that Lynch is primarily an artist who provokes feelings and does not want to give up hidden puzzles.
The Tibetan method
The fact that Agent Cooper not only relies on findings from the real world, but is quite supernatural, is already clarified before the legendary dream at the end of the same episode. In the middle of the forest, he wants to use a strange method to find the murderer, which he appeared in a dream about the people’s need in Tibet. The starting point is Laura Palmer’s diary, in which there is talk of a “meeting with J”. Cooper therefore reads all people living in Twin Peaks who have a J in their name. With every name it throws a stone on a glass bottle and misses – except for Leo Johnson.
This scene underpins that Agent Cooper is a link between two worlds that have not yet been revealed in the series at that time. It shows that he can not only deal with hard facts, but is also predisposed to dig where nobody looks – accordingly between the lines.
Cooper and the Lama
Season 1, episode 5: “The one -armed”
Agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman (Michael Ontkean) follow a trail at the vet. In the anteroom, a lama is waiting for his investigation and briefly interrupts the two investigators during their conversation. However, the two are not impressed by this. Nothing stood in the script. David Lynch, who was sitting on the director’s chair at Episode 5, still installed it – and created one of the funniest moments of the complete series.
However, a much more important dialogue line Coopers is quickly overshadowed, in which it is negotiated that in Twin Peaks the laws of space and time are not necessarily rules that the universe adheres to: “In the heat of the investigative work, the shortest route between two points is not necessarily just.”
Leland sings “Get Happy”
At a party, Leland Palmer (Ray Wise), Laura’s father, suddenly begins to sing “Get Happy” – and faster and faster, ever manic, until the collapse.
The character of the Leland Palmer is used in “Twin Peaks” as an explanatory vehicle for the dimensions of grief and trauma. He often tries to let out his feelings about singing and dance as a valve. He also gray from one moment to the other. Leland Palmer believes that he can process the death of his daughter. But in truth, Leland Palmer is a broken man and therefore a symbol for the place Twin Peaks himself.
In the black hut
Cooper can be found in the red room, which we already know from his dream in the first season. In the meantime, the place is also known as a “black hut”. There, the evil spirits – the small -scale, doppelganger of Laura and Leland as well as the mysterious man from another place – try to break Cooper’s spirit. Successfully. The hut wins over Cooper, the supernatural over the real world.
Hardly any other moment from “Twin Peaks” slips into surrealism and thus David Lynch’s feel -good area as extreme. It may not be clear, but breaks with the usual genre tropics. Because where the murder is clarified at the end of a commercially available crime novel, the second season of “Twin Peaks” concludes with the real destruction of the protagonist and everything he stands for: good in man.
All seasons of “Twin Peaks” are currently available at Mubi in the subscription.