NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
★★★★★ (A Must-See)
Director: David Lynch
2017
The scariest thing I have ever seen is the end of the Twin Peaks pilot. It was the early 2000s and a boyfriend snuck me into a magic shop inside a large Victorian building in the middle of the night. The stage at the end of the dark, cavernous room held a roll-out TV, a VCR, and two chairs and that’s where I was introduced to Laura Palmer’s murder and the characters in her town, and this steady morphine drip of dread culminated when I saw a figure crouching next to the bed in a flashback. I have never had a reaction like the one I had on that stage. I screamed hysterically and fell back in my chair and practically climbed all over my boyfriend as he walked me to my car later that night. The whole way home I kept looking in the backseat behind me, sure that the face I saw would appear between flashes of streetlight. I’ve seen the series—my favorite show constantly shifts between this, Fargo, The X-Files, and the original Twilight Zone—multiple times since, but to this day I can’t watch that moment in the pilot, and I’m fully aware of how ridiculous that is.
Despite my devotion to the series, I had no expectations when Twin Peaks: The Return came out, and I was the better for it. David Lynch has created a masterpiece using his favorite actors and a cast of hundreds wielding dozens of plots—a room of jigsaw puzzle pieces on the floor waiting for us to put them together. It’s tense, bloody, and full of existential questions and awe-inspiring visuals; you’ll laugh at the perfectly-timed humor, you’ll cry when both the log lady and actress Catherine E. Coulson say their good-byes. You can’t compare this with the original show from the 90s because we can no longer pretend to live in a world that is covered in linoleum and Formica. Twin Peaks: The Return is here to remind us of unstoppable change. While it’s a thrill to see the characters we loved so much all those years ago, the lines on their faces mean we have also aged more than we would like to admit. Never is the time lapse so apparent as when a somewhat new Twin Peaks resident asks, “Who’s Laura Palmer?”
The early murder mystery has hints of Noah Hawley’s Fargo, but true to form, Lynch cannot give us a story that goes from A to B. In fact, we may never reach B, as he experiments his way through Twin Peaks: The Return as if he was given carte blanche to do anything his heart ever desired. When it comes to his soaring surrealistic fantasies, Episode 8 may be the most difficult one for normies to watch. Possibly inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey and silent movies such as The Phantom Carriage (1922), it teases you with plot while being mostly experimental; when one dies here, they end up in a dream created by Lovecraft or the Lumière brothers instead of heaven. But the meat of the story is this: While we’re distracted by Twin Peaks shenanigans that exist as fan service or eventually go nowhere (the R.R. Diner sale, Shelly’s daughter’s marriage, gold shovels, Ben’s grandson’s crimes, talking trees), Agent Dale Cooper finds himself taking over the life of a Las Vegas doppelgänger named Dougie Jones after leaving the Black Lodge twenty-five years after he was trapped inside. Something went wrong in the delivery from one dimension to another because the perky Cooper we know and love doesn’t know who he is and cannot speak. He doesn’t even know how to open a door. Trying to live as Dougie Jones is easier than you would think, though. Even as a mindless mute, Dougie Jones/Dale Cooper still manages to win a jackpot, rock his wife’s world, sniff out corruption at the office, and be gifted a BMW. This non-entity succeeds without really trying because those around him make up their own dialogue about his role in the moment. They unwittingly give themselves what they need and Dougie gets the credit. Of all the dark humor in Twin Peaks: The Return, this is the most clever. For a horror series with crushed heads and swallowed bugs and gore aplenty, it’s unabashedly hilarious.
Kyle MacLachlan plays two Agent Coopers in what is easily his greatest performance. If you saw the second season of Twin Peaks, you’ll know that SPOILERS our lovable agent was possessed by an wicked spirit named Bob, which led to the existence of an evil Cooper and a good Cooper (also somewhat explained in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me). These dual roles in Twin Peaks: The Return are an actor’s dream; he gets to mug as the psychopath and smile as the agent who considers coffee and cherry pie a daily gift to himself. As Evil Cooper wreaks delicious havoc for our entertainment, we wait impatiently for Good Cooper to wake up from his Las Vegas suburban nightmare. SPOILERS END
Twin Peaks: The Return is chock full of Oscar-caliber performances, both subtle and dramatic; Lynch is one of those directors who can dig at an actor like an archeologist in order to find the most valuable idiosyncrasies. There are surprise stand outs, such Grace Zabriskie as Laura’s traumatized mother and Matthew Lillard as a sniveling father accused of murder. It’s always nice to see someone from the horror of your youth make a comeback, but Lillard’s is less comeback and more a declaration of his talents as he reminds us how good he is at making us laugh during times of duress (he begs to get out of jail so he can go scuba diving). These small moments make the Lynch universe as difficult to leave as the Black Lodge. Andy and Lucy arguing over a chair is a lesson in screenwriting; an old friend riddled with cancer sitting silently in a room is more effective than the speech given by his drained wife; a date between a persnickety FBI agent and a coroner is delightful to watch from afar. We feel as though we’re a part of the action or a part of the family because we’ve been here so long. David Lynch himself chews the scenery as a director of the FBI, a man who easily gets comedy points by being hard of hearing. His acting has never been better and neither has the wonderland he’s created. Even with the expected dour ending that some (not me) find hopeful, it was a privilege to return to Twin Peaks and bounce around in Lynch’s mind for eighteen hours.
The only two things I didn’t like about Twin Peaks: The Return were the plight of the old men and the songs/band of the week, usually taking us home during the final credits. These stage acts felt like a play to capture younger viewers, but no gimmicks are needed; the quality of the work speaks to all generations (though I do want to point out that my sixteen-year old self squealed when I saw Nine Inch Nails). Maybe the music was for ambiance, but I would have rather listened to barflies in the booths talk about nothing.
“YOU CAN’T COMPARE THIS WITH THE ORIGINAL SHOW FROM THE 90S BECAUSE WE CAN NO LONGER PRETEND TO LIVE IN A WORLD THAT IS COVERED IN LINOLEUM AND FORMICA. TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN IS HERE TO REMIND US OF UNSTOPPABLE CHANGE.”
Twin Peaks: The Return gives us a universe made up of either dignified old men or children. The codgers—with the exception of conspiracy nut Dr. Jacoby—are the steady, reasonable ones in the room while everyone else is making problems out of nothing. There’s a scene with Ben and Sheriff Truman where the officer has to give some bad news and the scene just keeps going as the men sigh and nod and sit in the quiet. This happens a lot with our male characters who are now near or passed retirement age. Deputy Hawk flies like an eagle and has the strength of a lion as he patiently waits to say his peace; an aged trailer park manager (played by the late, great Harry Dean Stanton) idles the days away plucking the strings of his guitar; and Ben drops our jaws by dismissing the advances of a pretty, younger assistant. Meanwhile, a harpy of a wife interrupts her husband at work to rage about a car that might not be fixed, a woman stuck in traffic foams at the mouth because she might be a few minutes late for dinner, and a dim-witted Vegas girl named Candie smacks her boss in the head with the remote while trying to kill a fly. Lynch saves his feminine affections for Naomi Watts, who plays Dougie’s long-suffering wife with grit and motherly devotion.
Then there are the modern teenagers who act like we did—making bad decisions as if two brain cells are rattling around in their noggins. But these teens are very different from the ones in the early 90s. Those kids from long ago got into the nose candy sometimes and threw rebellious hissy fits, but they still respected their elders and said please and offered to wash the dishes. Lynch has made it clear that many young people these days are so rabid in their selfishness that they’re a danger to the public. Whether social media or just the internet in general is to blame, there is a definite sociopathy that runs deeper now than ever before. Like an elderly cop says in No Country for Old Men, there’s no respect from punks with green hair and bones in their noses…but that officer had no idea what was to come.
Unhinged or useless women and the entitlement of youth is not the only thing on Lynch’s mind. Nuclear bombs and their unexpected fallout, and our favorite restaurant possibly closing down due to a franchise dispute, shows that he recognizes his powerlessness in stopping progress or humanity’s mistakes made long before he was alive and long after he will be gone. I felt this theme running through the series as I wished for the days of fish in percolators and silent window runners—we can’t go back. Time marches on even in Twin Peaks, even with a cast of wonderful characters who could have fallen off the turnip truck. Whether any of them turn up in a future project is irrelevant; Twin Peaks: The Return is David Lynch’s magnum opus, and there be no need for an encore.
GENRES: Atmospheric, Body Horror, Funny, Psychological, TV Show
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