Television: Twin Peaks, the Matrix by David Lynch

He had a solitary soul, but loved good company, coffee and cigarettes. Especially women, whom he filmed throughout his career. Laura Dern, Sherilyn Fenn, Naomi Watts, Sheryl Lee… It was therefore quite natural that he brought them together in the major work of his life, “Twin Peaks”. After a first season of eight episodes in 1990, the series will continue with a second season in 1991, then with a feature film, “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me”, in 1992, which will be selected at Cannes. Things should have left it there. But to everyone’s surprise, for the 25th anniversary of the series, Lynch signed a masterful third season, “Twin Peaks: The Return”, broadcast in 2017, which deconstructed everything that came before.

Because within the Lynchian galaxy, “Twin Peaks” stands out as a sum that sums up everything, from “Eraserhead” to “Inland Empire”, via “Blue Velvet” and “Sailor and Lula”. Success will be achieved very quickly, but beyond that, the series quickly turns into an obsession. We don’t watch “Twin Peaks,” we devour it. But what makes it so addictive? His scenario? His universe? His characters? Difficult to say, let alone explain. Let’s try to see it more clearly.

The mystery(s)

“Twin Peaks” is the story of an American town in Washington state, which descends into madness when the body of a student, Laura Palmer, is discovered at the edge of a lake. The common thread of the scenario boils down to one question: who killed Laura Palmer? Through the prism of a myriad of characters, each more intriguing than the other, the pieces of the puzzle of the young woman’s life fit together to resolve (or not) the heart of the mystery, an essential notion of the work which will even give its title to the French adaptation: “Mysteries in Twin Peaks”.

In the series, two worlds collide. The rational one of the police investigation, and the other, darker, of esotericism. “Twin Peaks” explores the underbelly of society, in the style of “Blue Velvet”, through vices, evil, suffering and even love. “The world has a wild heart and a sick head,” wrote Barry Gifford, screenwriter and above all author of “Sailor and Lula”. A leitmotif that sums up all of David Lynch’s work.

A world work

The success of “Twin Peaks” is intriguing. Unclassifiable, the saga is the polar opposite of the series of its time. The story is complex, interspersed with dreams and nightmares that influence reality. A dimension which could have put off not only the studios, but also the public of the time force-fed “Starsky and Hutch” and other “Columbo”. So how to explain it?

Perhaps by affirming that there is something for everyone. Thriller buffs glean the elements of the investigation, artichoke hearts melt under the romances and dreamers finally understand how their psyches are constructed. “Twin Peaks” is that, but not only that.

Some attribute to Lynch a surrealist dimension, in the tradition of Man Ray, Prévert, Dalí or Carroll. However, his style is more abstract. Like a cry from the heart, Lynch seizes the brain of his audience to shape and twist it, before returning it forever changed. Inspired by Cocteau, haunted by Tourneur, he succeeds in marrying the unreal and the down to earth like no other. There is something of “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Feline” in his way of filming women, fatal and torn. A dichotomy worked on so much by Lynch throughout his artistic career.

Absolute evil

With David Lynch, everything is indeed a matter of theme. Each film exploring a very specific direction, echoing the others. But if there is one work that encompasses everything, absolutely everything that David Lynch has offered to cinema, it is “Twin Peaks”. It would take too long to establish all the existing connections between the series and the rest of the filmography, but a few themes stand out.

On the surface, there is obviously the dichotomy of the blonde and the brunette, already evoked by Hitchcock with “Vertigo”, present in “Blue Velvet”, “Sailor and Lula”, “Mulholland Drive” and especially “Twin Peaks” , with a theatrical inspiration. The brunette is Salomé, the blonde is Phèdre. Confronted, colliding, these figures envy and destroy each other, like Dorothy and Sandy, Lula and Perdita, Rita and Betty, Laura and Donna in the above-mentioned works.

Women who evolve in a world where evil is protean. Madness as its essence, the search for suffering as its driving force, pain through greed to justify it… In “Twin Peaks”, Lynch then offers a path to unify evil and find an origin for it. He was simply born in New Mexico, in 1945, with the launch of the first nuclear bomb. A deeply pacifist reading that he develops in episode 8 of season 3. An episode considered by some to be Lynch’s absolute masterpiece.

Coda

An element of purge, fire is also incarnated as an important dimension of his cinema. To hide evidence, as in “Sailor and Lula,” or to kill, as in “Twin Peaks.” “Fire, walk with me,” even pronounces a character in the series. Like a mantra, both for the director and the viewer, the meaning of this phrase remains a mystery. However, we find a tragic symbol in it, at the time of the director’s death. As Los Angeles burns, taking away the legendary road of “Mulholland Drive”, David Lynch dies. This time it’s over. Goodbye “Twin Peaks”, goodbye David Lynch. A.D.G.

An artist of temperament

Painting was his first life as an artist. Engraving, drawing, sculpture will follow. But while America is pop, David Lynch remains moored between surrealism and expressionism to serve his ideas. “I am a translator of ideas, regardless of the medium,” he confided then. which he exhibited at the Alexis Forel Museum in Morges in 2018. So, in his graphic works, there is a society hallucinated by its own gesticulations which struggles in the darkness. There is also the temperament of a total artist. FMI

David Lynch captivated by music

The most significant musical aspect of the universe of David Lynch remains his collaboration with the composer Angelo Badalamenti, who signs more than half of the soundtracks of his films with this characteristic bridge between his classical roots, his jazzy sensitivity and his appetite for synthetic sounds.

Bewitching, the musician crystallizes the filmmaker’s fascination with music that extends the mystery of his films drawing on Presley, Bowie, Jimmy Scott and Trent Reznor, without forgetting the famous hit by Bernie Wayne and Lee Morris, this “Blue Velvet” that it will help to revive.

A musician himself, Lynch will not be remembered for his evanescent “Cellophane Memories” from 2024, with singer Chrysta Bell, to which we will prefer “Crazy Clown Time” from 2011 and its anxiety-inducing industrial blues. BSE

Creative as a designer

David Lynch has also made notable appearances at major design fairs. In Milan last year, he returned with his installation “Interiors. A Thinking Room. The director has always liked to mix the art of time with that of space, going so far as to design himself the furniture of the apartments in which he filmed some of his characters. One of his most famous creations as a designer: the “Silencio” nightclub in Paris, inspired by the club of the same name in “Mulholland Drive” and, already, the Red Room in “Twin Peaks”. GCO

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