The most exhilirating of my recent time travel activities has been the return of „Twin Peaks“, 25 years after leaving Agent Cooper in a disturbing trap. 18 episodes rush over you with the inventiveness of radical cinema, anti-nostalgia (what an ability to disappoint our expectations – and then to fulfill at least some of them when we are all ready to give up) – and an even higher level of bleakness that can only be handled with a big step into surrealism, dream territories, and some fleeting moments of relief.
Though I always raise my eyebrows when David Lynch promotes his heavily manipulative TM machinery (as bad as Scientology), he is definitely still a master in filmmaking, a chain-smoker, and (looking at the bonus material) apparently a warm-hearted person (sometimes:)).
It takes some time to discover old traces of humour and burlesque again, but they still exist. As does a prevailing sense of wonder. This is enlightening stuff from the department of darkness, and more so for those who have seen the first two seasons decades ago. A show that once changed the landscape of television forever – ask Damon Lindelof, the mastermind of LOST and THE LEFTOVERS. Or, simply remember.
And, please, forget your dreams of fairytale endings. In essence, it is all about the samsara of life, the illlusionary character of everything we are striving for with blindness (to only offer you the polite version). We learn these things with a devastating sense of hopelessness. David Lynch wanted us to feel utterly lost. It’s one of the most powerful emotions there is. What a paradox that in the end you are left speechless, but with a strangely knowing smile.
And the humans here, coming back from the glorious past of early Twin Peaks – some of them have had to face their deaths in fucking real life, after the curtain call. The old lucid dreamer‘s question about being in a dream or in waking life, you can ask this the whole way through. David Lynch looks at „The Return“ as a long movie, and was getting some angry responses by the same fools who thought Bob Dylan should never have come even near winning his Nobel prize. Trapped in classification. „Twin Peaks – The Return“ is a masterpiece – and its ways of delivering sound, song and noise add to the magic. By the way, the extras on disc 8 are the icing on the dark cake.