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.

plato's cave thirty two (being a film journal) it is happening again

Mark Frost and David Lynch - Twin Peaks - 2017

From Part One, Introduction of an essential element in the new Twin Peaks : electricity

Cooper is with the Giant (or ????????), played by Carel Struycken, in a backwards space; similar but most likely not the Black Lodge. The giant has been seen previously in another form, as the Room Service Waiter of the Great Northern Hotel (played by Hank Worden, the great John Ford actor, the Shakespearean fool who only longed for "a roof over his head and a rocking chair by the fire."). 

Different from the Black Lodge which is red, this space is black & white. Initially when seeing the Black Lodge in the 90s, this viewer was struck by the method Lynch achieved the oddness of these scenes.... having the actors go through the lines backwards and then playing them backwards so they appear forwards (image and sound). The glitches and imperfections became quite striking from this technique. Here in the phonograph scene, the backwards technique is present. The backwards technique is truly one of the most unique and otherworldly techniques in film history.

In this scene one observes the phonograph crackling... it is more an electrical crackle rather than the sound of a a needle on a record. These electricity sounds continue through the series. Here the sound mimics crow caws.

Cooper listens to the electricity.....

The sounds are followed by the Giant saying "Agent Cooper. Listen to the sounds (electricity loop). It is in our house now. It all cannot be said aloud now. Remember … 430. Richard and Linda. Two birds with one stone.”

The electricity continues to crackle and Cooper crackles into disappearance.

More detail emerges on ????????'s environment especially in The Return: Part 8 (episode 8). It is a fascinating place, more on this space later.

"Richard" is Richard Horne? the sadistic trash offspring of Audrey Horne and Bad Cooper? Linda? Linda remains unclear.

plato's cave thirty one (being a film journal) it is happening again

david lynch and mark frost - twin peaks - 2017*

opening credit sequence

the opening credit sequence for part one** varies slightly from later parts as it has the i'll see you again in 25 years intro (see images one through seven) which is accompanied by a drone undercurrent. the intro begins in the black lodge with a rather psychedelic filming of the floor's "chevron pattern" and the red velvet curtains. it then shows agent cooper and laura palmer with her message of i'll see you again in 25 years, a backwards finger snap, and the meanwhile hand gesture. there is some conjecture on the meaning of the meanwhile hand gesture. the intro then shows a montage of the saw mill, the twin peaks school, and a young female student running and crying in slow motion seen through school windows. there are some subtle yet hair-raising orchestral flair ups in the soundtrack during the running, not unlike something you would hear in the shining, then back to laura palmer's picture prominently featured in the school's trophies display window.

in addition, the opening credit sequence for the first part (or episode) does not have laura palmer's face multi-exposed over the waterfall as it does in later parts, as it would have been redundant to her face seen at the end of the intro.

the remainder of the title sequence is consistent with the rest of the series***. it begins with a dazzling aerial shot of the twin peaks waterfalls, or snoqualmie falls, then a very slow dissolve to the red curtains, followed by a very slow dissolve to the chevron floor. the floors and curtains dissolving and shifting is quite mesmerizing. the sequence ends with a dissolve to black.

to my ear****, the badalementi track twin peaks theme is a shortened version from the first and second season (and the ost) of twin peaks. it sounds to me to be a new recording which is very close to the original, but it might just be a goosed up version of the original.

variations from the original are the beautiful drone introduction,  reverberant cymbals which begin around the time the camera starts tracking the falls, distant water sounds which are heard as the falls descend, and lastly a doom-laden drone that fades up around the time the chevron pattern appears.

all these variations from the original have something of a dramatic effect on the viewer, and warn of what is to come in the next 18 hours.... less soap opera business that dominated much of the first two seasons (especially the second), and more abstractions and mysteries that will dominate this season.

the beauty that is this title sequence has much to do with, i assume, the editing brilliance of duwayne dunham. the slow dissolves are so unlike much of what one sees in narrative film or television, and are more commonplace in avant-garde and european film. dunham also edited blue velvet, wild at heart, and parts of season one and two of twin peaks. his work throughout this 18 hour work is groundbreaking and has much to do with the effect this work has.

*this series on twin peaks aims to mainly look at visual and sonic mysteries happening in the series.

**in an interview with dean hurley, music supervisor for lynch, he stated lynch saw the new twin peaks as a single movie with sections or "parts", rather than episodes: "the whole thing - remember - was one giant script shot as one long movie. that’s why he is calling these “parts” and not “episodes” - because they weren’t designed to have arcs between each bit like a normal television show. he (lynch) was interested in the giant story and slicing the pie up."

***up to part nine when i did this post

***if anyone has more information, or hears it differently, i would be interested in more info.