From: iott@rtsg.mot.com (Joel K. Iott)
Subject: Re: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (*MAJOR SPOILERS*)
Summary: What does it all mean?
Organization: Motorola Inc.
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 22:43:41 GMT

The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for Twin Peaks:Fire Walk With Me. 
It is intended to be read by people who have already seen the movie.

Do not read this if you are thinking about seeing the movie!  Go see it
yourself, while it's still in the theaters.


I saw TP:Fire Walk With Me, last weekend.  I didn't know what a lot of the
symbolism was supposed to mean, so I thought I would ask if anybody else had
some ideas.  Things I don't totally remember are marked (?).

After the movie, I went home and watch the TV series premeire.  I was suprised
both by how well the movie leads into the premeire, and how the premeire
managed to introduce just about every character and theme that would be fully
explored later in the series.

As I write this, I think: Does anybody know except Lynch?  Should I get a life
and give up TP? 

1. The angel.

Laura has a (cutesy) picture of a family having dinner around a table.  There
is an angel in the picture near the table.  Laura appears to like the picture.

Laura sees the angel disappear and reappear in the picture (?).  At the time
of her death the picture is shown again, and the angel disappears.

In the train car, an angel appears and saves Ronette Pulaski.  The angel
appears later in the red room (?)

So what is this supposed to mean?  Ronette isn't as "bad" as Laura was, so she
deserved to be saved by some heavenly power, while Laura did not?  And why
would the angel appear in the red room?


2. The one-armed man/arms.

The one-armed man manages to make it to the train car, open it up, and pull out
Ronette Pulaski.  He doesn't go in, though, and he doesn't help Ronette away
from the train car, as we see later when Leland leaves her for dead when he is
carting away Laura.

Maybe he doesn't go in because he's afraid of Bob??? But why didn't he help
Ronette away from the train car?

The one-armed man appears in the red room with the dwarf.  They say something
praising Bob (?).  But isn't the one-armed man supposed to be a good guy???

Also, regarding arms, we find out that Ronette & Laura both have their left (?)
arms go numb before they are killed.  The one-armed man cut off his arm "when
he saw the face of God" (from Cooper's dream).  Towards the end of the second
season, various people's hands are twitching uncontrollably. Hmmm...

Anybody understand what the one-armed man was saying to Leland, when Leland was
stuck behind the logging truck?

3. Mrs. Duchamp and her grandson

From what I remember, Mrs. Duchamp (sp?) (old woman) commands Bob to go out in
the world and do something for her (get a soul?).  We also see various other
characters in the dirty abandoned room in which they where in (none of whom I
recognized, except for the dwarf).

Later, she gives Laura the picture.  The picture is of a door, suggesting
perhaps a doorway to an alternate universe? I didn't really understand what its
purpose in the movie was.  There was a scene about Laura (or her "ghost") going
through the door, but I don't remember it going anywhere.  Mrs. Duchamp lives
in a trailer park under the number 6, which might be a anti-christ reference,
666.  The devil lives in a trailer?

Her grandson wears a mask with suggestive phallic tendencies and says "Watch
out for the man behind the mask".  I interpret his comments to be about Leland
- murderer/incest committer.


4. Food

The dwarf calls the mush-like stuff in the dirty apartment something like
"garbonzolia".   Later the word is followed by paranthesis in the subtitles as
(pain and suffering) (?).  He drinks the mushy stuff at this time.

TV: When we last saw Mrs Duchamp & grandson, she tells Donna that she hates
hospital food - that she hopes there was no creamed corn in the meal.  Her
grandson plays "magic tricks" with the creamed corn.  He rubs his hands
together (?), as the dwarf often does.  (No I didn't go back and look at this
scene on video.)

5. Bob etc.

Leland goes to the black lodge after he murders Laura.  Bob is there, and
suspends him from the air.  Bob pulls the blood out of Leland's stomach area,
and it drips off Bob's hand onto the floor.  The blood vanishes from the floor.

Also: did Leland kill Jacques Renault outside the cabin or not???  In the
movie, it seems as though Jacques is dead.  In the TV series, he is fine, and
later Leland kills him (when he is in the hospital recovering from Andy's
gunshot). 

TV notes: Coop is shot at the end of season 1 and bleeds from the stomach.  In
the finale, in the red room, Coop finds himself bleeding from the stomach area.
Mrs. Palmer repeatedly saw disappearing dark spots on her carpet, in her
visions.

6. James Hurley

Interesting that James and Laura had sex (strongly implied by the movie).
In general the movie shows sex a "bad thing", and part of Laura's dark side.
Ref: the extended scene at the canadian strip bar, where Donna is nearly
"corrupted". 

Also interesting was the extremely tight closeups of James and Laura when they
were talking in the woods (at the end of the movie).  James' face filled the
screen.  A review I read said that long, brightly lit takes were used by Lynch
to suggest Laura's good side, where tight, dark takes were used to suggest
Laura's bad side.  Maybe this is showing Laura's dark side finally taking over,
even when she's with James?

7. Who is that, anyway?

At the end of the movie, a woman is shown in the red room.  It is a blonde
woman with large curls in a black dress.  Is this Laura with a new hairdo ?  It
isn't Annie, but it might be Caroline (from the TV series finale).

Someone shows up next to Laura in her bed with her throat cut.  It wasn't
Teresa Banks, it seemed like Ronette Pulaski (who wasn't dead then!).  She says
something like "Cooper is in the Black Lodge" ???