From: s1mbm@isuvax.iastate.edu (michael bruce mcdonald)
Subject: Re: FIRE WALK WITH ME
Reply-To: s1mbm@isuvax.iastate.edu
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 06:43:45 GMT

In article <CINEMA-L%93012716410560@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU>, Rolando Recometa <$W$LB4P@LUCCPUA.BITNET> writes:
>Michael,
>   I haven't seen Fire Walk With Me but intend to, now that you're
>raving mad about it. Lynch is a great director who is slowly sinking
>into self-parody. Wild At Heart was all quirk and no substance. It made
>me laugh a lot but to this day, I'm not sure if it was funny or just
>laughable. It was like watching a bad Elvis Impersonation contest. Am I
>supposed to laugh or feel sorry?
>    As for The Last of the Mohicans being a Rambo movie for those who
>look down on Rambo movies, well, I was quite amused by the critical
>plaudits and box office success this movie has gotten. Take away the
>Britishness(which for some spells class), the lush photography, and the
>historical dressing, what you have is Daniel Day-Lewis tossing his long
>hair, baring his chest, spitting out corny dialogue, running around in
>graceful slow motion, a rifle in each hand, blasting away at the enemy -
>an 18th century Rambo. It also doesn't help that director Michael Mann
>directs it like a spinoff of Miami Vice - call it Mohawk Vice!
>                                                               Rolando

Rolando, as always, I appreciate your ideas more the more detailed they be.
I can indeed see, now, that *Mohicans* is a bit Rambo-like once its
Britishness, lush photography, and historical dressing are "taken away,"
though I'm not sure that I'd agree that these elements merely ornament the
film rather than being an intrinsic part of its *content*.  I have to note
that the first scene of this film was so beautifully done that my good will
was extended through the end, though I did cringe profoundly at Lewis's
cross-eyed declarations of love during the shower . . . woops! *waterfall*
scene, and at the ensuing maundering lilt from the once-great Clannad, a
lilt that was no less painful for being mercifully brief.

Rolando, thanks for taking my post in the spirit in which it was intended.
I should be aware, though, that declaring my allegiance to such a near-
universally villified film as *Fire* amounts to "asking for it."  Unlike
Peter Giordano, and like you, I found *Wild at Heart* immensely trite and
disappointing, hopelessly, endlessly self-referential, a paean to postmodern
cynicism (see Peter Slotdijk for an interesting discussion of the general
phenomenon) at its most egregious and, what's worse, at its least effective.

I did not expect *Fire* to be very good at all, especially since the TV series,
which showed so much initial promise, truly ended up being practically just
another soap.

Contra the assumptions of kjf, who figures that films like *Fire* suit the 
turgid desires of the academic to hang those trite and truisms like "desire of
the Other" about the neck of an artifact whose always already dessicated body
was never meant to bear such weight, I was simply deeply moved by *Fire*.
Peter G is right that much of Cheryl Lee's acting is overwrought, I suppose,
but there are moments, I think, where her performance conveys profound feeling.
At least it did for me.  I do plan to take the time and effort to write a 
much more carefully considered and written post than this.  Before I do so,
I feel that I need to consider an aesthetic relationship I have rarely thought
about:  the possible interdependence of realism and expressionism.  Lynch, at
least, seems to be attempting to situate his work amidst the inevitable
slippages and disjunctions between realist and expressionist aesthetics, and
does so quite successfully, in my view, in *Fire*.  From a strong realist
perspective, that is, the film is indeed too much, practically rationalizing
away the vague yet poignant terrors of drug abuse by externalizing those
terrors in Bob and his reluctant servant, Leland.  From a strong expressionist
standpoint, conversely, Bob (and to a lesser degree, the dream sequences)
doesn't go far *enough* toward establishing a nearly decorative two-
dimensionality, a stylized terror whose great precusor remains the wonderful
projected shadowplay of Murnau's *Nosferatu*.  Partly realistic and partly
expressionist, the imagery of *Fire* is ultimately neither, occupying instead
an uneasy space between these two great aesthetic movements.  And this uneasy,
yet-to-be-resolved relationship, I might add, has a *lot* to do with the
uneasy story of 20th century art.  

I wonder if one reason for the film's failure with its critics and audience is
that Lynch did not do enough to indicate that the *audience* has a more
definite, realistically understood knowledge of Bob's demonic and spectral
world than does Laura Palmer.    	SPOILERS AHOY!	




















For instance, the viewer quite definitely *sees* Bob in Laura's room, and
we are led to assume that she *shares* that definite vision.  Yet later, in
confronting Leland, she asks if *he* visited their home the afternoon of
Bob's appearance.  The viewer *sees* that Bob and Leland are interchangeable
beings (though curiously we get none of those mirror non-reflected images
which were the overly-literal tipoffs of the TV show), yet Laura seems
confused about the connection between Bob and Leland, at least at this
point in the film.

Thus, while the viewer is treated (the treat that so many viewers refused
before or after the fact!) to the expected antics of Bob and Leland sharing
the same space if not exactly the same body, *this* viewer, at least, was
led to see the film's expressionism as an externalization of Laura's very
real, drug-induced confusion and anguish, an anguish that also has a lot to
do with her late-adolescent confusion and displacement of *desire*.

Thus, while the film's expressionism *is* almost tawdry in many respects, my
personal response was occasioned, I felt, by a much more subtle impressionistic
thread in the film, a thread focusing on the anguish of a young woman that
remains simply anguish *despite* the riot of excess imagery and antics here.

I don't know.  Maybe I'm just hoky.

Thanks for the response.

michael mcdonald