Restore the rules of the world

How can one think about Charisma (1999, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) without trying to decipher its meaning? Let’s start with some basics. Kôji Yakusho plays YABUIKE. What do we know about Yabuike?

     He’s a cop who’s so over his workload he just sits alone in an empty room avoiding it. Then there’s this standoff between a gunman and his hostage a parliament member. Yabuike arrives on the scene only to walk away from it because of his conflicting morals. Then the guy shoots the hostage and the cops rain down on him with gunfire. Yabuike walking away shows us he didn’t want either to have to die. But specifically why would someone have to shoot and kill the other guy because the hostage holds a post in the government.

     Charisma literally from the Greek means God’s grace. At the end of Charisma the poacher puts a gun to JINBO’s head and Yabuike is so over it he raises his weapon to shoot the guy who even starts to say something like if you do you’re gonna make me kill the hostage but Yabuike doesn’t hesitate for a second. And both the hostage and because it was a nonlethal wound the poacher live. This is the crucial final test of Yabuike’s character after all he’s gone through. And the moral discussion throughout Charisma is despite the reality that nature is made up of forces that want to live and forces that want to kill is it possible through the grace of God to allow both to exist? I’ll let you think about Yabuike’s conclusion.

 

But really the big question what’s up with the tree? On another level I think the tree could be charisma along the lines of winning hearts and minds charm wisdom someone adept at rhetoric persuasion politics cunning. A leader. Which is why we see two sides battling over it. And the way it’s told through these characterizations is what’s so wonderful.

     First there’s bureaucracy. They work in the forest and I guess rig the tree with speedrail. Then there’s the zealot who they all know violently protects the tree. The zealot or protector KIRIYAMA funny we learn was a patient in a now defunct sanatorium in the forest. And the way Yabuike wanders into the abandoned sanitarium unbeknownst to him to sleep there and in the middle of the night Kiriyama returns his gun and badge he mutters he’s taking Yabuike’s soul. I don’t think there are any throw away lines in this film. Think about that later. 

     The opposing side is the ecology professor Jinbo. She tells Yabuike the guy who used to run the sanitarium brought Charisma the tree from the continent and it’s not what everyone thinks it produces a harmful toxin and is killing all the other trees in the forest. Of course we later find out it’s actually she who’s poisoning the forest as a means to make her claims credible. 

     What happens next I take as none of this matters because a stronger force armed invade and kill the tree. No one can stop them. And what’s the image resulting from the aftermath? Mushroom cloud. Nuclear holocaust. 

 

But despite neither Kiriyama nor Jinbo believing him Yabuike begins nursing a new Charisma. The final act of the narrative. As fate would have it through chance events Kiriyama absconds with stolen cash so he doesn’t care about the tree at all anymore or the forest for that matter. In a scathing portrayal he even tries to buy his way into the poachers.

     When the leader of the poachers takes control of the new Charisma everything is in place to set up the standoff mentioned earlier. I see the ending as Yabuike giving up on thinking he can single handedly end highest levels of political corruption all he can do is be average and do his average job so he gives the sprout to Jinbo while admitting he really doesn’t care what she does with it. 

     So everything’s settled. Tied up in a bow for us. We got our answer. Don’t even try to get involved when it comes to high stakes politically motivated action. Right. That’s what Yabuike did and in the end it was what’s right for him. Now he can go back to being a cop. Oh except for what follows is the end of civilization as we know it into a lake of fire oops. 

Fish farm dude ranch milk bar

I don’t know the land means a lot to me. Connective. There’s something there. Siblings fighting over it. Estranged mom returns the son near her as she hangs linens bedsheets bright washed on the clothesline to dry outdoors. Is it possible for everyone to be back together again? Does fate bring the motorist back to prevent YUKATA from finding a way to make his own happiness by destroying what he’s built on the land? Thinking about how Yukata acts like FUJIMORI dumping hazmat there isn’t a big deal.

 

License to Live (1998, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is a tender mumblecore existential comedy about youth the theme of which seems to be leave the past behind you and pour your kindness and heart into the here and now wherever you are because it’ll be gone before you know it and those who cross your path and yourself the mutual exchange interactions will be all you have left once they or you are gone. 

     This film sets itself apart as cinema early on if you consider how generic the premise of someone waking up from a coma after ten years could otherwise be handled. Dude the way Kôji Yakusho plays Fujimori sitting in that hospital room when Yukata asks him about all these major news historic events and to each his lackadaisical response is always like yeah so what who cares whatever type reactions. I think it’s kind of punk. Current events are so boring. Hey can’t I laugh this is a comedy? 

     I wanna say the motorist sets up one of the most often recurring themes running throughout Kurosawa’s films that is something like old people being selfish stubborn in conflict with youth feeling stifled like it prevents any meaningful connection genuine sincere reciprocity of existing in harmony with one another. And what his youth do in reaction to all of it. License to Live feels like it belongs in a loose mumblecore disaffected youth trilogy along with Barren Illusion (1999, Kurosawa) and Bright Future (2002, Kurosawa).

This dates from the Cambrian Period 550 million years ago it's called a Eurasian King's Eyes

You know how there’s that line the math teacher asks the students in Serpent’s Path (1998, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) now what happens when we add dualism? I think that’s a joke about Eyes of the Spider (1998, Kurosawa). As heavy as the moralizing and confronting those who contribute to the lowest depravities in society is in Serpent’s Path we now see all that turned on its head and get its complete opposite Eyes of the Spider.

 

Eyes of the Spider is this heartwarming tender set amid rural splendor slow peaceful quiet meditation comedy that allows us to empathize with a man whose young daughter was killed along the path he follows in life after his albeit pretty quickly handled revenge shooting the man responsible. This is also one of the most indicative examples of just when you think you’ve hit lower tier Kiyoshi Kurosawa you are proven to have been too hasty to judgement.

     But think about Serpent’s Path for a second. This time around in Eyes of the Spider our everyman again Shô Aikawa plays a character with the exact same name NAOMI NIIJIMA is now the protagonist we follow. After he gets recruited by an old high school friend into the yakuza their first job finds them trying to verify the identity of a target and it’s so easy it’s funny what does Niijima do? He checks the man’s license. This is hilarious if you remember how hard this was in Serpent’s Path. But so yeah in the same sequence the boss asks Niijima to shoot the man and Niijima hesitates for a second then the boss says no problem and does it himself. Ultimately the biggest difference is the yakuza IWAMATU just wants to be buddies with Niijima.

     The dramatic conflict turns out to be a higher ranking yakuza played by Ren Ôsugi implores Niijima to supply him with info reporting on Iwamatu who later turns out to be breaking the rules dealing with the head of the Kinsai Family. But okay the old dude Ren Ôsugi plays is this kind rock collector who spends all his time hunting for precious stones in the mountains. Drastic tonal shift from Serpent’s Kiss this film makes it okay for us to love these dudes. The yakuza in Eyes of the Spider is this aimless hijinks workplace comedy.

 

So much happens in the last few minutes. Spanning time. And while normally I would have thought about how I was taught a passive protagonist is poor writing this exception proves the rule. It’s profound how Niijima just deals with the hand life deals him over and over again. 

     When his dead daughter Mitsuko appears at their home as a ghost he just denies it and says there’s nothing there. In any other movie that would be played up for its dramatic or horror impact potential. And when he and we see that dude in the wheelchair in the span of such a short runtime oh how he and we have changed the way we think about things. Zen existentialism. Flow through life like water. Be in harmony with your surroundings what a punch. Now we’ve all been transported back to a state of childlike innocence and wonder at how beautiful it is to be alive. 

What happens next? The clue is analytical theorem

Building on my take of Kurosawa’s previous film I read Serpent’s Path (1998, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) as a condemnation of depravity calling out the smallest cog in the machine the distribution of evil a lowly salesman is made accountable for and found guilty of contributing the worst overall whereby he’s led under false pretenses through an intricate trap that twists his own twisted morality back on himself. Its thesis is that only an innocent child has the sincerity to discern right from wrong yet none other than an innocent child is the one society is most affected by upon those transgressing said laws. I also kinda see it as dismantling the yakuza genre through directly confronting us its audience.

     The allegory in Serpent’s Path is the nastiest sfuff to be put on camera is perpetrated by the one selling it. This hits so hard with me because I’ve often pondered the nature of how just thinking about that this kinda stuff exists what disturbs me more than the acts themselves is that someone would film it. I never even thought to consider the culpability of someone who sells it. Beyond disturbing I now gotta agree someone marketing finding a clientel for said offensive taboo criminal contraband materials is too scary. More than that the way the MIYASHITA character is depicted oblivious in denial that he’s even done anything wrong. The chilling part of it all is that addressing all this is real life.

 

But the fun of it all is Shô Aikawa as NÎJIMA. The first time I saw Serpent’s Path he felt like this symbolizing embodiment of justice. As in the faulty legal system indiscriminately punishing not necessarily those who committed the crime but close enough. Somebody’s gotta pay. 

     Obviously though the twist ending is set up the first lines in the movie. Are you sure it’s the guy? It doesn’t matter they’re all connected. Miyashita laughs. Then at the end to Miyashita you were all in the same business right? The idea of the serpent’s path could refer to this grand tragedy very moralizing inevitable cause and effect tale of Miyashita making the wrong choice and paying for it. And Niijima is charismatic cool icon of countless yakuza films as against type teacher detached aloof yet driven his dialogue so revealing when he says in answer to the reason he’s doing all this I just wanted to try something like this.

     Then there’s the great image system wheels of justice Niijima constantly spinning that chamber. Also you ever notice when theyr’e playing darts that gag hearing Otsuki moaning off screen suggests though he’s obviously not really like he’s getting hit with the darts. Like he’s part of their game. Which he is. Which it turns out everyone is. And another weird image system thing is every time I see this you can’t help but notice that table of arts and crafts in the math classroom with funerary wreaths being assembled. And finally definitely not funny how do I wash this out of my brain the filthy slide swing set and chair with stirrups in the abandoned warehouse is the uh stuff that nightmares are made of. 

 

Finally there’s the way Serpent’s Path deglamorizes the yakuza genre. Like how Miyashita is having so much fun thrilled bloodthirsty bent on revenge giddy until he’s not. Once Niijima and we know Niijima intricately planned this whole thing gets Miyashita to shoot someone he doesn’t think any of this is as fun anymore. Nor do we. He becomes just this pathetic wretch loser. We realize we’re into something more now.

     The coolest most effective memorable scene in Serpent’s Path is when Miyashita crashes the classroom and right when he’s lulled into thinking he’s going to get what he’s come after. His reward. And by thanking the teacher they’re like friends or something. Like his dignity is intact. Like he’s in a place he can appreciate the child prodigy and her goodness. But no. He can’t. When he’s confronted by her outside that shot. The way his whole demeanor changes. And the blaring overwhelming sound of the el train behind them drowns us until it cuts to silence. Kiyoshi Kurosawa again here manages to make him accountable for what he’s done. And us too.

 

4/5/2026 4/8/2026 Plaza Theatre

Atlanta, GA

People like to think a crime has some meaning but most of them don't

The dualism inherent in movies for me is popcorn vs cinema. Commerce/art. I need both to live. Though distinct from one another that isn’t to say either is better or worse. Sick after consuming garbage I yearn for sustenance. You can only watch elevated transcendental form for so long until the monotony becomes unbearable and you need to restore balance with rousing spectacle instant gratification you don’t have to think about. 

     When I think of the 90s I lived it I think of serial killers. The Silence of the Lambs (1991, Jonathan Demme) and Seven (1995, David Fincher). As far as they were what’s new. Awards. Box office. Cultural. But there’s also something especially looking back I find distasteful. The only thing that really bothers me. Depravity. 

 

I take the meaning of the title of the movie Cure (1997, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) to refer to the antidote to depravity. Or what I find far worse. People who like to watch it. The first way Kurosawa does this is to deglamorize the killings. 

     Notice how of all five of the murderers the three we are shown none of which exemplify this as much as the cop. Probably one of the most memorable discussed scenes in Cure. That wide static daytime ext and the way it happens so mundane without in any way being stylized. None of the murders in Cure have any motive until it’s programmed into them. Cure dismantles the serial killer juggernaut sensation of the 90s which preceded it. We aren’t lured into following the narrative to find out why they did it because we already know why. And it’s nothing special.

     Yet we still get to follow the procedural. So what is it we are trying to solve? That’s just it we aren’t. Popcorn would have us solve the mystery. But Cure as cinema instead forces us to realize we’ve been hypnotized and have to snap out of it. 

 

I’m gonna skip to the end and come right out with it when TAKABE murders MAMIYA I don’t think it’s because he’s to carry on the Mesmer legacy taken over from Mamiya. He's too perfect new lease on life to be. I think Takabe does it because he realizes Mamiya is a hoax. Powerless. Mamiya is depravity enticing Takabe to find his true self telling him that by freeing him he will get to hear his true secret. But Takabe doesn’t buy it. And when he asks Mamiya if he remembers now it’s because they’re both divested themselves of their mutual interest in the illusion that led up to this point. There never was a secret. It was only a means to pull people down the rabbit hole. Into the abyss. This is real life now. Mostly I feel this because afterwards Takabe isn't in the same lost condition Mamiya was always in plus didn't Mamiya have to read like a thousand books to get that way. 

     Mamiya is the media. He’s empty. He uses manipulation psychology tricks to get people to believe they suffer from unfair plights that they’re only way out of is to take it out on others. And he’s so cool. Seriously. That shaggy mop thin moustache stoner gen X slacker baggy Aran sweater Cobain disaffected charm sincere ASMR hypnotizing sound design accompanying cozy doom is the reason I can’t stop watching this movie. Over and over again. Mamiya is cure is cinema is the greatest thing any movie could ever do. Hypnotize its audience. Suspension of disbelief. Put your stupid phone away and pay attention. 

 

Likewise the wife of Takabe is also a depiction of another type of problem which arises from popcorn. Hollow shallow meaningless entertainment with no redeeming value. The first scene in the movie when FUMIE is asked what the book she read is about is repeated later on. And when the doctor asks about the book she has no recollection of ever having read it. Just like after you watch a big budget Hollywood movie and take away absolutely nothing from it. 

     And when Fumie gets lost on that bridge in that signature Kurosawa high wide ext with the overpowering sound of wind that’s like us getting lost in a movie. Like she losing our grasp on reality is proof that we have crossed over into the power of cinema. But when she does a load of laundry yet the washer is empty or serves a steak that isn’t cooked we can see this as the media causing one to lose touch with reality despite not actually hurting anyone. When the doctor at the sanatorium tells Takabe he looks sicker than his wife it’s because she’s able to live her meaningless life while remaining healthy. Unlike him.

 

The dualism in Cure is it pathologizes our sickness allowing us to indulge in it while curing us of it. It warns us of the perilous rabbit hole while tempting us to jump in. And I did. I have. A notion I have is that both Mamiya and Fumie suffer from memory loss is because they and we can’t remember anything before Cure because the other fifteen movies Kurosawa made up until now no longer matter. 

I am a black hole

Initial thoughts the Frankenstein character represents culture. The old. Romantic. As in pop culture in one sense. Escape fantasy dream factory product for consumption by the masses. For you see he too was created. He has been programmed conditioned to find someone and fall in love. As if that’s the only plausible meaning of existence. Where could he have got this from? Spending all his time in the cinema? 
     His delusional parasocial obsessive star worship alternates between that and projecting himself onto the celluloid he’s infatuated with. And this cycle leads to reinvigorating the corpse of the next phase of culture. The new. The Bride.
 
The Bride is accultured to her role in the status quo by Frankenstein (prevalent culture) lying to her denying her any agency identity covering up her gaslighting her trauma abuse murder and any other derivation of systemic silencing of her voice. Yet it is she who is stitched together from a bunch of different pieces. All the movies The Bride! (2026, Maggie Gyllenhaal) is cobbled together from.
     That’s why it feels like such a mess. The Bride is coming to terms with disavowing the culture that created her (and us too) pulling her pistol on everyone she blames for all manner of wrongs and moral transgressions that cause oppression while struggling to accept that it’s a part of her that happens to be pretty fun. She tears it down (hidden meaning #MeToo is what broke it?). Then everyone kills it. Then she realizes she loves it after it’s too late. But Hollywood ending Hollywood doesn’t die. Because it was never alive to begin with.
     Larry Sher’s grimy gloomy orange nasty palette big budget studio riot revolutionary cynical fake biting the hand that feeds you conformist punk wallowing in its own grandeur gothic revenge odyssey is so rad. Because it revels in its acquiescent turmoil and they gave her $90 million to make it. The Bride! despite even if I’m totally misreading it is way ahead of its time and quite possibly my favorite studio movie of the year.
 
3/7/2026 AMC Madison Yards 8
Atlanta, GA

Dog in the manger

You ask me the most romantic film of all time is Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974, Rainer Werner Fassbinder). Its design is two people from completely different backgrounds who similarly exist in quiet lives where they go unrecognized unappreciated undervalued until the moment they meet then mutually find and reciprocate simple modest kindness that blossoms into genuine affection until it inevitably withers. The romance genre as tearjerker. Fassbinder as tender brutalist. 

What Wuthering Heights (2026, Emeral Fennell) does is express love as the painful sick toxic self-degrading miserable excruciatingly brief yet eternally damaging inborn prank nature has bestowed on us. And it has fun doing so. Romance as bleak tragedy as dark as it gets.

     The prologue sells us the spectacle of death and sex we cheer for. The introduction of Catherine’s home Wuthering Heights full of yonic images that clit arch the winding river originating from where life begins. Poor illiterate people fuck better. And the sentimental child promise I won’t go away I will never leave you no matter what you do is the sweetest bliss swooning heart butterflies people stupid enough to exchange as part of nuptial vows for thousands of years can’t help but fall for. 
     When Heathcliff breaks that chair we know that he’s the only one good enough for Cathy. But in real life you end up hurting the one you love. And so Wuthering Heights translates into cinema a projection of a couple who have found the greatest love of all time so they treat each other abysmally spitefully relentlessly their imaginations energy and souls dedicated to the vindictive harm torture dirty talk and every variety of abuse they are able to inflict upon one another. Everything I always knew was the full expression of love. Thrushcross Grange is Academy Award for Best Production Design with that sitting room with the lacquer red floor and white marble hands mantlepiece. 
     ISABELLA LINTON is what makes Wuthering Heights probably the finest Hollywood studio trash targeted at a large audience of the twenty-first century. Alison Oliver is bubbly adorable vulnerable wanton the only character whose pain I truly feel whose arousal I truly blush. She’s the golden honeypot at the end of the tragedy degradation arc. Romance = passion. Wuthering Heights is the lavish big budget journey from the sentimental passion of first love into pornographic all consuming overwhelming lust. Passion of the heart passion of the flesh what two desires could be least worthy of our trust. Second in overall impact only to Buñuel’s adaptation of the same source Abismos de pasión (1954). And I do respect the scene where Cathy looks in the mirror and slaps herself callback to Ali: Fear Eats the Soul.

2/14/2026 AMC Phipps 14
Atlanta, GA

6. The End—Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks exists in a dream. The dream conveys the message that when evil corrupts good there is a suffering felt by all followed by the wish to have prevented it by some or by accepting it and seeing what we learn from it by others. When some are unable to accept the dream or attempt to actually prevent it the result is a cosmogonic catastrophe.
     In Twin Peaks (1990-91) the pilot is everything. Then at ABC Bob Iger becomes the first to break one of the two rules. 1.) Accept the dream. 2.) Don’t try to prevent the dream from occurring. Iger doesn’t accept the dream. He forces Lynch and Frost to reveal the killer. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that when Lynch is forced to give Evil in Twin Peaks a name it’s Bob. Note that in this its first iteration dream is meant in terms of a system of archetypal images drawn from the unconscious to convey a message.
     In Fire Walk with Me (1992, David Lynch) the tragedy is impacted even more so upon learning that the victim LAURA PALMER made the choice to sacrifice herself instead of allowing said evil to possess her entirely. Her catharsis is attained through angels comforting her soul in the afterlife where she rejoices over her triumph. DALE COOPER shows up in their shared dream and tries to persuade her not to take the ring though. He’s breaking rule 2 although we don’t really see the consequences in this movie. PHILLIP JEFFRIES goes looking for Judy breaks rule 1. Finds his way above the convenience store into the black lodge. Cosmogonic catastrophe. And he finds Twin Peaks exists inside a dream. Note here the iteration of dream expands to include the sense of existing in the realm of the unconscious mind and not real. And it’s truly terrifying. My guess is what Laura whispers to Dale at the end is something like Hey you know how all the fans are going to bitch about how they aren’t getting the answers closure they deserve well it’s their fault and Iger’s because remember Lynch and Mark Frost pitched this as a series we never reveal who the killer is?
     In The Return (2017, Lynch) we see what happens with the Phillip Jeffries Gordon Cole and Garland Briggs Blue Rose Task force plan to capture Judy. You guessed it. Cosmogonic catastrophe. Sitting in the black lodge the whole time Cooper re-enters the dream of Twin Peaks via astral projection. Stubbornly defiantly bent on finding Judy he now realizes in episode 17 that Twin Peaks is a dream. So he decides to wake the dreamer who dreams the dream and lives inside of it. But who is the dreamer? At first it seems like in the real world after waking Cooper and DIANE are really Richard and Linda. Richard tries to prevent the dream of Laura’s murder from occurring resulting in cosmogonic catastrophe. Then again in reality the dreamer is revealed to have been CARRIE PAGE this whole time and the proof we have of this is the 6 post electrical wires outside her trailer is the same from the one at the trailer of Bob’s first victim TERESA BANKS. Then mistake two Richard refuses to accept the dream by driving Carrie from Odessa to Twin Peaks. Carrie’s final unsettling scream when Judy calls to Laura from within the reality house is the return to where it all began. That first iteration of the dream meant in terms of a system of archetypal images drawn from the unconscious to convey a message. The final existential blackout the final cosmogonic catastrophe inevitably returned to. That’s it. Done. And. Time.

 

I never saw horror movies growing up. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I went to see Scream (1996, Wes Craven) in the theater. So by the time I was old enough to I was too old to be scared by a movie. But no wait. One night when I was in middle school I was a very naughty boy and left alone at some strange home I found this blank vhs tape and watched my first David Lynch movie Twin Peaks Fire Walk with Me (1992) and it was scary. It still is. In fact I now realize it’s the only film that has ever legitimately scared me.
     The stuff I’m talking about is specifically the old woman giving Laura the framed picture with a photograph of an open door that she takes home later and hangs in her room. And this scene where one night she enters the door and we see her in bed looking at herself going through the door in the picture. To this day that moment is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. That and another scene towards the end in her bedroom when she’s all coked up and the framed picture of the children at the table as the guardian angel watching over them vanishes before our eyes.
     I’m like thirteen when I see this so before I had ever seen any of Twin Peaks the series. But this laid the foundation. So when I did I found there’s so much stuff that frightened me tapping into these repressed or forgotten fears. Especially when Leland Plamer remembers that a man next door to a house his parents used to live at when he was a little boy would light matches and throw them at him and say Do you want to play with fire little boy? Do you want to play with Bob?
 
Fire Walk with Me means everything to me. Of the world of Twin Peaks it’s the only film. And obviously I have a lifelong eternal strong bias in preference of film vs tv so the opening shot of the sledge destroying the white noise cathode ray tube is a language system that gets me excited.
     Fire Walk with Me is harrowing to say the least. Among anything else Lynch has done it’s by far the most unsettling scary terrifying hard to watch gorgeous sublime spiritual transcendent beautiful thing I’ve ever watched. How? Wouldn’t you have to be psycho to love this movie? LAURA PALMER is this teen prostie cokehead incest abused suicidal out of control lost sheep?
     But she’s also innocent does Meals on Wheels is magnetic darling of eveyone’s affection bubbly cute blonde adorable homecoming queen angelic force. And Sheryl Lee’s performance finds her fully capable of evoking both parts equally in perfect balance. Seriously though the standout my favorite moment is when she and BOBBY BRIGGS score those kilos and he shoots DEPUTY CLIFF the way Laura is so zonked out she keeps laughing the whole time. At first it’s spontaneously tonally contrasting and then after the third fifth time when she tells him laughing You killed Mike I laugh even harder and harder at how tense but how vital and enthralling the jawdropping hold your breath edge of your seat intensity of the whole thing is. Bobby you killed Mike.
 
The Deer Meadow procedural segment is like its own little movie. And I love it. It’s what makes Fire Walk with Me instantly the most fun rewarding rewatch out of any of Lynch’s other films for me. Timeless. The PHILLIP JEFFRIES bit is now too canon. And those are some of the other things that scared me so much when I was a kid that COOPER in the video monitor frozen image as he steps out of frame and sees it confirming a premonition he received in his dream. The fingernail letter. The lipstick script windshield Let’s Rock with foreboding sound design. This thing has some of the most unnerving sound design abstractions to be found anywhere.
     And to close I guess now grown up what chills me even more is RONETTE PULASKI’S dialogue in the train car. The Father if I die now will you see me part. And how after she says she’s sorry her angel unties her from her bondage so she can escape. The Cherubini opera. How grand it all is. Magnificent. Crescendo of torment anguish. Garmonbozia for the masses. This all sets it apart from every other thing that’s been part of Twin Peaks. It’s its own stand alone art form. It’s the final word on what Lynch is. It’s the end of Twin Peaks. The end of pointless speculation. The end of cinema.

 
 
Twin Peaks Season 3 (2017, Lynch) is in another way the most satisfying culmination of David Lynch’s style with all of his charms strengths and beauty on full display except with a somewhat lighter touch. His only work that can be considered as having been made post-net we get fan service through a sense of of course with the help of Mark Frost an awareness of all of the overwrought fanatic speculations theories and interpretations that abound.
     First of all the joy. I mean come on ow fun is this thing? I’m a sucker for saccharine. You know how you realize in Mulholland Drive (2001, Lynch) the top-heavy Betty Elms narrative is the sweetest most genuinely if not over the top wholesome innocent naïve hopeful full of bliss we’ve ever seen from Lynch? And why? Naomi Watts. Hence our treat in the DOUGIE JONES narrative. Watts playing JANEY-E makes for this perfectly idealized fantasy home life of love sex job family finances child partnership friendship couple parents little slice of paradise so pure as to never get old. But gotta mention the Mitchum Bros too. BRAD and ROD. Great stuff.
     And nowhere near as much in any other David Lynch movie have I laughed so much so often. Off the top of my head when HUTCH asks CHANTAL if she’s on her period and she ferociously instantly snaps back WHAT IF I WAS? And after coldblooded assassinating that dude using a sniper rifle who dies in front of his young son sociopath the way Hutch lightheartedly says Next stop Wendy’s. Or after BILL HASTINGS head is ripped open when GORDON COLE plainly surmises the obvious He’s dead. 
 
If you think Twin Peaks Season 3 is bleak you’re missing the whole picture. The sunny side of this thing is enormous. Okay random but I wondered what happened to how most of the original series and film were so drenched in trauma from sexual abuse? Like say notice how there’s no rape? Other than what we’re told happened between Mr. C and Diane; and the end of that phone call with Jean-Michel Renault at the Roadhouse. And what do we get along the lines of prostitution? JADE is living her best life. What happened? She’s one of the prettiest happiest characters?
     Both Janey-E and CANDIE SANDIE and MANDIE embody this whole tradwife role. But even they all seem to love it and thriving. This revisionist Las Vegas role depiction system is rad. The mafia have hearts of gold. And when that old lady gets her life back on track and reunites with her son all because of Mr. Jackpots how can you not shed a tear. When Candie is so moved because Brad and Rod really do have hearts of gold I wonder what could ever spoil this magic world.
 
The dark is pitch black though too. THE EXPERIMENT is JUDY. In New York we see that Sam and Tracey prove you can’t trap her; just as we see when the dreamer is awakened and she calls out to Laura from inside Mrs. Tremond’s house; she the experiment created at the Trinity site and summoned by Jack Parsons’ sex magik rituals is wreaking her havoc and anyways enough said about that we’re not going to talk about Judy. 
     The way Lynch stages pov shots of night driving is one of his most iconic legacies. The woodsmen. The convenience store. And what I find scary as hell on top of all that is how many entrances we get in Twin Peaks Season 3. Portals. Coordinates. How terrifying it is when Mr. C being led by that woodsman to the top of the convenience store by that staircase whose terminus is a wall with no door. Archetypal doom; the way the Dutchman’s is in that cheap motel; Cooper’s room at the Great Northern; how when Mr. C finds that the coordinates were a trap he returns to the black lodge on his own as if giving up and how we feel the chill that he was powerless this whole time.
     The most troubling aspect in Twin Peaks Season 3 compared to everything else Lynch did is how far it takes you down the rabbit hole. And how little else than an existential void is to be found. Which is the point. And its perplexity complexity. The fan service of crackpot theories it subtly acknowledges. Like how it’s also all AUDREY HORNE’S dream and she awakens from it in a white vacuum in a hospital gown like she and we are crazy from having followed it this far.
    In the black lodge when the Arm and Mike give the clues 430 two birds with one stone 253 time and time again it highlights the two rules again 1.) Accept the dream. 2.) Don’t try to prevent the dream from occurring. When Richard attempts to awaken from the dream of Twin Peaks then awaken the dreamer by breaking both rules first one and then the other Laura’s final scream and the obliteration of the real world they inhabit is the final point establishing once and for all the inevitable mistake cause of the recurring cosmogonic disaster by breaking the two rules is thus demonstrating the demise of the two birds in effect thwarting the false conviction of trying to defeat Judy.
     The answer is to look within ourselves to work on what we can. Live a better life appreciative of what we have. Look around us. Love those close to us. Feel for everyone else around us. Seek to understand the mysteries. It’s not about defeating evil or blame shifting hate or revenge it’s about embracing good. And although for what it is its meta interdimensional planes of reality are addictively pulling us into their undertow you know the whole scope of it and its clean HD digital clean episodic heft set it apart from Fire Walk with Me in that it’s not as emotionally striking or immediate. Not as terrifying in the way that film is because it’s unsettling in a different way. Existentially. 

5. Women in Trouble—David Lynch’s two Hollywood pictures

The difference between Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch) and the rest of the films Lynch made is that it takes us to a place where we get to experience all of the bliss exhilaration joy sweet wonder promise of everything. Particularly our first love and a creative passion we love both so intensely as if to make our lives perfectly realized. Emotional paradise. 

     And by this I mean the BETTY world. The bulk of the film. When was the last time this kind of plucky G-rated schmaltz camp was so gratifying? It’s never too much. The wide-eyed naïve excessive enthusiasm is me. An involuntary tendency I have that’s been pointed out to me. And I’m pretty sure I got it from this movie. The most exemplary instance of this has probably always been this line when Betty leaves for her audition and says And don’t drink all the Coke which I’ve always matched to an identical scene from Showgirls (1995, Paul Verhoeven) when Showgirl tells her roommate And don’t eat all the chips.
     I’d say the point in Mulholland Drive that causes me to exclaim I cannot believe how perfect amazing awesome this movie is is when Betty and RITA go to those apartments and Betty decides to break into Diane Selwyn’s apartment by climbing in through that back window. Aside from the kind of mystery we work out with our intellect this is the kind of beat in a mystery yarn that on some primal level is just so rad fun on its own. But then throw in our intellects working and we get the girl who was lured betrayed whored out ridiculed punished and humiliated by the love of her life on a dream Hardy Boys adventure with the idealized version of said love in the most romantic amateur sleuth scenario to find out the identity of a woman who we know is her and is also the one dreaming the dream we are in and at the same time has already committed suicide because of it and we have to ask ourselves when has any other movie taken us anywhere like this before?
     When cinema evokes establishes encodes and exchanges a meaning with us that is impossible to put into words we get Club Silencio. Ever since the first time I saw this when Rebekah Del Rio sings Llorando and Betty convulses in her seat I’ve always immediately recognized as getting your heart broken for the first time the hardest the most painful that moment right before the end when you realize it was all an illusion that is about to irrevocably vanish from reality and you’ll pumpkin back into life without her and I cry every time the most cathartic scary happy vulnerable messy invigorating sobs you’ll ever know. The No hay banda illusion is infatuation cinema and dreams. It’s no less than our very existence.
     But what about all of the other trauma dark abuse hidden meanings in Mulholland Drive you ask? I mean they’re there yeah. But acknowledging most of them never really seemed to add anything that significant to the whole viewing experience for me. The Lynch clues. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to answer that last one Where is Aunt Ruth? I mean all I’ve got is that after Rita drops the blue cube and we shift to what I presume is Diane Selwyn’s real world then Aunt Ruth enters her bedroom and doesn’t notice the cube on the ground yet later at the dinner party Diane says she had an aunt that died and left her some money so? Where is Aunt Ruth? I wanna say Aunt Ruth is this like fulcrum of verisimilitude in the sense she was a source for Diane Selwyn to base her fantasy Aunt Ruth on but in the real world of Mulholland Drive she has nothing to do with her. But the cube is in her room. As in this uncanny Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette) moment with a remnant of a reality beyond our own that shows up in our real world. Cinema is candy. Cinema is a mystery box.

Mumblecore folk tale collective unconscious recognition repetition. You know I’d never thought of Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch) as mumblecore before but it’s shot on prosumer MiniDV lacks a conventional narrative and the definitive proof according to my definition a scene where Laura Dern’s character makes scrambled eggs the telltale mumblecore trope. If Mulholland Drive is all about what if feels like to have your heart broken for the first time then Inland Empire is about how fun it is to play make believe.
     Also of primary importance is how David Lynch’s final film feels the most DIY creative indie low budget artistic freedom art film meta distillation culmination of his life’s work. Ironic to consider his big Hollywood film is both narratively and aesthetically in its execution anything but. And like Mulholland Drive I personally don’t go for trying too hard to figure out what all of it means more like I just know how it makes me feel and that’s enough. Come to think of it the only David Lynch film I think I really infer something significantly within its subtext is Lost Highway. 
     Inland Empire then is NIKKI GRACE entering into the folklore of Old Hollywood but at the same time her character exists in a state where time does not exist. Everything’s already happened and the past and future occur interchangeably throughout the film’s narrative. Reflection is an elastic motif that encompasses meta devices such as watching yourself in a movie watching yourself prostitute versions of actresses wives mothers and domestic triangles where someone invariably ends up getting stabbed in the stomach with an old screwdriver. Oh and probably most of it has to do with the PHANTOM. Pretty straightforward.
 
The vibe of Inland Empire is like Axxon N the longest running radio play in history most enjoyable through its serialized continuously unexpected curse it charts. Yes I said curse that isn’t a typo. I’ve always above all loved more than anything the scene with PIOTREK accidentally squirting that entire plastic squeeze bottle of Heinz ketchup all over the white t shirt his stomach he’s wearing then when he asks his wife so calmly where are the paper towels and she says right behind you on the table. And such a cool backyard then all his Polish circus friends show up ominous and that Stanley Kamel dude with the watchmen cap intensity asking where his hammer is. This is the kinda thing in general cinema is lacking in. 

     It’s the subtle little things. Like how KINGSLEY and FREDDIE after we are told they had lousy tea from the commissary when they show up on stage and have a seat look how long of a beat they hold just projecting their distaste that stuff is hilarious. And my obsessive need to match and connect is given full reign with this material like the look at me and tell me if you’ve known me before line. And the manifestations of the visitor’s vague elliptical foreboding fairy tales.
     Inland Empire is also such a fascinating incantation of make believe and how we construct our own meanings because of how it was not only Lynch’s final film but the final and grandest achievement in that short lived little trend of MiniDV features. Remember that? Shot so wonderfully by the likes of Anthony Dod Mantle and Robby Müller movies like The Celebration (1998, Thomas Vinterberg) Julien Donkey-Boy (1999, Harmony Korine) Dancer in the Dark (2000, Lars von Trier) Chuck & Buck (2000, Miguel Arteta) The Original Kings of Comedy and Bamboozled (2000, Spike Lee) 28 Days Later (2002, Danny Boyle) Personal Velocity (2002, Rebecca Miller) 24 Hour Party People (2002, Micheal Winterbottom) Visitor Q (2002, Takashi Miike) and The Girl from Monday (2003, Hal Hartley). These were a time of going back to our roots trying to reclaim the excitement of spontaneity the whole independent craze promised. The MiniDV era was a bridge between Dogma 95 and mumblecore that Lynch was at the forefront of because of not only Inland Empire but a series of content and shorts he was uploading to his website davidlynch.com at a time when the internet wasn’t near as big a thing as it became. This stuff was lo fi raw rough and amateur and Lynch was one of the proponents of embracing this kind of aesthetic as an alternative means to stale bloated mass product Hollywood brainrot garbage. And that time is gone now. And so is he. One awaits the next time we’ll see that kind of spirit make its return. It’s only a matter of time.

4. Wicked Witches and Femme Fatales—the Barry Gifford screenplays

Middle period. The way I like to remember the star persona of David Lynch during this time is avant garde rockstar. Commercial surrealist. He’s wearing all black; but still keeping that top button buttoned. He introduces his signature coif for the first time at its wildest. He’s directing the most enigmatic black and white Calvin Klein fragrance ads we’ll ever see. Sex becomes a commodity. Violence along with it. And this wins him a Palme d'Or.

A golden heart fairy tale. Lynch’s most optimistic heart on its sleeve unabashed romance. His only pure love story. SAILOR and LULA share a developing internal conflict: doubt. Midpoint is Lula grappling with Sailor having hidden from her that her mom wanted to fuck him and his refusal is the reason she hates him and likely has ordered a hit on him troubles her. Wicked Witch.

     Sailor likewise begins to lose his trust in Lula when he finds out she told BOBBY PERU she’s pregnant before telling him. In fact she doesn’t tell him at all. So Sailor’s destiny becomes two-bit hood bank robber deadbeat loser. That is until the Good Witch restores Sailor’s belief in himself thereby allowing him to acknowledge Lula’s love for him and he her so they can raise their child together and live happily ever after. Which brings us to maybe the film’s central weakness. It lacks a strong idea behind its theme. Lynch usually has some profound narrative structuring behind his content.
      But it doesn’t matter. Because Wild at Heart (1990, David Lynch) is all surface style accessible indulgent delight. It’s powerful. It stays with you. It’s at its most sublime during that scene where Lula lies on the bed forlorn looking at that little statue of a horse with Strauss’ Im Abendrot blasting. This At Sunset piece about a couple approaching dissolution and death will prove to be a bait and switch but that’s to the strength of Wild at Heart. Most of the movie we get to see this perfect couple together. And when you think about it what causes them to lose trust in each other is so petty and is experienced by each of them so simultaneously calculated it’s Hollywood fairytale implausibility makes it that much more dreamy. It’s an operatic sweeping ideal of young sexy idealistic invincible love. As far from real life as Hollywood has always been yet vigorous dangerous and modern.
     You still get Lynch’s small town Americana nostalgia. Like the gas station attendant snapping his fingers while Lula dances. And when Sailor gets the thrash metal band to play an Elvis song we have to stop and ask ourselves what world are we in? Exactly. David Lynch’s. The end credits Cage singing Love Me Tender is the best reason not to skip through the crawl ever conceived. 
     Wild at Heart like any good road trip movie is about the voyage not the destination. From North Carolina to New Orleans to Texas this thing really finds its character. The paranoia conspiracy theory borne secret society of underworld network that connects everyone. And who can forget that one MR. REINDEER scene? You know the one I’m talking about. The haunting exquisite corpse teeny bopper Sherilyn Fenn Now She Tells Me monologue. And how the loathsome Bobby Peru somehow gets more and more charming upon each subsequent rewatch.

Lost Highway (1997, David Lynch) is a crime genre film about pussy. And self-denial. Its plot is pretty straightforward. The thing is hardly any of it takes place in what we might typically think of as the real world. You know. The diegesis. And usually if I hear a movie is all a dream or all took place in someone’s head or Tyler Durden is imaginary and in hindsight I’m supposed to accept that the character played by Edward Norton beat himself up in that scene in the parking lot that kind of thing ruins the movie for me. I mean I’m generalizing here but say there were a movie and at the end we were to be told it was all a dream I’d be furious. But I also adhere to the conviction that in cinema there are no rules. There are always exceptions. And remember Wild at Heart has shown us David Lynch is quite fond of a film that happens to be one of those exceptions The Wizard of Oz.
     MYSTERY MAN is an evil demon capable of driving a man to madness induced jealous homicidal rage. Or so FRED MADISON tells himself. That way he sheds the burden of having to accept it’s he alone who goes psycho and murders his wife. According to my theory the only aspects of the premise we may be certain of are that RENEE MADISON met her friend ANDY at a place called Moke’s and some guy named DICK LAURENT is connected to some part of this somehow.
     Also due to the fact that we never actually see Fred kill Renee this builds a central mystery essential to the film’s narrative which coincides with the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial finding him not guilty. Let’s say the inciting incident then is the buzzer Dick Laurent is dead message. In Fred’s scheme this is the first stage in what becomes a Faustian agreement wherein in exchange for his redemption Mystery Man enlists Fred as an accomplice to execute Laurent—here the embodiment of perversion sexual violence establishing him as evil. We know this is impossible though. In Fred’s delusional fantasy he finds redemption by having the courage to vanquish evil but Mystery Man can’t really live up to paying his end of this bargain because Fred’s soul is already unequivocally damned to eternity for the murder of Renee.
     If video represents Fred’s aversion to how things really happened then Mystery Man sending the anonymous tapes to his residence points toward a defect in Fred’s design. Mystery Man breaks the terms of their agreement and begins harassing Fred and forcing him to acknowledge his role in their partnership. After that scene where Fred and then Renee embark upon their plunge into that abyss corridor we see these two shadows walking across the living room. Those two shadows are Mystery Man and Fred going in for the kill. And those lights upstairs waving all over the place before the couple return home is Mystery Man prepping the murder scene. Furthermore any time Mystery Man is in two places at once we can take as Fred struggling to reconcile the fact that this evil entity he’s summoned has control over him and a mind of its own but really comes from within himself the whole time.
 
In equal and opposite juxtaposition with Fred’s contempt for Renee is his infatuation and desperate refusal to let her go. The PETE DAYTON portion. ALICE is the perfect half of all the bliss emotions she arouses in him against the poisonous half Renee does. Alice is Fred’s wish fantasy codependent denial impulse that sex can preserve their troubled relationship. Until this dream is ruptured by him knowing better as it disintegrates into the acceptance conclusion no it can’t. 
     The scene in which Pete first sees Alice in that shop is mesmerizing. The increased frame rate of the camera along with the mismatched shutter to preserve the fluorescent tubes’ flicker shot of her getting out of the car set to Lou Reed’s cover of Magic Moment is ethereal. But nevertheless it’s still shallow and objectifying of her. The awkwardly uncomfortable scene where Alice is forced to strip at gunpoint while Pete is made uneasy upon hearing it retold to him make no mistake is also a product of the very same warped psyche of Fred this whole time. 
     Pete and Alice are projections conjured up by Fred as a means for him to reverse the imbalance of physical attraction between he and Renee in the real world. When Pete’s parents and Sheila recall a man showing up with Pete that night and when detectives Al and Ed say Pete Dayton’s prints are all over Andy’s crime scene it’s because Fred’s delusions can only go so far before such an inevitable collision. The elegiac sweeping vocal ballad of melancholy longing that precludes the coitus interruptus Pete frightfully encounters matches Fred’s erectile disfunction scene because they’re one in the same reality. Yet in Pete’s version as with everything else it’s idealized. Imbued with romantic cinematic more closely according to our own desires dramatic force as if a Greek god is accusing his desperate fuck impulse you can’t possess pussy you silly mortal how dare you even try.
 
Similarly near the end of Pete’s hardboiled femme fatale interlude when he asks to go to the bathroom and is transported to room 26 with a serious case of migraine as the black widow mercilessly taunts him with the condemnation did you want to ask me whyyyyyy his headache links to two significant matching occurrences. It’s the key. 
     In his cell when Fred’s psyche literally rips apart as headache it begins the Pete interlude. And then after Fred nabs Laurent so again Mystery Man can do the actual deed and executes him afterwards the police chase which ensues with the entire LAPD chasing Fred just like he was O.J. the headache that ends the film tells us that none of this happened and Fred is still on death row. It now makes sense when we recall that scene on the phone with Mr. Eddy when Mystery Man tells Fred about how in the Far East when a person’s sentenced to death they’re sent to a place where they can’t escape never knowing when an executioner may step up behind them and fire a bullet into the back of their head. Lost Highway uses a retro-fitted construction which foreshadows the path Fred both denies will send him to his doom and knew all along.