Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

This is my own personal interpretation of the movie and it's symbolism, I'm very interested in learning what other people think the movie was about, as it's all symbolism it's open to interpretation and it's possible that events and concepts that have no personal meaning to me completely slipped me by. That's part of the beauty of this movie is that it's a different movie for everyone!

I have a way of thinking of this movie which I'd like to share... Think of a normal movie as being a piece of paper, the paper representing the emotional and intellectual content of the movie... you watch this movie and you consume this content. Lets say watching the movie is equivalent to burning the paper. When you burn paper you're left with ashes... in a similar way when you watch a movie, you're left with unchanging aspects of the story telling mechanisms because of the nature of the direct method used. This ash or residue represents aspects of the emotional and intellectual content which you are unable to make your own because they are expressed or founded in something you can't detach from someone else's vision that doesn't necessarily map to how you feel about something.

So if movies are paper, and ashes are impersonal obstacles to identifying with the content of said movies... I'd say that TP:FWwM is analagous to flash paper. That is paper that burns leaving no solid physical residue. Because of the story-telling mechanism employed the emotional and intellectual content is not directly communicated, only implied and induced giving the viewer license to stitch together the content in a way that is meaningful to him.

Right! Well enough of that, lets get to my own personal interpretations and please please please send me mail and tell me your own, I'm very interested in finding out what other people interpret this movie to be about.

Laura Palmer is a beautiful blond yound girl, very wholesome looking. She goes to school and lives in a small attic bedroom in her parent's home. She keeps a diary which she keeps hidden begind her dresser and in which she writes about these nightmares she sometimes has where a horrible evil man she calls "Bob" comes in through her window and has his way with her. She comes home one day to find pages missing from her Diary...

There's a very interesting subtext to her relationship with her father, the psychological state of her father and how that state relates to the existence of bob and Laura's perception of both of them and her understanding about their relationship.

She comes home one day to find pages torn out of her diary... pages in which she had written about Bob... this scares her and she runs, she goes far far into this cabin in the woods to talk to Harold, she tells Harold that there are pages torn out of her Diary, that Bob is the one who did it. He tells her Bob is not real, he's very concerned for her though... she tells him he is real... he says, "well, maybe..." he sees no other way out of it, Bob ha to be real and there's no denying it now.

She tells him that Bob wants to be her, or he'll kill her. She then turns evil for a moment and then returns to normal and starts sobbing. She tells Harold all about Bob and how he's been having her since she was 12, he's appalled and shocked, concerned... she asks him to hold her diary for her, after all he told her to start writing it. She starts becoming intimate with him but with every kiss she's in more pain and she finally has to stop, she jumps up to leave... she says she doesn't know when she can be back, maybe never.

Then Laura is working when she sees an old lady and a little boy wearing a mask with a long nose. The old lady beckons her. She walks over and the old lady gives her a painting... it's a painting of a bare room with a door that's open and there's light coming from outside the door. She hands it to her and says "This would look good on your wall". The little boy tells her that Bob is in her room right now.

She rushes home and as she cautiously makes her way to her room and as she peeks around the corner, she sees Bob is there, behind her dresser... she screams and runs outside, hides in the bushes... she sees her dad coming out of the house. She sobs and screams when she sees this... she runs over to her best friend Donna's house and cries with her for a while.

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Ok, now for my interpretation up to this point.

The fact that her Dad and Bob are the same person is psychologically valid in that in order for Laura to deal with the sexual abuse of her father, she mentally seperated the father who is loving and cares for her from the one that comes into her room at night and has his way with her. Since her caring father couldn't possibly do that, she tells herself it's someone else, someone not real. She writes about her nightmares in her diary and when she finds the pages torn out, she can no longer believe Bob is not real.

I think Harold is an abstract of whatever reasoning mechanism she has employed to deal with the sexual abuse she's been receiving from her father. He tells her Bob is not real, but she knows better now... she tells him she doesn't know when she'll be back, maybe never. Meaning it's no longer possible for her to keep telling herself the abuse is not really happening. There are too many physical manifestations of the existence of Bob to convince herself it's just a nightmare.

At this point she doesn't feel she can live with the abuse she's experienced, she starts to whore herself in order to forget about it, she wants to self destruct so she starts living an even more dangerous lifestyle than she was before. Her friend goes with her, she doesn't know everything, she just knows she cares about Laura and goes down the self destructive path with her out of loyalty. Laura tries to push her away but her friend is going to stick by her no matter what.

Later on she sees her friend being had by two guys, she jumps up and takes her friend out of there screaming at her that she doesn't want her to wear her (Laura's) clothes. Meaning she doesn't want her friend to put on the protective attitude Laura's adopted just to keep her company. She doesn't want her friend to self destruct and lose her innocence because of her.

There's so much more, it's a very tiring thing to analyze, interpret and explain this movie, maybe that's why no one else has done it yet! :)

This movie is like a dream, seemingly random events that your mind stitches into a story, it's an interesting experience. A waking dream.