sylvian

The acclaim this series received paints a sad picture of our culture. Generations have grown up to believe that anything more or less different from the Hollywood standard has to be a good thing, and to percieve weirdness for weirdness' sake as shorthand for "quality". Of all the contemporary filmmakers, Lynch has profited the most from this ever growing trend of clueless hipsterism, after he personally played a role in triggering it. In selling his own brand of emotional bullying (the "big idea" about it being the layered simultaneous effects of shocking vulgarity and disorientation), Lynch presented enough talent in the craft of film itself to earn his reputation. But that was eons ago. Fire Walk With Me already showed an awkward plate spinner, not able to pull it off, his plates falling left and right in a haze of Badalamenti patchouli. Since then, with the exception of the okay-ish Straight Story - his only sincere work - each new title presented a new low in self-serving obfuscation, masking an inability to round it all up with sophomoric surrealism-by-numbers. See the last act of Mulholland Drive for exemplification, with Silencio, blue box, miniature evil grandparents and the kitchen sink. Twin Peaks - The Return represents the final station of this one-way journey into the heart of solipsism, not even attempting to provide a story, a mood, believable characters and motivations, context, rhythm, structure, continuity, etc. A shapeless mess of unfiltered garbage dropped onto the legacy of the original series, in complete ignorance of its details and subtleties. A demented budget-spending exercise by a dried-up has-been, allowed way too long by his easily satisfied audience to get away with the bluff.