I. AND NOW, THE BOOING BEGINS
“After I saw Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me at Cannes, David Lynch had disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see another David Lynch movie until I hear something different. And you know, I loved him. I loved him.” — Quentin Tarantino
They booed. And booed. And booed some more.
David Lynch was used to this from Cannes audiences by 1992.When WILD AT HEART won the Palme d’Or in 1990, it was cheered by a select few, but booed by the majority. Two years later, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME faced a very similar reception, only this time, there were no champions to be found amongst the detractors. In his review (published in August, mere months after its disastrous festival bow), Vincent Canby said:
Its not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be. Its 134 minutes induce a state of simulated brain death, an effect as easily attained in half the time by staring at the blinking lights on a Christmas tree.
Taking a cue from Canby not too unlike the way they did with Cimino’s HEAVEN’S GATE, critics piled onto Lynch’s oblique prequel with equal vitriol, tearing the movie limb from limb and leaving it for dead by the side of the Washington highway.
Looking back twenty years on, it’s easy to see why FIRE WALK WITH ME was met with such rabid hostility. What most presumed would be an answer providing coda to the hit TV series Lynch shepherded on ABC turned out to be a hyper-violent portrait of Laura Palmer’s sexual victimization at the hands of nearly every man around her. Equal parts hypnotic and revolting, FIRE WALK WITH ME opened with a TV being smashed, a message that wasn’t received by fans of the show in the audience. What Lynch was saying out of the gate was “this isn’t the TWIN PEAKS you know and love”, but the audience wasn’t prepared for the subversion of the myths he had created week in and out, rejecting the horror film portrait of a “woman in trouble” he had instead prepared for them. It would be five years before Lynch made another feature (the equally ghastly LOST HIGHWAY), and his TV output would be limited to two mini-series.
In short, the scornful response TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME received almost ended David Lynch’s cinematic career.
Nicolas Winding Refn now knows how the Montana master must’ve felt, as ONLY GOD FORGIVES, his follow up to the Best Director and standing ovation earning hit, DRIVE, was met with similar out and out hatred by audiences at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Jeffrey Wells said:
Movies really don’t get much worse than Nicholas Winding Refn‘s Only God Forgives. It’s a shit macho fantasy — hyperviolent, ethically repulsive, sad, nonsensical, deathly dull, snail-paced, idiotic, possibly woman-hating, visually suffocating, pretentious. I realize I sound like Rex Reed on one of his rants, but trust me, please — this is a defecation by an over-praised, over-indulged director who thinks anything he craps out is worthy of your time. I felt violated, shat upon, sedated, narcotized, appalled and bored stiff.
And Rex Reed went on one of his aforementioned patented rants:
Gruesomely grotesque and pathologically pretentious, a diabolical horror called ‘Only God Forgives’ may not be the worst movie ever made, but it is unquestionably in the top five.
That “worst movie ever” quote sounds quite familiar, doesn’t it?
The truth is, neither TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME nor ONLY GOD FORGIVES are the “worst movie ever” made. Nor do they rank in the Top Five (or even Five Thousand for that matter). But both are certainly wildly idiosyncratic films that feel like they fly in the face of what their respective fan bases wanted. Where FIRE WALK WITH ME was a subversion of the mythos Lynch created with his popular serialized ABC mystery, ONLY GOD FORGIVES is a deconstruction of the genre Refn mastered with DRIVE; an “anti-neo-noir” that undercuts the masculine, Scorpion jacketed anti-hero he and Ryan Gosling created in his cult classic. Opting for gory Freudian psychoanalysis over synth pop scored car chases, Refn did his damnedest to alienate his core critical supporters, bathing it all in the same sharp crimson hues contained inside the infamous Black Lodge.
II. NEO-NOIR ANALYSIS
*** MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ONLY GOD FORGIVES AHEAD ***
With DRIVE, Nicolas Refn and Ryan Gosling created a quintessential neo-noir anti-hero in The Driver. A man of very few words, a “cool” white Scorpion jacket and an unshakable set of simplistic “rules”, he utilized his skill set to help poor little Irene, the girl next door he becomes smitten with, out of a jam involving some very, very bad people. In the process, The Driver becomes a “real hero, a real human being” (as the Greek chorus of girl pop tells us), enacting bloody vengeance on any who threaten Irene or her son. He’s a man of action; his capacity for violence matching his unique abilities behind the wheel.
The very connection between man and machine in DRIVE is, in itself, a definition of The Driver’s masculinity. The Chevy Impala he drives during his job is the mechanical representation of what he wants to be: “plain Jane boring” in the eyes of the law, but eerily efficient when aiding a group of jewelry store thieves who need to hightail it away from a heist. The old Freudian maxim of “you can tell the size of a man’s cock by what kind of car he drives” (i.e. if he’s driving a Porsche, he’s probably got a bit of a dinky) doesn’t even enter into the equation with our nameless racer. He knows just how good he is, and only wants a vehicle that will enable him to maximize on his innate abilities. During the day, he relies on his confidence behind the wheel to get paid a few hundred bucks doing dangerous Hollywood stunt work, because he simply knows “he’s that good”.
In ONLY GOD FORGIVES, Gosling plays Julian, the antithesis of everything The Driver represents. When first we meet Julian, he is sending a Muay Tai fighter into the ring with a simple “go”, before strolling off and finding an elevated spot from which he can observe the proceedings of the crowded gym. Down below, his brother Billy (Tom Burke) collects bets being made on their warrior. Later, Billy doles money out to the gladiator, as Julian stands silently in the shadows, going as far as to speak for his brother when congratulating the young fighter.
“Time to meet the devil,” Billy tells Julian before striding off into the night, in search of a fourteen-year-old girl to fuck. After assaulting a brothel manager because he won’t let him have sex with his daughter, Billy finds a woman who will accommodate his needs, and then rapes and beats the young girl to death, prompting Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), a local cop, to lock him in a room with the girl’s father so that he can take bloody revenge on his daughter’s violator.
Billy’s ability to act on his sexual urges, however damning they end up being, makes him the yin to his brother’s ineffectual yang. The first time we see Julian interact with Mai (Yayaying Rhatha Phongam), a prostitute, it tells us everything we need to know about his character. She ties him to a chair while she masturbates, and Julian’s mind drifts off into a psychotic premonition, where Chang chops off his hands with the kitana he keeps hidden under his uniform*. And it isn’t just sex that Julian struggles with partaking in, as he isn’t able to murder his brother’s killer when presented with the opportunity. Instead, he listens to the man’s reasoning for killing Billy, and takes sympathy on his plight as opposed to enacting vengeance in broad daylight.
But while Julian’s initial tendencies to watch without action are hints as to how he defines himself as a man, it isn’t until we meet Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas), Julian’s domineering mother, that we get a true look at just how unable he is to exert his will onto others. Crystal compares the size of his penis to his brother’s (Billy’s was much bigger) and, to establish an out and out Oedipal complex, it’s later revealed that Julian murdered his father with his bare hands after she manipulated him into doing so. Crystal’s demeanor is ice cold and she enacts the vengeance that her son could not (one of her first orders of business when arriving in town is to have Billy’s murderer executed). She dominates Julian, undercutting any sense of masculinity he owns, sometimes with a mere lash of the tongue.
Julian finally challenges Chang and, in turn, is beaten to a pulp but the police officer while his mother watches (disfiguring Ryan Gosling’s beautiful visage in the process). And once Crystal is murdered by Chang for trying to have him assassinated, we see Julian literally attempt to return to his mother’s womb, inserting his fists into the woman’s stomach. He is symbolically revealing that he is still his “mother’s child”, seeking refuge inside of the womb that first housed him and brought him into the world. Afterwards, he has Chang slice off his hands with his sword; another bit of symbolism, only this time it represents a self-castration. Julian essentially is owning the fact that he is less than a man, and needs to be punished because of it.
Placing Julian and The Driver side-by-side shows Refn tearing down the avatar of manliness he and his blonde haired hunk of a muse have created. Its a mutilation of myth; a straight up middle finger to all those hipsters who bought a Scorpion jacket on ebay for $100 and wore it to a Baths show in Brooklyn. Refn has no interest in creating another “real hero”, but instead wants to rub the viewer’s face in the ugliness of true impotence.
III. KARAOKE VENGEANCE
It feels like no coincidence that Nicolas Winding Refn used the name of frequent Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti as a credits placeholder in the early cuts of DRIVE. Badalamenti’s humming guitar and throbbing synths are an ideal template for composer Cliff Martinez (who returns for ONLY GOD FORGIVES), whose buzzing minimalism evokes the starkness of the true temp soundtrack that was comprised of Brian Eno’s ambient work. But Refn didn’t stop at attempting to replicate Lynch’s usage of foreboding score. The way characters react to and even use music as a means of expressing their emotions in ONLY GOD FORGIVES feels pulled straight from the Roadhouse sequence in FIRE WALK WITH ME.
Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is living a secret life of drugs and lust, a means of numbing the pain she feels from the constant visits she receives from “BOB” (the molesting manifestation of her father, Leland Palmer). One night, Laura reluctantly allows her best friend and high school “good girl” Donna (Moira Kelly) to tag along with her on one of her trips to the Roadhouse, the den of inequity on the outskirts of Twin Peaks that she loses herself in on a regular basis. There they meet sleazy bartender Jacques Renault (Walter Olkewicz) and another school chum, Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine), before participating in jazz and industrial scored orgies bathed in blood red light. But before Laura takes part in the seemingly ritual sexual degradation, she becomes entranced by the song the singer in the bar (Julee Cruise, who most TWIN PEAKS will recognize as the vocalist behind the show’s original theme song, “Falling”) is belting out:
This is easily the most hauntingly beautiful moment in the entire film, as not only does Laura finally break down crying, letting loose the years of pain and humiliation she’s felt, but Donna also gets a chance to see, from a distance, just how injured her friend really is. Just one look at the lyrics (penned by Lynch and obscured on first listen by both the overwhelming backing synths and Cruise’s breathy delivery), shows what the director is conveying here:
How can a heart that’s filled with love start to cry?
When all the world seemed so right
How, how can love die?
And while this may seem horribly on the nose to some after further exploration, in the moment, it’s all about a feeling; an evocation of the inner monologue Laura has been trying to express for so long and, because of this song, finally can.
Chang’s karaoke scenes in ONLY GOD FORGIVES have been a highlight of both those who have immensely enjoyed the film and the bane of the viewing experience for those who have loathed it. But while some have attempted to the label the musical interludes as “pointless”, there is certainly a method to Refn’s musical madness. In the interview he gave to our own Courtney Howard, he said this of Chang’s untranslated singing:
I felt that it would almost be ruining the image if you suddenly start subtitling something that’s more about the sound in a way. But specifically, the songs are about vengeance coming. They’re very much folk tales because they’re based on Isaan music, some of it, which is part of Thailand’s country and western music, but the lyrics a lot of the times are very much fable stories.
The lack of subtitles again speak to the usages of song and visual as opposed to words, as Chang is expressing his need for the righteous violence he enacts on those who have wronged people in the province he protects. Much like Laura Palmer in the Roadhouse, Chang is finding his own musical solace, while simultaneously warning the audience (on even a subconscious level) that “vengeance is coming”. And while Refn is quoted as saying the movie is directly influenced by the works of surrealist Chilean master Alejandro Jodoworsky (to whom ONLY GOD FORGIVES is even dedicated), he is clearly cribbing from Lynch.
IV. COMMERCIAL NECESSITY VS. PERSONAL ARTISTIC EXPRESSION
Refn wasn’t supposed to direct DRIVE. At least, not at first. But instead of me telling you the story, let’s hear it from Refn’s own mouth (via BadassDigest):
This film actually got made because Ryan wanted to make it. He was given the director control of it like when Steve McQueen brought Peter Yates from England or Lee Marvin did POINT BLANK, he brought John Boorman to come from England to come and make that film with him. I was in LA trying to kill Harrison Ford in a movie [THE DYING OF THE LIGHT], and it was turning out the way I thought Hollywood was going to be, because it went into that development hell which I hear so much about.
I postponed my own film that I was going to do because I was broke, and I went to Hollywood to make some money. And I got a call asking if Ryan Gosling wanted to meet up would I do that, and I was like, sure**. I’d never met him, but I had a very high fever I got when I flew in, and my wife only allowed me to stay four days in America. I had a terrible, terrible fever, but I said I’ll go have dinner with him, so I took these American drugs to take the flu down, so I was high as a kite. Literally I couldn’t remember anything.
So I went to Ryan’s restaurant in LA and I had a stiff neck so I couldn’t look at him, so I sat down and I couldn’t move so I was like Frankenstein – and we tried to have a conversation. It was like a blind date – very awkward – because you sit down with an actor and you’re really supposed to get it going and you go make the movie together and you come up with some cool idea. That’s what Hollywood is about, having meetings about doing stuff. So I couldn’t really move, and Ryan would talk, and I would go “mm hmm,” and it was a bit like a blind date realizing that nobody was going to get fucked tonight. There was simply no connection between us because I was so out of it, I was so stoned that I couldn’t remember half of what I was saying and I would react too slowly. Ryan would be like, who the fuck is this stupid European guy?
So halfway through this dinner I said, could you please take me home, and Ryan was like, “What?” And I said, I don’t drive. He goes, “You can’t get a cab?” And I was so out of it that just the idea of having to get up and get a cab, I was like, uhhh. So he was like, sure, I’ll drive you. So we had to go to Santa Monica and it was quite a long ride, and you know that awkward silence when you’re dropping the girl off because you know you’re not getting any action? You go home and watch porn? We were sitting in the car and it was pure silence between us, and Ryan turns on the radio, and it was soft rock. And on this station, REO Speedwagon starts singing, “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore,” and I start to cry.
I start to cry, and tears are falling down my cheeks, and Ryan’s driving the car thinking how the fuck do I get him out of my car? And then I start singing the song. It’s like foreplay, and I’m really getting into it, and I slap my knee and for the first time I turn to Ryan in the car and I look at him. I scream in his face because the music is so loud, and I say, “I got it! I got it.” He says, “What?” I say, “I know what DRIVE is. Its about a man who drives around at night listening to pop music, and that’s his emotional relief.” And he said, “We’re doing it.”
That was a great encounter between us that led to a very passionate and strange relationship that will go on for, well, we’re doing ONLY GOD FORGIVES after Christmas, and then we’re doing the remake of LOGAN’S RUN.
Outside of reinforcing the way Refn uses music to define character, this story also makes one fact abundantly clear: DRIVE was a “work-for-hire” directing gig. And while Refn was able to put his personal auteuristic stamp onto the neo-noir crime tale, it was clearly a job he took because he “was broke”. In most instances, this will lead to a paycheck cashing endeavor that lacks any sort of artistic credibility. But Refn used this opportunity to bring his fetishistic style to a much wider audience, earning him critical acclaim and artistic freedom. Because of this, he was able to make ONLY GOD FORGIVES, a completely original tale born out of Refn’s own consciousness.
The original concept for the film was to make a movie about a man who wants to fight God. That is, of course, a very vast obstacle but when I was writing the film, I was going through some very existential times in my life – we were expecting our second child and it was a difficult pregnancy – and the idea of having a character who wants to fight God without knowing why very much appealed to me.
Free of the shackles of financial burden, Refn was able to travel to Bangkok and make a much more personal movie than DRIVE. While on the surface it may appear to be another fetishistic tale of violence run amok, in truth, the movie speaks to the director’s perceived impotency as a man. He’s using the medium and packages what he views to be his own personal shortcomings (a fight between man and God, after all, is a rather futile and fool-hearted thing to undertake on the man’s part) into a crime tale that superficially resembles that which fans initially used as a reason to champion his work. But Refn wasn’t interested in indulging their whims, and instead delivered a difficult, psychologically complex tale of revenge and madness.
In truth, ONLY GOD FORGIVES is the most personal film Refn has made since BLEEDER, the 1999 Danish film that was Refn’s first sole screenwriting credit. Following Leo (Kim Bodina) a Copenhagen man who finds himself increasingly fed up with his menial job and claustrophobic apartment and finally tips over the edge when he realizes that wife, Louise (Rikke Louise Andersson), is pregnant. As the walls continue to push in on Leo, he becomes more and more unstable, lashing out at his wife and even infecting her brother with HIV before going on a rampage with a gun. It’s another sad portrait of a man who feels impotent and dominated by the world around him, leading him to take violent action. What we’re seeing with ONLY GOD FORGIVES is the “true” Nicolas Winding Refn; an artist obsessed with men who are seemingly powerless against the forces of the world they’ve helped create for themselves. His original films are ugly, brutal and nihlistic — a fan cry from the disaffected cool of DRIVE.
David Lynch created TWIN PEAKS after practically being begged by his agent, Tony Krantz, to capitalize on the critical acclaim his films had been receiving***. But working with ABC proved to be quite difficult, as the network forced him to wrap up the mystery of Laura Palmer’s death mid-way through Season Two. This was after he had clashed multiple times with network producers over numerous issues, the greatest of all being the central revelation. The network insisted that Palmer’s killer be revealed, but Lynch wanted that question to last the length of the series. After losing this battle, Lynch became disillusioned with TWIN PEAKS, publicly stating that allowing ABC to force him to change his overall plan for the series was one of his biggest professional regrets.
After TWIN PEAKS was cancelled in 1991 (following a massive ratings drop once the central mystery was resolved), Lynch announced a mere month later that he would be writing and directing a feature film follow up, with French company CIBY-2000 financing. This freed him from having to answer to the ABC brass regarding every decision, and create a crystallization of what he envisioned TWIN PEAKS as being. The result was a dark, twisted, nightmarish bit of moviemaking that fit much more with Lynch’s cinematic output than cultural phenomenon he had created. Lynch was allowed to be an artist again and, despite being torn to shreds by the press and fans upon initial release, FIRE WALK WITH ME has just now begun to be re-discovered and re-elevaluated.
I wonder what David Lynch would think about the duality of DRIVE and ONLY GOD FORGIVES? Would he think it “one of the worst films ever made”? Or would he understand how Nicolas Winding Refn used his success to create a personal work that is as alienating it is beguiling? Unfortunately, we’ll never know, as Lynch isn’t a film critic. But one would have to guess that he would understand the position Refn was in. But by capitalizing on his own success and creating a movie that revels in his own ugly fascinations, Refn might’ve created the quintessential “anti-noir” that, unfortunately, won’t be appreciated until it reaches its twentieth birthday.
*Chang’s sword can also be seen as a Freudian extension of himself. It is the weapon he chooses to use to enforce his righteous moral code, much like The Driver uses his car to carry out his (uniting Chang and The Driver as both being “men of action”)
**Gosling has been widely reported as being a fan of Refn’s viking saga, VALHALLA RISING
***TWIN PEAKS followed not just BLUE VELVET, which earned him a Best Director Oscar nomination but THE ELEPHANT MAN, which received multiple Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Director