It’s happening again. It’s happening again. It’s happening again. — Sarah Palmer, Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces
The emergence of The Missing Pieces was our first real sign that it might, indeed, be happening again. It was the first new Twin Peaks material anyone had seen since 1992, when Fire Walk With Me came out. Though it comprises deleted and extended scenes, sometimes with alternate takes, from FWWM, The Missing Pieces is considered canonical. The things that are happening in those missing pieces are really happening.
That’s not to say you’d be able to understand a moment of it if you hadn’t watched Fire Walk With Me first. The Missing Pieces has been edited into a continuous feature-length film, but even in the opening titles themselves, which bill what you’re about to watch as an outtakes collection more or less, no one’s making any pretense that it’s intended to stand on its own.
That’s reflected in how its story is told. There are no character introductions, no settings established, and much of the plot has been excised, happening in between the scenes we’re watching. Moreover, the scenes are arranged in the order they might have appeared in the original movie, not chronologically — scenes of Leland Palmer’s relationship with Teresa Banks, for example, are shown around the point of the film where he himself thought about them, even though they take place prior to anything else. You’re just dumped into it, with FBI Special Agent Chester Desmond already investigating Teresa’s murder. It’s expected you’ve watched Fire Walk With Me if you want to know who either of those people are or why they matter.
The Missing Pieces is designed to expand on and enhance our understanding of Fire Walk With Me — clearing up certain elements that came out confusing in the finished movie, beefing up the roles of the eccentric FBI agents from its opening sections, reintroducing a number of characters and actors from the original series whose material was filmed but didn’t make the final cut.
Most importantly, it provides a much larger, clearer window into both the lives of the Palmer family and the workings of the Black Lodge, allowing us to know the people this happened to and the things that made it happen more accurately and intimately. As such, it contains some of the most frightening images and moving moments in the entire Twin Peaks oeuvre. They can’t stand alone, exactly, but they do stand apart.
I reviewed Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces for Pop Heist. If you’ve never watched this and you’re a Twin Peaks fan, you gotta do it.
Tags: david lynch, horror, movie reviews, movies, TV, TV reviews, Twin Peaks, twin peaks: the missing pieces