Chungking express explained series#

I felt this strongly in two contrasting scenes from last nightвЂ™s episode. WeвЂ™re all traveling along this conveyor belt that is relentlessly moving us toward this very certain outcome.вЂќ One of the first, unforgettable images from the showвЂ™s promotional materials was Kyle MacLachlanвЂ™s face, a quarter of a century older, emerging from the darkness into light, and our feelings toward these characters when they were younger inevitably shape the way we regard them now. Mark Frost said in an interview: вЂњItвЂ™s an exercise in engaging with one of the most powerful themes in all of art, which is the ruthless passage of timeвЂ¦WeвЂ™re all trapped in time and weвЂ™re all going to die. This leaves us in a peculiar position when it comes to the third season of Twin Peaks, which, both by nature and by design, is about aging. In a Time cover story on Lynch from the early nineties, Richard Corliss writes of Kyle MacLachlanвЂ™s face: вЂњIt is a startling visage, as pure of line as an art deco vase, with soft, all-American features and a comic-book heroвЂ™s jutting chin-you could park a Packard on it.вЂќ It echoes what Pauline Kael says of Isabella Rossellini in Blue Velvet: вЂњShe even has the kind of nostrils that cover artists can represent accurately with two dots.вЂќ MacLachlanвЂ™s chin and RosselliniвЂ™s nose would have caught our attention in any case, but itвЂ™s also a matter of lighting and makeup, and Lynch shoots them to emphasize their roots in the pulp tradition, or, more accurately, in the subconscious store of images that we take from those sources. Blue Velvet is a much darker work, but it employs a similar lure, with the actors made up to look like illustrations of themselves. ItвЂ™s fair to say that the second half of the latter film would be far less watchable if it didnвЂ™t involve Tony Leung and Faye Wong, two of the most attractive people in the world, and Wong Kar-Wai, like so many filmmakers before him, uses it as a psychological hook to take us into strange, funny, romantic places.

My two favorite movies of my lifetime, Blue Velvet and Chungking Express, both understand this implicitly.

Chungking express explained series#

And the notion that a film or television series can consist of little more than following around two beautiful people with a camera has a long and honorable history. Lynch isnвЂ™t the first director to display a preference for actors, particularly women, with a very specific look-although heвЂ™s thankfully never taken it as far as his precursor Alfred Hitchcock did.

HeвЂ™s continued this trend in the third season, which has been populated so far by such striking presences as Chrysta Bell, Ben Rosenfield, and Madeline Zima, and last nightвЂ™s episode features an extended, very funny scene between a delighted Gordon Cole and a character played by BГ©rГ©nice Marlohe, who, with her red lipstick and вЂњtrГЁs chicвЂќ spike heels, might be the platonic ideal of his type. (In one of the commentary tracks on The Simpsons, a producer describes how a network executive might ask indirectly about the looks of the cast of a sitcom: вЂњSo how are we doing aesthetically?вЂќ) If this seemed even more pronounced on Twin Peaks, it was partially because, like Mad Men, it took its conventionally glamorous actors into dark, unpredictable places, and also because David Lynch had an eye for a certain kind of beauty, both male and female, that was more distinctive than that of the usual soap opera star. A show like The Hills, which was one of my guilty pleasures, seemed to be consciously trying to see how long it could coast on surface beauty alone, and nearly every series, ambitious or otherwise, has used the attractiveness of its actors as a commercial or artistic strategy. From prestige dramas to reality shows to local newscasts, the story of television has inescapably been that of beautiful men and women on camera. In that respect-and maybe in that one alone-it was like just about every other series that ever existed. For all the endless discussion of various aspects of Twin Peaks, one quality that sometimes feels neglected is the incongruous fact that it had one of the most attractive casts in television history.