To my surprise, this is one of the longest episodes of Twin Peaks Cinema: a study of the chilling, riveting Dutch thriller The Vanishing from the late eighties (right around the time Twin Peaks itself was first conceived and produced). Like the other three subjects of fifty-plus-minute episodes - Vertigo, The Sweet Hereafter, and Mysterious Skin - this is one of the darkest Peaks-connected films, with a rich sense of character psychology. Unlike them, and unlike Fire Walk With Me, The Vanishing does not really explore the victim's side of the coin to the same extent as the detective's. The perspectives it offers are more akin to Cooper's and Leland's (and maybe even Windom Earle's!) than Laura's. That is not to say the story doesn't have a Laura Palmer-like character of course; Saskia is played by Johanna ter Steege, a luminous presence and lively performer whose curious mind and warm charisma anchor the opening passage of the movie before her disappearance haunts the rest. Once she casually enters a gas station and is never seen again, her brooding lover Rex (Gene Bervoets) spends years obsessed with her image on TV screens and missing posters, tracing and re-tracing their steps together and giving interviews which disturb the kidnapper Raymond (Bernard Pierre Donnadieu). That's not a spoiler, by the way, since he's introduced even before the kidnapping itself! This early reveal is embedded in a narrative jumbled with flashbacks and re-tellings (hence its inclusion as part of the "disordered stories" season alongside last month's timey-wimey Back to the Future Part II and next month's classically fractured Rashomon). Not identity, but motivation and outcome are the mysteries here along with the question of whether Rex will - or could - ever get satisfaction in his quest. In a way, Fire Walk With Me - or rather the process that led to Fire Walk With Me - is present in The Vanishing, because Rex's determined pursuit of Saskia, consequences be damned, resembles David Lynch behind the camera as much as anyone onscreen. Unable to give up on someone who appears to just be gone, he forces his way back into the past at great personal cost.
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LINKS FOR EPISODE 19
What's Streaming: The Original 'The Vanishing' Still Terrifies, 30 Years Later by Adam Nayman (The Ringer)
The Vanishing, Trailer (video)
Recent guest appearance - Creamed Corn and the Universe - Sarah Palmer
Recently on Twin Peaks Conversations - Colin, host of Creamed Corn and the Universe (public part 1) & ($5/month tier part 2)
Recently on Lost in Twin Peaks - began Season 3 Part 11
Recently on Lost in the Movies podcast - The Vulnerable Throne capsule on The Bitter Tea of General Yen + brief reflections Knights of the Round Table, Land of the Pharaohs & Rasputin and the Empress
Recently on Lost in the Movies patron podcast ($1/month) - The 90s in September (& beyond) + 70s bonus... Pulp Fiction & Klute (capsules on Exotica, Network, Superman, Magnolia, Saturday Night Fever, Thelma & Louise, Reality Bites, Boogie Nights, Nashville, Scream, Gremlins II, Romeo + Juliet, Set It Off, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Ice Storm, Dangerous Minds, archive readings of The Conversation & Enemy of the State) & Halloween Special / Continuing the 90s... Bram Stoker's Dracula (+ archive readings of Dracula, Frankenstein & The Wolf Man, feedback/media/work updates including Cooper's identity, the Professional Managerial Class & more)
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