The Vanishing as Twin Peaks Cinema #19 - Disordered Stories (podcast)

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

belated July 2021 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN THE MOVIES #81 - Twin Peaks Cinema: The Vanishing (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Andrew, JJW, Josie, Blue Pine Lodge, Wind River, Josie's intrigue/Part 16, listener/viewer feedback, Rebecca & more)

Until recently, I waited until Thursdays to publish Patreon and public podcasts alike.

From now on, the following schedule will apply:

Sunday:

monthly Patreon update or guest appearance on other podcasts (update: also, monthly Twin Peaks conversations)

Thursday:

weekly public podcast for Lost in the Movies, Left of the Movies, or Twin Peaks Cinema

Saturday:

round-up for upcoming week of public Lost in Twin Peaks podcast (starting in October)

My patron podcast is finally back after its longest-ever delay, coincidentally to talk about a disappearance. The Vanishing, one of the most haunting, fascinating, and disturbing European films of its time (or any other) exists in a fascinating dance with Twin Peaks. They were released around the same time, as the eighties transitioned into the nineties and a more open, quasi-mystic mood overtook the zeitgeist. They both dwell on an obsessive man, driven by dreams, trying to find out what happened to a beautiful young woman whose smiling portrait becomes iconic, although in The Vanishing he's her husband rather than an official detective, and she went missing rather than turning up dead. Both works also have highly unusual narrative structures, with the Dutch movie arguably trumping the (initially) more straightforward Twin Peaks in its presentation of the central "mystery" (we got many answers early on, in some cases before the actual disappearance itself, which somehow only piques our curiosity). This is one of my longer "Twin Peaks Cinema" topics, as there was so much to dig into in both the film itself and its Peaks connections. Other parts of the episode link up to this theme: an archive reading in which I review yet another work about the overpowering draw of an absent woman (Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca), several more general meditations on poignant passage of time in my listener/viewer feedback, and some discussion of Josie's intrigue in Twin Peaks (alongside related characters, locations, and season 3 stories).

Episode 81: Twin Peaks Cinema - The Vanishing (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Andrew, JJW, Josie, Blue Pine Lodge, Wind River, Josie's intrigue/Part 16, listener/viewer feedback, Rebecca & more)

Josie's fate is also the focus of the Lost in Twin Peaks episode I opened to all patrons in July.

NOW AVAILABLE: 2-part Lost in Twin Peaks #24 (the "drawer pull" one) open to all patrons

The $5/month tier got their Lost in Twin Peaks episode a month early as an advance (I covered the season two finale in three parts for the thirtieth anniversary this June). My planned bonus conversation with other podcasters has been pushed back along with much else, but the next monthly episode is already out; I'll wait till next week to officially cross-post it alongside my extensive Lost in Twin Peaks coverage of Fire Walk With Me, which is presently ongoing.

Podcast Line-Ups for...