MUBI & Metrograph Present: Twin Peaks circa 2017

The premiere of the first episode of Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series on Showtime in 2017 was a moment of anticipation—and some trepidation—for admirers of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s two-season cult series. Was it going to be a return to form of the show’s first season on ABC, the Lynch-directed finale episodes, and the terrifying deathwatch that was 1992’s prequel Fire Walk with Me? Or would there be more of the dead-end subplots and general sense of diminishing returns that marred swaths of season two? The answer, as it happened, was neither: The third series was an all-of-a-piece Gesamtkunstwerk, totally disinterested in playing games of “fan service,” impossible to anticipate from one episode to the next, a devastating meditation on death and aging, and perhaps the apotheosis of Lynch’s genius for blighted Americana and far-out spiritual exploration. Lynch and Frost thought of the work as a continuing movie and, not ones to second guess them, we’re playing the whole thing on the big screen, in all its baleful and beautiful splendor, in time to celebrate the 35th anniversary of their cult classic and the premiere of Twin Peaks on MUBI, where the entire series is now available to stream.