Twin Peaks: the Return part 6 Don’t Die (Twin Peaks WA)

David Lynch & Mark Frost 
Snoqualmie WA & Los Angeles CA 2016

One of the longest sustained and complexly composed sequences so far (at least in my estimation) within Lynch’s new eighteen hour film was found in the latest section.  It concerned a hit and run accident that occurs at the site of a major scene in Fire Walk with Me, an intersection with a four way stop, where Laura and her father, Leland, came to some realizations prompted by the intervention of Mike, the one armed man from the Black Lodge, who pulled around a long line of cars backed up waiting for an old lady to slowly cross the road.  This time, however, there’s a young boy in the cross walk and the driver of the truck (a much bigger one than Mike’s pickup) is Richard Horne (I assume he’s Jerry Horne’s grandson, Audrey’s son, and he’s played by Eamon Farren) who’s high on coke and shook from an encounter with Red (perhaps another denizen of the Black Lodge, a kind of Magician or at least an Illusionist, played rather brilliantly by Balthazar Getty,) and witnessed by Carl Rodd (proprietor of the Fat Trout Trailer Park, played with exceptional dignity and compassion by Harry Dean Stanton) and a good-natured woman named Miriam Sullivan (who has just eaten two slices of cherry pie at the Double R Diner, played by Sarah Jean Long.)  That the viewer suspects well beforehand that the accident will occur in no way lessens its effect.  Every element in the sequence is perfectly balanced right down to that Eisenhower dime that spins far too long in the air and the golden smudge of the boy’s soul seemingly absorbed by the electrical lines.