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How so? I'd go further back.
What FWWM does that we don't get in any of his previous films is create linkage between the 'real' world, and the more subjective surreal segments. If you look at Blue Velvet or Wild at Heart, a lot of weird stuff happens, but the narrative proceeds in a fairly straightforward way. With FWWM, he begins to play with form a lot more, immersing you in the surreal reality that Laura inhabits. There's more outright supernatural stuff, now the evil isn't just a really bad guy, like Frank Booth, it's actually a spiritual incarnation of evil. Now, you could argue the series actually did this, but the film takes that surrealism to an extreme, it's the most surreal film he did since Eraserhead.
Like LH and MD, FWWM is a dream before dying, the frantic, scattered moments someone experiences on their way out of reality. The moment of transcendent death at the end of the film is another common thread with those two.
And, the focus on a female protagonist is a major departure from his previous stuff. In Blue Velvet, we're kept at a distance from Dorothy Valens, only seeing her through Jeffery's eyes. However, in FWWM, we engage directly with Laura, and this focus on a suffering, complex female protagonist continues with Mulholland Dr. and the new Inland Empire.
And that's why I see FWWM as the critical turning point in his output. It's where he manages to fuse the surrealism of his early work with the emotion and reality of his later stuff. |
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