1/x When Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me came out in 92, much of the (male-dominated) critical community somehow managed to entirely leave out its central dynamic—Laura’s struggle to cope w/ [SPOILER] being sexually abused by her dad (the film’s driving force!)—from their reviews

It's tempting to focus on ethical issues raised by the high concept sci-fi premise, rather than on the implications of the internal metaphors undergirding that premise. But I think the latter, the abstractions of mind & soul, seem to be the engine of SEVERANCE, steering it.

(Fwiw, Mark also has every reason to already know that H's life is fraught with problems; in S1, he watches Helena's wild indifference to Helly's extreme turmoil, culminating in an attempt to take her own life. The twisted nature of H's existence is abundantly apparent.)

I think this gets at the way intimacy can break down barriers, placing identity in a fluid state. In allegories, sex often represents an encounter with oneness, a meeting of opposites. (Here, innies/outies.) Neither of these two is sure who they are; they're stumbling through it.

Indeed, when they have sex, there is a lovely parallel insofar as viewers cannot yet be certain which version of *either* person is present: M's reintegration status is unclear, & there is not definitive proof which H is present. They're Schrödinger's Severeds: one, both, neither

One can even argue that, in a key sense, Helena is accessing the Helly side of herself here—she's being vulnerable & tentatively dropping the mask. Helly's literal reappearance at the end of the ep (& Helena's accession to it, albeit forced) then seems symbolically related.

Moreover, after Helena partially acknowledges her deception & begins confessing how ashamed she is of her life, Mark affirmatively declares he doesn't care about what she's done out there—stopping the discussion & making it unclear how far Helena's confession would have proceeded

First, this scene struck me as intentionally representative of the type of progression a relationship often goes thru: we start by presenting a very selective, idealized version of ourselves; it is only with intimacy that we feel safe enough to reveal thornier parts of ourselves.

Rather, the problem with Helena's behavior to Mark in S2E4 is that she conceals important information about herself. But this is, to barrow Mark's term from above, a "mushier" problem than a straightforward matter of one person impersonating a totally different person...

So I disagree w/ those who argue the problem w Helena's behavior to Mark is that she's impersonating someone else. Because she's not. Helly is the suppressed side of a person who hates her life. Helena is the mask of repression that person wears. They're sides of the same person.

@rarefilmm I understand & support the project of spreading open access to rare and hard to find titles, but isn’t this book still very much in print? Does his estate (ie his loved ones) not benefit from their sales? Not trying to blame, just trying to understand the thought process here…

And a postcard that Laura keeps on her desk, as seen in THE MISSING PIECES:

@Capoglou (one of my favorite films of all time, HEAVEN, was the final script kieslowski completed before he died, & a different director, tykwer, directed it after his passing. still, that was a quite different context… it’s possible, though.)

At a minimum, we can still hope that the scripts for UNRECORDED NIGHT will be published one day... (Hopefully alongside some of his other major unproduced works, like ANTELOPE DON'T RUN NO MORE or even DREAM OF THE BOVINE.)