The Cinematheque

“A culmination and summation that deepened every aspect of the Lynchian project, in the process cementing his status as the great artist of the American imaginary.”

Dennis Lim, Film Comment

Go figure that, in an age of media porousness, the cinematic event of the 2010s would be the third season of a TV show. With its first two episodes debuting at Cannes and institutions like Cahiers du cinéma and Sight and Sound naming it the best (the former) or second-best (the latter) film of the year, David Lynch and Mark Frost’s groundbreaking chef‑d’oeuvre reignited André Bazin’s sage question: Qu’est-ce que le cinéma? Scripted and shot as an 18-hour movie, and aired in hour-long installments on Showtime, the Twin Peaks revival picks up 25 years after season two’s legendarily WTF cliffhanger — with FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) swapped for an evil doppelgänger (MacLachlan again). But its true predecessor is Lynch’s once-maligned 1992 prequel film Fire Walk With Me, a Rosetta Stone for The Return​’s complex mythology and many obsessed-over mysteries. Cavernously strange, brilliantly nostalgia-averse, and staggering in its scope and singularity, The Return is an unshakable triumph of maximal film art.

The Best Film of the 2010s
Cahiers du cinéma

Parts 1–3
​“My Log Has a Message for You,” ​“The Stars Turn and a Time Presents Itself,” ​“Call for Help”
170 min.

Parts 4–6
“… Brings Back Some Memories,” ​“Case Files,” ​“Don’t Die”
170 min.

Parts 7–9
​“There’s a Body All Right,” ​“Gotta Light?,” ​“This Is the Chair”
170 min.

Parts 10–12
​“Laura Is the One,” ​“There’s Fire Where You Are Going,” ​“Let’s Rock”
170 min.

Part 13–15
​“What Story is That, Charlie?,” ​“We Are Like the Dreamer,” ​“There’s Some Fear in Letting Go”
170 min.

Parts 16–18
​“No Knock, No Doorbell,” ​“The Past Dictates the Future,” ​“What Is Your Name?”
170 min.