David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks: The Return' as the First Masterpiece of the 21st Century

Christian Caliandro argues that David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks: The Return' (2017) is the first true cinematic masterpiece of the 21st century, surpassing other significant films like 'Inception', 'Interstellar', 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', 'Donnie Darko', 'Southland Tales', 'Collateral', 'Boyhood', 'Birdman', 'The Master', and 'Holy Motors'. The series expands cinematic language into an 18-hour film, following the trend of expanded cinema from the 1960s and 1970s. Lynch dismantles and reassembles the logic of modern TV series, using the original 'Twin Peaks' (1990-91) as a pretext to create a new type of narrative that is neither modernist nor postmodernist. The series evokes the uncanny (Unheimlich), drawing on Freud, Kubrick, and Kafka. The central journey of Agent Dale Cooper over 25 years rearticulates reality, with his alter ego Dougie Jones-Cooper experiencing the world without mediation. In episode 14, Lynch's character Gordon Cole questions: 'Are we like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream? But who is the dreamer?' Episode 8 features a scene that updates the finale of '2001: A Space Odyssey', identifying the atomic bomb and the end of World War II as the origin of contemporary evil and dreams.