While Twin Peaks: The Return, Showtime’s 2017 revival of the 1990 – ’91 David Lynch / Mark Frost television series Twin Peaks, was officially referred to as “an 18 hour event series”, Lynch (who directed the entire event himself) has said that he sees it as an 18 hour movie. And the folks at Sight and Sound clearly agree with him, because Twin Peaks: The Return has just found its way onto their list of the greatest films of all time. Where one of the other entries in the top 250 happens to be Lynch’s 1992 theatrical release Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
Sight and Sound previously caused a stir when they listed Twin Peaks: The Return as the second best movie of 2017, coming in behind Get Out (which, yes, is also on their list of the top 250 greatest films of all time). These lists are compiled by way of a poll, with critics, programmers, curators, archivists, and academics sending in their personal picks – so clearly there are a whole lot of people out there who consider Twin Peaks: The Return to be a movie rather than a season of television.
One of those people is filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, who told Vulture back in 2019, “The best of American cinema of the last decade, probably, for me, is Twin Peaks: The Return, an 18 hour film that is incomprehensible and dreamlike in the most beautiful, adventurous way. That is a masterpiece.“
Personally, I don’t think it should be on movie lists, even if Lynch sees it as a movie himself. It was released as a TV show, so it should be kept on lists of TV shows rather than lists of films. But if people want to call it a movie, it really doesn’t mean enough to me to argue about it.
So, where do you stand on this issue? Do you think Twin Peaks: The Return should be included on lists of great movies, or do you think it’s a TV show, like the seasons of Twin Peaks before it? Let us know by leaving a comment below.