Splitting the heart

Terry Nguyen on Laura Palmer’s heart necklace.

This is the second in a series of dispatches called Peak Objects, from Dirt x MUBI. Authors writing about a single object of their choice from the world of Twin Peaks. You can read the first dispatch, from Geoff Rickly, here.

“I was in love with the character of Laura Palmer and her contradictions: radiant on the surface but dying inside.” —David Lynch

The final scene of the Twin Peaks pilot unfolds as a vision. Sarah Palmer, Laura’s mother, lies on the living room couch with her eyes closed, drained by the day’s events. Cut to jittery, handheld footage of someone moving through the woods. Sarah jerks awake, screaming at the sight of a gloved hand unearthing a buried necklace from a rock.

On the day that Laura Palmer’s body is discovered, investigators find a necklace at the scene of the crime: half of a gold heart engraved with the word “BEST.” Police believe it to be Laura’s necklace. They suspect that the owner of the other half—the one that says “FRIENDS”—is her killer.

The heart necklace was given to Laura by James Hurley, her secret motorcycle-riding beau. And while James was one of the last people to see Laura alive, he was a benign, if not boring, figure in her life. “I really believe that you love me,” Laura tells James when he gives her the pendant. “Now my heart belongs to you,” she says, then breaks it in two.

Twin Peaks begins as a murder mystery, but as the investigation unfolds, it becomes clear that the real enigma is Laura herself. The search for Laura’s killer is a kind of red herring in the first few episodes. It briefly distracts the investigators and the audience from the question that surrounds Laura’s death: Who was Laura Palmer?

David Lynch was a master purveyor of symbols. He was never direct or didactic, and his inclination for Americana imbued his work with an errant familiarity. There are layers to Lynch’s symbolic registers, and his imagery can feel impenetrable at times, no matter how familiar the object initially seems. 

On its surface, the heart necklace reflects Laura’s dueling intentions—a covert token of her allegiance towards James. She wears it while in her public relationship with Bobby, the high school quarterback, who also deals her cocaine. The necklace is both innocent and incriminating, an iconic symbol of teenage love that simultaneously encodes a betrayal. Its seemingly platonic inscription offers Laura plausible deniability about who owns the other half.

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To celebrate the 35th anniversary of Mark Frost and David Lynch’s groundbreaking TWIN PEAKS, the complete original series plus its 2017 follow-up THE RETURN are now available for the first time on MUBI. Dirt readers get two months free to enjoy this show, plus everything else streaming on the platform for incredible cinema. Start watching here.

Lying just five miles south of the Canadian border, and twelve miles west of the state line, is a sleepy little town filled with intriguing characters, a damn fine cup of coffee, and cherry pie so sweet it’ll kill you. While you’re visiting, you may ask yourself, “Who killed Laura Palmer? Is it all a dream? Or are the owls really not what they seem…” Welcome to the town of Twin Peaks.

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