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Blue Velvet, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, remains an intoxicating look at supposed small-town tranquility in which innocence fears to tread. Written and directed by David Lynch (Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks) after suffering through the wreckage and critical beating from his poorly received adaptation of Dune, the movie also serves as a bit of a confessional for Lynch as he returns to the genuine weirdness that made his debut, Eraserhead, so memorable.
Dark thoughts, disturbing deeds and dangerously unpredictable characters are what the quiet town of Lumberton conceals beneath its pleasant Americana façade. Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), home from Oak Lake College to visit his hospitalized father (Jack Harvey) after his suffering from a heart attack, cuts through a vacant field on his way home and discovers a severed ear hiding in the grass. He quickly brings it to Police Detective John Williams (George Dickerson) and, together, the two men ponder and speculate how the ear could have come to be in a sleepy Pacific Northwest logging town.
Peaked by the attractiveness and sudden interest in the case of the severed ear by the detective's daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern), the young and naive Beaumont simply will not let the mystery go. Together, he and Sandy, obviously attracted to each other though Sandy has a boyfriend, delve deeper into the incident and discover that a suspicious torch singer, Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), may be involved. Soon enough, after a bizarre turn of events involving a bit of breaking-and-entering from Beaumont, matters turn disturbing as the violently dry-humping Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) and his bizarre sexual tendencies – involving a lip-synching Ben (Dean Stockwell) - drag Beaumont and Dorothy into the unsettling truth behind the picturesque Lumberton and its residents.
Turning the mood of Bobby Vinton's classic rendition of “Blue Velvet” completely on its ear (pardon the play on words), Lynch presents a mysterious opening of intrigue that keeps beckoning its characters to follow until it completely spirals into something deadlier and, with each twist and turn of the crackling narrative, more bizarre than the last. It is also completely intoxicating. Call it disturbing. Call it neo-noir. Call it anything you want; Blue Velvet is a masterpiece of many themes and moods and operates on a number of levels.
Lynch and long-time cinematographer Frederick Elmes (Eraserhead, Wild at Heart) articulate the seedy world that exists on the fringes of Lumberton through some pretty gritty and grimy exploration of the insect world. Many shots allude to the insects that plague summer days and summer nights and reveal the swarming nest of human filth that uses Lumberton as its cloak. And speaking of seedy, if the use of Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” doesn’t send shivers down your spine then very few moments in cinema history will. That’s Lynch’s precise ability to reveal what hides below the surface of things. From one extreme to the other, Lynch pulls back the red velvet curtains to – time and time again – bring us closer to what we fear the most: ourselves.
Hitchcock did it with Psycho. Charles Laughton did it with The Night of the Hunter. Martin Scorsese has Taxi Driver. Add Lynch’s Blue Velvet to the list of directors who explore the psychotic subconscious with film and manage – soul, body, and mind - to strike a pop cultural nerve that resounds into the eternities. With Blue Velvet, Lynch deconstructs the very folds and fabrics of suburbia and the life therein with a freakish finesse that is simply unmatched by his contemporaries.
Come visit, if you dare.
MPAA Rating: R.
