Blue Velvet
Dir. by: David Lynch
Country: USA
Year: 1986
Running time: 120 minutes
“It’s a strange world, isn’t it?”
To the voice of Bobby Vinton, the vividly rich flowers at the white picket fences blossom in the sunshine, and the benign fireman drives by, smiling and waving at us, clearly happy that fires simply do not occur in this part of the world. The garden needs hosing, and the elderly men, content with their serene life, enjoy watering it, while the women become engrossed in the latest crime story on TV— and that’s the only place such crime happens, far from this life.
This is Lumberton, the small middle-American town in which David Lynch’s Blue Velvet takes place. Lumberton is, on the so finely depicted surface of the opening sequence, suburban America at its most stereotypically innocuous. But with this director, we’re seldom in for a routine ride, and within mere minutes, we’re plunged into a world of mutilated ears, sexual perversion, kidnapping, candy-coloured-clowns and joyrides.
On his way back from visiting his father in the hospital, archetypal college student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle Machlachlan) finds an ear in a deserted field. Taking it to Detective Williams, whom his father knows, Jeffrey is understandably curious as to whom the ear belongs. Befriending Williams’ daughter, the peachy high-school student Sandy, Jeffrey embarks on a journey into the depraved subculture of his sleepy community. He meets nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens, a recurring name in the ongoing ear case, and begins a sexual relationship with her that will eventually lead him to an encounter with Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), the perverted psychopath who is keeping Dorothy’s husband and son hostage in order to force the singer into sexual torture.
While Kyle Machlachlan serves Jeffrey with the typical prying of a young man with nothing better to do, who gets caught up in something way above him, Dennis Hopper’s is the performance by which the film is most remembered. Frank Booth is the very embodiment of evil, and Lynch does all he can to conjure up the image of a powerful and insouciantly dangerous psychopath who, with every intake of helium and curse and act of sexual perversion, is seemingly unstoppable in all his malevolence. Dean Stockwell, as Suave Ben, however, perhaps steals the show in a delightful cameo, in which, clad in makeup, he mimes Candy-coloured lyrics into a lamp, which lights his face gloriously. Incidentally, the same scene offers Lynch the chance to do what he does best—manipulate the fear in all of us, simply by bewildering us with stark (sur)realism and unsettling gloom—just note the clown that sits on the couch as the gang enters, the inexplicable Paul (Lynch regular Jack Nance, of Eraserhead fame) insisting on introducing himself to Jeffrey more than once, and the passive acceptance with which Ben toasts “Here’s to fucking.”
Lynch directs the film like an old-fashioned, 1940s mystery, not dissimilar to the average Hitchcock outing, particularly in early scenes. The early verbal exchanges between Jeffrey Beaumont and Detective Williams are deliberately acted with the sickliness of an old family soap opera. But amid all the benevolence, there is the usual underlying menace of Lynch’s directing: the zoom-in on the ear, as an implication of what is to come, and the director’s usual indulgences of random puzzlement are present also: blind Double Ed guessing how many fingers Jeffrey is holding up; and observe the time and care taken for the hospital scene—the apparatus mounted on Jeffrey’s father is, for such a short scene without dialogue, frightening in its passive obscurity; and of course, let’s not forget the climax, in which a guy in (according to the script) “an extreme state of shock,” stands upright, having been shot in the head—it’s Lynch, and Lynch only.
Whether intentional or not, symbolism is also prevalent in the directing: as Jeffrey ascends the staircase to Dorothy’s apartment for the first time, we see the light of the streets behind him, and then plunged into the dark, blue shades of the empty corridors—the light of Jeffrey’s life is now behind him, and nothing but darkness lies ahead; and note the strong difference between the two ears at the beginning and end of the story—while one is decomposing and riddled with bugs, the other is once again, after a tortuously obscene adventure, clean and pure. The characters themselves represent a certain aspect of life. Jeffrey is the inquisitor, the investigator, the one who solves the crime, while Frank is crime itself, nothing less than pure evil; and while Dorothy is the victim of that unrelenting decadence (and mentally warped because of it), Laura Dern offers excellent contrast as Sandy, who, being the light in Jeffrey’s darkening world, emerges out of the shadows, a la Film Noir. Lynch’s controversial exploitation of sexual violence is tackled by the director himself: while evil Frank demands that his victims—and the audience—don’t look at him, Jeffrey the good guy not only looks but fights back.
And, with viciously stylish vigour, Lynch exploits the expression of perturbing violence with the carefully crafted, otherwise innocent, soundtrack—a device deployed by, among others, Tarantino in Mr Blonde’s torture scene in Reservoir Dogs, which, ironically, also deals with a severed ear. As well as Angelo Badalamenti’s pitch-perfect score, and the haunting use of the title track, we’re treat to Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams,” while Raymond’s girl boogies on top of a car, watching, while she dances away, Frank and his cronies beat and torment Jeffrey with a relentless sign of inhumanity.
Originally four hours long, Blue Velvet had to be cut for both the length and profanity—among the many scenes cut was Jeffrey’s waking up after Frank’s attack, to find his pants round his ankles. Though the film is unquestionably sordid, however, Hopper’s over-the-top, deranged antics often verge on the hilarious—another Lynchian trait, in making humour the subtle instigator of sadism. Whether it is realistic, unrealistic, surrealistic, funny, repelling, stylish, dark, provocative, metaphorical, obscure and malicious, Blue Velvet is, most of all, the summation of David Lynch’s work, and one of the most influential and stylish films of the past twenty years.
Mick
