Blue Velvet [R]

Coming back from visiting his dad in the hospital, Jeffrey Beaumont comes across a human in ear in a field. Turning it to the authorities, Jeffrey’s mind burns with the desire to solve the mystery himself and, with the help of the detective’s daughter he traces the ear to a singer, Dorothy Vallens, in a seedy club. After breaking into her apartment with the intent to find clues, he gets more than he ever imagined when he discovers that a sadistic psychopath has kidnapped Dorothy’s husband and son and holds them hostage so that he can exercise brutal power over her. 

From the guy that brought us Eraserhead (which you would never get any answer to as Lynch himself wouldn’t explain its surrealism) and The Elephant Man (one of the most moving films of all time), comes this dramatic thriller that explores the dark underbelly of the world. Set against a backdrop of bright, idyllic suburbia, Blue Velvet is (in my mind) American Beauty before there was American Beauty. Sam Mendes’ 2001 drama about the nightmares behind the American Dream can very well be argued as having been inspired by this movie! 

On the surface, it’s a film about a normal American college student who becomes entangled in a mystery that gradually becomes more brutal and life threatening. The hero’s journey so to speak; complete with frightening trials (including a terrifying ‘joy ride’ with Dennis Hopper, who we’ll get to later). But underneath, it’s much more. To paint a picture: we have the opening scene of a beautiful suburbia. A man has a heart attack. The camera then travels along the grass, into the underbrush of the garden (we hear the rustle of grass as it moves through) and then suddenly there are hundreds of insects tearing each other apart! That opening scene alone tells you exactly what type of movie this is! There is no better way to describe it really. 

What struck me most about the movie was the complexity of the writing and how many motifs and metaphors harboured such meaning. Lynch’s use of motifs of mirrors, doubles, and a whole bunch of tricks from Freud’s psychoanalytic kitbag are the key stimulators in this film and it’s through them that the frightening events of the movie gain their meaning or meanings. 

Well, the motifs and Dennis Hopper’s terrifyingly brilliant performance as Frank Booth. A true psycho for the modern screen, the role of Frank was a resurrection for Hopper’s career after he’d slumped into a stupor of drug addiction. Hopper famously said that he had play Frank “because he was Frank” and this comes across on screen. Hopper delivers a performance that is wonderfully unbalanced and there is absolutely not telling which way he’s going to go (literally, figuratively, mentally etc.). Every second word out of his mouth is a profanity, he goes into these horrible frenzies of brutality and violence, and there’s also this (sometimes subtle) underlying hint that he’s got some repressed homosexual identity issues. He’s Heath Ledger’s Joker. He’s the crazy guy that you can’t read and you can’t make out and Hopper plays the role incredibly well. 

Starring Isabella Rossillini, Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Hope Lange, Dean Stockwell, George Dickerson, Priscilla Pointer, Frances Bay, Jack Harvey, Ken Stovitz, Brad Dourif, Jack Nance, J. Michael Hunter, and Dick Green, Blue Velvet is a strikingly beautiful but wholly disturbing movie filled with drama, violence, murder, romance, suspense, and psychos. It’s a film that sets your mind working in a buzz of meaning making, even after the credits roll and song ‘Blue Velvet’ starts playing. Yeah, it’s that type of film.