Blue Velvet (1986)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Blue Velvet (1986) – D. Lynch

In memory of David Lynch who passed away yesterday, I pulled out my DVD of this film which I hadn’t watched in years. My recollection, which may or may not be accurate, is that this film was first brought to my attention by my mother who had either seen it or read about it (I was 18 years old when this was released).  This is fitting in that the film itself features a protagonist, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), who is also poised just at the boundary of childhood and adulthood, as I was.  Nearly 40 years later, what leaps out at me is that the movie is about those first steps outside of the safety of the family home (or the womb itself, if you will) where things are more unruly and there is freedom to follow any course of action, advisable or not, by following one’s own impulses.  There is inherent risk in this.  (Forty years later, I am also thinking as a parent of a teenager). Not everyone is so unfortunate to run into a Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) but the risks are real and danger is out there for the finding.  Jeffrey and his accomplice Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), daughter of the local police detective, get more than they bargained for when he finds a severed human ear in a field and they follow clues to the apartment of lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini).  She is in serious trouble and seriously warped/traumatised but Jeffrey makes the impulsive decision to get involved with her – which brings him into the sphere of evil Frank Booth. Most reviewers focus on Lynch’s depiction of a “dark underbelly” of an otherwise normal looking white-bread America and that’s definitely a key theme here – but the underbelly that Lynch creates is likely a lot weirder than any real underbellies you could easily find. Dean Stockwell vamping to Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” is but one well known example. That aside, this film actually makes more sense than most of Lynch’s other output in that the plot does not contain as many non-sequiturs or befuddling jumps (such as in Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive). Interestingly, it does foreshadow themes and choices that would reappear throughout Lynch’s oeuvre (from sound design, music, and art direction to characters, places, and that sense of the mysterious he achieves so well). Looking back now, I remember my college dorm-mates quoting Hopper’s “Pabst Blue Ribbon!” line – and even seeking out the brand in homage. For all the risks we ran back then, ready to explore the unruly world, we were lucky that our impulses (which might have been normal and psychologically, evolutionarily, biologically motivated) didn’t lead us too far astray and/or that we were able to return to safety, just as Jeffrey does. (I’m speaking for most of us).  Thank you, David Lynch, for the deep thoughts and weird images.

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Twelve Monkeys (1995) – T. Gilliam

After watching a few dud films in a row, I returned to Terry Gilliam’s classic time travel thriller as a sort of palette cleanser, rejuvenating balm – and it did not disappoint.  Using Chris Marker’s La Jetée as a launching pad, Gilliam and writers David and Janet Peoples, flesh out the narrative, which sees a man, James Cole (Bruce Willis), sent from a post-apocalyptic future (where a purposefully released virus has killed most of humanity, sending survivors underground for decades) back to the 1990s to uncover clues that scientists can use to create a vaccine and reclaim the world above.  Of course, no one believes him and he is immediately committed to a mental hospital where he meets psychiatrist Madeleine Stowe and patient Brad Pitt (who become important to the plot later on).  One undercurrent in the film focuses on whether Cole is really from the future or possibly just really mentally ill – and in true Gilliam-fashion, leads us to ponder our own understanding of reality, truth, and the myth of mental illness.  But the real action follows Cole as he bounces back and forth from the future to the present, perhaps accidentally changing the course of events (if that is actually possible), and slowly piecing together clues that reveal the involvement of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys in the events leading up to the virus’s release across the world.  The scientists of the future need this information but Cole is also driven to understand a memory that he had as a small boy (in the time just before the virus hit), of seeing people die in an airport, a memory that returns to him in a recurring dream and which is growing in familiarity the longer he stays in the 1990s.  Director Chris Marker spent his career pondering memory’s emotional sway over us, with Hitchcock’s Vertigo a particular touchstone (so it comes as no surprise that we see a clip here, when the protagonists escape into a movie theatre). Ultimately, even with all of the Hollywood baggage that could have dragged the film down, Gilliam manages to capture the same feelings, the pull of nostalgia, the pangs of lost times, and he does it while still stamping his own style on the proceedings.  Worth another look (and no, I haven’t seen the subsequent TV series).

 

Tampopo (1985)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Tampopo (1985) – J. Itami

Beloved Japanese comedy from director Juzo Itami that is equal parts a series of sketches linking food to sex, death, and all varieties of human experience AND an engaging narrative detailing how a pair of truck drivers (and the assorted “experts” they enlist) help a single mum to elevate her ramen noodles and ramen shop to excellence. Itami makes good use of classic film technique to move between scenes (closing iris wipes!) but also lets the camera move out of the narrative by following a passerby into a sketch. I was surprised to see Koji Yakusho (subsequently a big star, including in Wim Wenders’ recent Perfect Days, 2023) as a gangster intent on the sensuality of food (whose scenes also reminded me why I haven’t shown this film to the kids). Ken Watanabe (Inception, 2010) is also here as one of the truck drivers.  But the film really belongs to Tsutomu Yamazaki as Gorô, the truck driver who initiates the plan by citing in detail how noodles could be improved and Nobuko Miyamoto (the director’s wife and muse) as Tampopo, the ramen shop owner. They bring sincerity, charisma, and conviction (and have the most fleshed out characters). Overall, this is a joy to watch and while not laugh-out-loud funny, it is knowing and observant and, most of all, playful and full of heart.  

The Great Silence (1968)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Great Silence (1968) – S. Corbucci

Wintry Spaghetti Western (that takes place in “Utah” in 1898) featuring Jean-Louis Trintignant (what a career!) as a mute gunfighter (Silence) with a vendetta against bounty hunters working within a cruel law (soon to be rescinded) that allows them to massacre “outlaws” wanted dead or alive.  Klaus Kinski plays the most devious and brutal of the bounty hunters (called Tigrero in the subtitled Italian version I watched, but Loco elsewhere), piling up corpses for the hefty reward money. The new sheriff in town (Frank Wolff) sympathises with the ragtag group of outlaws hiding in the hills just outside of Snow Hill and finds a way to arrest Kinski, with plans to transport him to a larger prison. Meanwhile, Pauline (Vonetta McGee), widow of a recently killed outlaw, solicits Silence’s help in getting revenge.  We already know he’s the fastest gun in the area, encouraging the bad bounty hunters to draw first so he can kill them in self-defence. Eventually, there’s a showdown.  Ennio Morricone’s score really adds to the action, heightening those trudges through the deep snow (on foot or on steed) and cinematic vistas (matched by the many huge head close-ups that director Sergio Corbucci favours). The ending is astonishing but historically accurate (I think).  Moody and somehow majestic.  

 

Nosferatu (2024)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Nosferatu (2024) – R. Eggers

Everyone knows the story by now, having seen the Murnau (Max Schreck), Herzog (Klaus Kinski), Coppola (Gary Oldman), Universal (Bela Lugosi), or Hammer (Christopher Lee) versions of Bram Stoker’s Dracula on film.  Murnau changed the names (from Dracula to Orlok, Harker to Hutter, Jonathan to Thomas, Mina to Ellen, and so on) but was still sued by Stoker’s widow. Director Robert Eggers retains Murnau’s names in this new version but, although it starts out as such (and includes some of the “authentic” or previously shot locations), this is not the same faithful remake that Herzog already made in 1979.  Instead, this is another “variation on a theme” wrought by a director for whom the material is very near and dear (he directed a high school drama production of the story). He claims he only made the film because he found a new angle: Orlok and Ellen have an original bond that precedes her marriage to Hutter which sets the plot in motion and draws Orlok to her, all the way from Transylvania to the fictional German city of Wismark.  Hutter’s journey to the Count’s castle (sent by Herr Knock/Renfield), his stopover in the Gypsy village, and his nights with Orlok remain similar but Eggers adds his exquisite visual panache, production design and sound design (as displayed in his previous films: The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019), and The Northman (2022)). Indeed, this version of the classic tale feels bigger and bolder (perhaps because I saw it in the cinema) and very soon, we have left the original narrative behind, leaving only its contours.  Lily Rose-Depp is magnetic (and also feral) as Ellen, Willem Dafoe provides some comic relief as Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz (the Van Helsing counterpart), and Bill Skarsgård is, uh, very different from previous portrayals, as a gruesome Orlok (as a decomposing Hungarian nobleman). In the end, Eggers takes us someplace new, not scary (although there are a few jump-scares for the target audience) but definitely uncanny. Ultimately, he reveals the Count as, yes, evil but also as pathetic as anyone hopelessly obsessed can turn out to be.