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.