Blue Velvet [1986] [DVD]

If you've never seen David Lynch this is a good place to start as it has a combination of his trademark obscurity (seen perhaps best in Eraserhead, Lost Highway and Twin Peaks FWWM) and a reasonably linear structure (though not as coherent as The Straight Story), so incorporating some of the finest techniques of his work. The plot is bizarre, complex and perverse leaving unanswered questions and disturbing imagery firmly impressioned on the mind. Blue Velvet creates a remarkably hokey smalltown American town and explores the sinister mechanics behind the seemingly placid facade. No one else can combine tacky diners, convenience stores, picket fences and tweeting robins with the sadomasochistic underworld quite like Lynch can.

Watch it and you'll never forget it. Watch any more of his films and you'll never think about cinema the same again!!

All of that said--I saw this film in its first theatrical release, and at the time I did not like it; it struck me as incredibly pretentious and wildly derrivative of numerous European directors, particularly of Hitchcock, Bunuel and Fellini. (Indeed, I recall remarking to a friend that it was very much like Fellini meets Chuck Waters.) I had no intention of revisiting the film until a friend expressed an interest in seeing it--and so, rather reluctantly, I agreed to sit through it one more time. And on this occasion I was pleasantly surprised. It wears extremely well.

That is not to say that there are not problems with the film. Kyle MacLachlan is a remarkably wooden actor; the plot frequently falls apart; and Lynch's bursts of surrealism are occasionally miscalculated and actually tend to get in the way of any coherent statement. But what BLUE VELVET does well, it does very, very well indeed. The story is a bit convoluted, but in general it concerns a young man (the eternally wooden MacLachlan) who comes home from university when his father is taken ill. While walking to the hospital he discovers a severed human ear--and when the police fail to give him information re his discovery his own curiosity leads him into investigation. His investigations center on beautiful singer Dorothy Vallen (Isabella Rossellini), who is rumored to be involved with local underworld figures--and in the process he becomes directly involved with both Vallen and the dark forces that surround her.

David Lynch uses this storyline as the hook on which to hang his dark statements about the nature of sexual awakening, moral choice, and the deadly evil to which we strive to remain oblivious but which nonetheless lurks very close to the surface of otherwise ordinary lives. And while many aspects of the film can be justly criticized, in this the film is entirely--and unnervingly--successful. In BLUE VELVET, sex and violence are ruthlessly connected, and both are forever simmering just under the skin.

At the time of its release, and even today, BLUE VELVET was extremely, extremely controversial for its nightmarish depiction of sexual attraction and violence--and deservedly so, for the film repeatedly focuses on a horrific sexual humiliation of the mysterious Dorothy Vallen by the predators that surround her; the rape sequence (which is genuinely horrific), her endurance of repeated physical and sexual assault, her sado-masochistic edge that implies a certain complicity in her own abuse are front and center throughout the film and is all deeply disturbing. Strangely, however, the film contains considerably less nudity and graphic violence than one might expect; much of the effect arises more from the on-going dark, surrealistic visuals and disquieting sound effects than from any one single scene.

With the exception of MacLaughlin, the cast is very fine here. Laura Dern has seldom been so effectively used in any film as she is here, but the real standouts are Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper; Rossellini was a relative newcomer at the time, but she gives an incredible performance, and Hopper virtually re-invented his languishing career in the role of her psychotic tormenter, and Dean Stockwell's against-type cameo was so startling that it drew tremendous critical fanfare.

But now we come to the final question. Do I like the film? No. Even though I can now watch it and appreciate it, and although I certainly recognize its importance and influence, and although I grant it status as art, I still do not like BLUE VELVET and I remain dubious about director David Lynch in general. It seems to me that he lacks the discipline to create a cohesive statement. But do I recommend it? Absolutely. Those who admire Lynch admire him with a passion, and you may be among those. And even if you are not--BLUE VELVET is an important film in so many respects that no one seriously interested in film can afford to miss seeing it at least once.