A Mirror Floating in Water

Blue Velvet - It's amazing how David Lynch can take something which seems to have been done a number of times, and craft it into something so entirely his own, that the influences almost seem to disappear. He creates simulacrum

Blue Velvet remains today Lynch's most powerful film (next to Mulholland Drive and his short film Grandmother) and certainly his most nostalgic; and though it may not be him at the height of his independent powers (much of this film is influenced by Hitchcock, with an almost blatantly Hitchockian climax), it is still in a very messy way, a masterpiece. It opens with a shot of roses, blowing in the spring wind, a surreal slow-motion shot of a friendly fireman waving at the camera, schoolchildren crossing the street. Lynch's pseudo-setting of Lumberton seems to exist in such a timeless and warm place, that we can only assume that all time and culture stopped in the 50's, hell, it's even filmed with the campy humour of a 50's flick.

Blue Velvet completely reflects Lynch's love of movies, especially Hitchcock and his weird juxtapositions, as well as his nostalgia for innocence. It can be seen in almost all of his films; Wild at Heart dances between the lines of a violent manhunt, an erotic Elvis-like love story, and an obvious homage to The Wizard of Oz all at once. Muholland Drive graciously floated between a parody on Hollywood and Nancy Drew, and a truly nightmarish dream and lesbian love story.

Compared with all of Lynch's other works, before and after Blue Velvet, it is moderately tame in its weirdness, but no less shocking. It is a story of maturity, as its main character Jeffery, who is such a good college-boy with not a dirty thought in his mind, who comes up with the idea of playing Mr. Detective and breaking into the apartment of a women who might be involved in the mystery of a severed ear that he found in the forest, without giving any second thoughts to other implications of his idea.

It's amazing how Lynch fiddles with the subconscious, of both the audience and his characters (learning from only the best; Hitchcock). It's quite interesting how Jeffery's attitude towards his plan is before he sneaks in, and after. Before, he takes it as if he is self-consciously in some detective film and Sandy (a highschool blonde who has all of the attributes of any 1950's movie cliches) being his accomplice. But once he arrives at Dorothy's empty apartment, and a series of circumstances leads to Jeffery hiding in a closet, he unwittingly watches her get undressed and then raped. Watch his eyes throughout the scene, they almost seem like a replication of the shot of Norman Bates, vouyeristically peering though a hole in the wall to watch one of his unsuspecting vacator’s get undressed.

It's about time that I get to the other world which inhabits Blue Velvet; a world completely pitted against the campy world of Lumbertown. The world of Dorothy's apartment, (all of these scenes, which interestingly take place at night) is one of victimization, sadomaschism and sexual violence. The two performances which are embraced in this world are Isabella Rossilini as Dorothy (in what is probably her most powerful performance) and her victimizer and rapist, Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth, who is undoubtedly one of the most sadistic and intense villians in the history of cinema. His terrifyingly intense yelling of the word "****" in every sentnece is greatly contrasted with Sandy's dreams of love, birds and angels.

Not enough can be said of Rossinlini's performance, which is so painful and powerful that we feel for her even before we even know who she is. What has happened, is that her husbund and son have been kidnapped by Frank Booth, and the only way she can get them back, is if she becomes his slave. It's so painful and strange to see how masochistic she is in a scene in which she is having violence inflicted upon her; it is one of the most shocking psychological devices in cinema representing the loss of innocence.

What Blue Velvet really seems to be about is how the mystery of a severed ear leads the eyes of the audience; Jeffery, to the haunting underworld of his very own hometown. But it's so much more than that: It's a story of the underlying evil lurking underneath everything beautiful and innocent in the world, and despite the fact that this evil may be defeated, innocence cannot be regained.

Blue Velvet is an extremely well-made movie with some moments of true genius (the Candy-Colored Clown scene for example), but then these great scenes are juxtaposed with some slightly mediocre scenes, which are quite difficult to accept on first viewing (such as Sandy’s melodramatic recollection of her dream of heaven), but then become appropriate after becoming familiar with Lynch’s other work. The reason why his juxtapositions are so extreme; why he combines blatantly campy satirical daytime scenes with scenes of the nocturnal horrors of the night; a time in which the id goes wild, is because it necessitates Lynch’s philosophy. In all of his films he seems to see a duality in the world; the beautiful, angelic, child-like and innocent and the violent, grotesque and strange. Much of this certainly seems to be rooted in his experience of Philadelphia as a young man and how he discovered the dark, absurd side of human nature. Many of his films are concerned with this discovery one way or another; Blue Velvet is about this discovery, oh and how beautifully nightmarish it is.
9/10