Runtime: 120 minutes
Directed by: David Lynch
Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper, Dean Stockwell
From: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group
It's a Strange World.
Blue Velvet is a film I first saw in college; it had to be around 17 years ago or so. I enjoyed it yet most of the movie had left my memory banks by the time this was finally seen for the second time, which was last night on MGMHD. Thankfully this is something I found to be great despite its dark seedy nature and general unsettling tone.
The opening sets the tone: an older man in a small bucolic town has a stroke while in his backyard; it then zooms in on insects crawling on the ground. The film pulls back the curtain on this hamlet and exposes it for having some terrible human beings and horrible crimes take place. In this case, that man's son-college kid Kyle MacLachlan- is forced to return home and what a world he stumbles in after discovering a severed ear in a field. Then again he is to blame for the troubles he experiences, as he becomes so obsessed with the case that he does some illegal things to break into the apartment of Isabella Rossellini, who was connected to the case. From there he discovers that this lady has problems of her own-including some perversions-and what a ride this ends up being.
Thankfully Kyle's character wasn't portrayed as always being in the right for his rash actions. I do laugh that he got high school girl Laura Dern involved in this dilemma as among his dalliances w/ a girl who (hopefully) was 18 years old was them going to a club where somehow she was able to drink Heineken beer with him despite the legal drinking age being 21. The chuckles do go away once Frank Booth enters the picture... what a scummy, sleazy awful human being he is. Sadistic, psychotic, abusive-what a role for Dennis Hopper. He is quite the terrifying villain.
Besides an engrossing plot which is gripping the entire time, many different elements are top-notch... the cinematography, interesting uses of color, the sometimes brutal moments, symbolism, the obvious Oedipal themes, and important for a movie which is titled after a 50's song made famous by Bobby Vinton and Rossellini's character singing at that club... the music and score are appropriate for the setting. Besides several renditions of Blue Velvet, there is also an unforgettable scene featuring Roy Orbison's In Dreams. Also important for Lynch: the sound design. Of course that was great also.
Such an unflinching look was controversial at the time so the acclaim for this wasn't as strong at the time as it is now. Personally, this is the Lynch I prefer... certainly eccentric but not surreal to the point of confusion as I am more a logical person. That is not a diss as of course I can acknowledge his talent and him being an iconoclast for all these decades. Anyone that enjoys the pitch-black neo-noirs should check this out if you somehow haven't experienced it yet, not to mention this being a product from a legendary director.
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