“Keep your ear to the ground.”
Blue Velvet is the noir-ification of The Wizard of Oz. I say this not just coz there’s literally a key character named Dorothy in both films, but purely for the idea of narrative holes, or narrative portals, in both cases to the unconscious. In Oz, the tornado is the portal. In Blue Velvet, it’s the ear. The camera literally travels into the ear on the ground, and only at the end of the movie, emerges from Jeffery’s ear. So we effectively spend the majority of the dark parts of the film inside Jeffery’s head. Lynch operates in an oneiric mode, constructing the cinematic equivalent of a dream, in which events unfold without the rational filter of waking reality.
“Why are there people like Frank? Why is there so much trouble in this world?”
Some context to why this film was groundbreaking for its time: 1970s cinema reveled in violence: your Deliverance, your Death Wish, your Taxi Driver, your Rolling Thunder. But the violence they depicted was decidedly realist and non-sexual. For the most part the majority of the settings portrayed in these gritty violent films were set apart from normal American towns. Straw Dogs was really heavy and portrayed shocking sexual content, though it wasn’t in a regular American house or apartment. Of course these movies had their complaints but they were tolerated. Lynch knew what he was doing with Blue Velvet using clean-cut kids like Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern. I think their presence is what made it too much for audiences back then. Had Lynch used some East Village punks, goths, or some marginalised group who discovered the central mystery, most of the audience could have used that as a shield. Blue Velvet took a direct, hard approach into the American psyche because it appeared to be a place where all was good. Even the radio commercial had a familiar, cheerful feel. And yet, American towns have never been all that good despite what people think. Any study of American crime will reveal there were more sex criminals and repeat offenders in mid-century America. But people didn’t talk about it though. The real Frank Booths got away with things because people believed “it doesn’t happen here.” Lynch ripped the roof off and reminded the world that nice places could be a lot worse. Countless films evoke similarly terrorizing emotions about “hidden rot in perceived utopia”. Yet, it’s nearly impossible to approach a film with the same level of naivete today!
“Baby wants Blue Velvet. I love it. I love it.”
Typically, Hollywood relegates terrifying narratives into genre films. From Psycho to Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the numerous subsequent slasher films, horror is the standard repository for such experiences. For me, Blue Velvet is decidedly NOT a horror film. It’s far too expansive for neat genre categorization. Lynch borrows, promiscuously, from all genres to reach something inexplicably transcendental. Lynch builds on aesthetics and tropes of so many films, each one lodged in the Westernized collective memory – a pastiche. While Back To The Future in ’85 made people nostalgic for the 1950s, Lynch in ’86 took narrative tropes of 1950s technicolor melodramas and infused them with a coming-of-age narrative as a means of exploring a sexual psychodrama unimaginable by any other director or studio mining the same territory.
“In dreams I walk with you,
In dreams I talk to you,
In dreams your mine all the time,
We’re together in dreams, in dreams.”
I just love how Lynch flipped this song’s meaning on it’s head into that of total domination of someone else where he controls them in their dreams. Dennis Hopper reciting the lyrics with his bug-eyed Joker-lipstick insanity, describing to Jeffrey what a “love letter” is…..pure hyper id! The first 35 minutes will distort any audience’s expectations of the film, what with Jeffery and Sandy being such Golden Retriever-like optimistic lovebirds….and then Frank Booth comes in with his oral fixations and giant toddler dark energy. The audio and visuals from then onwards has you anticipating something emerging, like a waking dream. Its like Audition before there was Audition.
“This….is….it”
I feel like every Lynch work, Blue Velvet especially, has to be just the way it is. The weird dialogue, the flat way most scenes are shot, the almost kitschy backdrop…..its all wrong in the right way; all of it feeds a particular millieu. Its like piecing together a dream you had right after you woke up. Can you believe Lynch made Velvet right after Dune? In many ways, this is the film where you see his Lynchian language grow. Vivid, textual and strange.
“I don’t see how they could do that. I could never eat a bug”
The confidence to pull of such a seemingly cheesy ending with the obvious fake bird after such a dark and disturbing movie….. harkening back to Sandy’s dream, and the idea that goodness can be restored if enough of the good people are willing to fight for it…..only Lynch, man!
P.S: There’s a great story about Henry Rollins and Blue Velvet. Right after it came out, Rollings saw Hopper at an art gallery and chased after him screaming Hopper’s lines from the movie, until Hopper ran to his car and bolted off. That is the funniest thing to me, considering the lunatic legend that was Dennis Hopper!
Mike’s love for films began when his dad introduced him to The Usual Suspects. From that moment on, he never looked back. Now, having explored thousands of films, he has mastered the art of unpeeling each facet gracefully. Mike especially loves writing movie reviews that are narratives in themselves, offering a unique perspective and depth you won’t find anywhere else. His insightful and captivating reviews bring each film to life, making him a standout voice in the world of cinema.