Blue Velvet (1986)
Looking back it becomes apparent what a departure Blue Velvet was for David Lynch. He had suffered from something that too many independent directors are put through these days, which is a studio plopping a big-budget movie in their lap and then pretty much poking their nose in every step of the way to the point that what comes out satisfies neither audiences nor the director. That is what happened with Lynch's previous movie, an adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel Dune, that attempted to jam the story into a mere two hours and 20 minutes - something that no one who has followed Lynch has attempted. Despite the weird mess Alejandro Jodorowsky's movie would have been I think he still understood he wasn't getting away with under three.
Messing up a Marvel or Star Wars film these days in such a capacity, whether the director is at fault or not, is pretty much a career killer. Lynch had been offered Return of the Jedi before turning it down to make Dune, and this was merely on the reputation of Eraserhead and The Elephant Man, the latter which had produced Oscar nominations of the young director. I think that was the turning point where Lynch decided he was going to go his own way and he found a surprising supporter in Dino de Laurentiis, who backed and distributed Blue Velvet. Laurentiis pretty much knew no major studio was going to touch the film and that, except for making sure it didn't get that dreaded X rating, Lynch didn't seem to care. He had a story to tell about the corruption that seethes under idyllic, small-town America, and he was going to tell it his own way.
Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) returns to the small town of Lumberton when his father (Jack Harvey) has a heart attack. While walking back from visiting his father in the hospital Jeffrey finds a severed ear in a field and brings it to Detective Williams (George Dickerson) to look into. This leads Jeffrey to rekindling a friendship with the detective's daughter Sandy (Laura Dern) who is now a senior in high school. Curious about the ear, and with some information Sandy overheard from her father, Beaumont decides to investigate the matter further.
His first clue is that it may involve a singer named Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), and Jeffrey figures out a way to sneak into her apartment. Unfortunately, he is discovered, and also learns about her association with Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a sexually deviant head of a gang of thugs related to drug trafficking in the town. Eventually Jeffrey begins affairs with both Dorothy and Sandy, the former leading him to cross paths with Frank and set a number of events in motion.
Blue Velvet is a bit of a transition for Lynch. Wild at Heart, the movie that followed it, would be a bit stranger and go off on more tangents, and that only kept getting more and more de rigueur for him as his career went on. Here there is more of a balance between symbolism and straightforward storytelling. For those baffled by Eraserhead or Mulholland Drive this should come across as kind of a throwback to the noir films of the 1940s, albeit quite a bit more disturbing.
It also is the first to focus on an outlandish, exaggerated villain. There were other actors in the running, but Dennis Hopper was the perfect choice and, in many cases, I wondered if he was acting or just being Dennis Hopper. Normally an over-the-top performance like this would strain the boundaries of believability, but Lynch doesn't ask his audience to accept what's being shown to them as real. Frank is an archetype and as such something for Lynch to play with and he does, making him both ridiculously evil and hilarious at the same time.
Like most of Lynch's films this has a dark sense of humor, but it does go in some disturbing directions. One of the reasons De Laurentiis decided to distribute this himself is because of the sexual content, the most controversial being the assault on Dorothy by Frank as well as it being implied that this has been happening for a long time. It also does not paint Jeffrey as much of a hero, with him taking advantage of Dorothy's fractured mental state and vulnerability and knowing full well what he is doing while also pursuing a romance with Sandy. That is also a bit creepy as, though Sandy may be 18, she is still in high school while Jeffrey has been in college long enough to leave and come back to help out his father. None of this does a traditional romance or crime movie make.
If there is a major problem with the movie it is Kyle MacLachlan. Lynch often has his actors behave like automatons, but MacLachlan, at least at this point in his career, was still not that good of an actor. His strange line readings worked as an alien in The Hidden and Paul Atreides, through any Dune adaptation, is pretty much a blank slate upon whom events are thrust. Here he is constantly upstaged by better actors such as Hopper, Isabella Rossellini and Laura Dern. Dern is able to communicate so much with just her facial expressions when she finds out the depths to which Jeffrey has become involved in what is going on between Dorothy and Frank, while MacLachlan's line delivery throughout most of the movie reminds me of Keanu Reeves. He may be the star but even Dean Stockwell and Jack Nance outshine him despite having only brief appearances in the film.
It is good that the movie does not hinge on a major performance from him like it did with Wild at Heart, which was something Nicholas Cage was able to bring. Instead, it is one of the most interesting crime thrillers of the 1980s. There is a wrongness that pervades every scene, beginning with the bright colors and smiling small-town atmosphere from the beginning. The one thing Lynch was always able to do was create a sense of unease in the audience and that would have been there even without a character like Frank Booth.
Blue Velvet (1986)
Time: 120 minutes
Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper
Director: David Lynch
Comments
Post a Comment