Blue Velvet has been infamous as a controversial independent film from the strange mind of David Lynch that it gains a mixture of opinions and interpretations that keep people talking about it. Many can be turned off by its disturbing content of violence, drugs, and sex, others can be mystified by its surreal imagery of a small town and its citizens, there are even some huge laughs at some of its eccentricities, and at least some respect for its actors. All of these elements boggle my mind, but I feel they work altogether to create a unique piece of art for film by an artist like Lynch with his strange and dark style.
The movie starts off with an opening credits sequence with a wall of flowing blue velvet and haunting classical music playing, giving it an eerie start, before it fades into a more colorful image of a small American town. The shots of the clear blue sky, a white picket fence with red and yellow flowers, a smiling fireman waving on his firetruck, and neat clean houses provide a picturesque and stereotypical view of a suburban community as friendly, clean, and safe. However, it juxtaposes with a darker side below the pretty surface when we see a man collapse from a heart attack and we look deeply into the green grass at an ugly pack of termites, groveling through the dirt. It symbolizes a sign of darkness and when Kyle Mac Lachlan as Jeffrey discovers a severed ear in a field, it shows an ordinary young man making a shocking discovery in the town he's treated as his home after returning from college. It's that one discovery that throws him into a conflict that gets him in over his head with a voyeuristic and perverted journey. It excites me to see what an everyman like Jeffrey will uncover beneath his picturesque world and it's original to say that an ear is what jolts him into an underworld he has never experienced. The clean and peaceful surroundings he is used to look comfortable when I see that and it makes me think of my own comfortable surroundings living in suburbia. Of course, the imagery of that blissful life looks exaggerated with its colorful and eccentric elements that it comes off as an alternate world that Lynch creates to be strange. When Jeffrey’s amateur detective work leads him to the mysterious singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), the film takes a deeper step into a world within Jeffrey’s world that is dark and grim and is ruled by the ruthless and maniacal Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper).
The violent world of Frank is disturbing to witness and makes the movie unbearable to watch, but Lynch never shies away from keeping it strange. As cruel and sadistic as Frank is, there are eccentric behaviors displayed around him and his henchmen, such as the scene where his accomplice Ben is dressed in white make-up like a transvestite and lip-synchs “In Dreams”. This scene brings a strange edge to the creepy and menacing nature of the underworld, despite how cruel and sadistic these villains are about their crimes. They act as though there is nothing to be ashamed of because Frank is able to hold off any guilt by laughing and drinking with his cohorts and speak loud and fowl language for fun. He’s just so consumed by his energetic but disturbed idea of fun and partying that he can’t see how cruel he is about abusing and controlling Dorothy for his own pleasure and holding her husband and son hostage to make her cooperate. He also seems to be in love with her when he hears he sing “Blue Velvet” at the Slow Club and lets a tear come down from his eye. He wants her and doesn’t have the guts to kill her, but he can at least torture her and threaten her family’s life so that she will behave like his object of obsession. This makes him more dangerous, but at the same time, I can't look away from him because his rage and humor make draw a lot of attention to him and he fits the type of a psychotic character in a mystery-thriller who works as a formidable foe to the young and innocent Jeffrey.
However disturbing it gets in the portrayal of female abuse and psychotic behavior in drugs, sex, and violence, the strangeness of the film never goes away and it keeps me intrigued by its artistic approach. Whenever Jeffrey and his friend Sandy talk about it being a “strange world” it’s very laughable to hear these young people calling the dark side of life “strange” in a juvenile way as though they don’t understand this evil. Jeffrey and Sandy carry on their young romance in between the moments of Frank’s ferocity that it provides the film with a soap opera touch on young love in the midst of crime and violence. It’s almost funny when Sandy comes off as a stereotypical innocent small-town girl in her blond hair, her pink clothes, and her dream of “thousands of robins” breaking through darkness and bringing light into the world. She has this naïve perception of the world that is there to bring comfort to Jeffrey after his horrific discoveries and it provides a balance of the light and darkness that works for the film. Whenever Jeffrey is having his lustful encounters with Dorothy and facing the heat of Frank’s violent nature, Sandy is there as a figure of contrast to that perverse and violent underworld. Her innocence is not so meaningless in that way and provides a breather from the perverse and violent world of Frank that they have discovered to show there is still good in the small town.
This keeps the film at its balance of light and darkness, however satirical and stereotypical it may come off as. It’s David Lynch’s vision of his filmmaking style and he has since then made films about strange worlds full of picturesque, scary, and humorous images.
Like the negative viewers of the film on its initial release, I’ve watched Blue Velvet a good number of times and I feel different all the time. I’ve had viewings where I feel it’s artistically beautiful and strange and other times where I feel it’s over-the-top or ridiculous in the strange satire being set against the serious backdrop. So mixed feelings pile up in my head, but in the end, Lynch approached it with his vision of film and brought something unique out of all his elements. It’s helped the film stand the test of time as an accomplishment in independent cinema and I even got to watch it in one of my film classes. A lot of people in the screening room laughed at a lot of places, especially at Laura Dern’s performance of Sandy, which got me to laugh as well because I could feel the same absurdity as they did about her manners as a caricature of a small town girl. As funny as it may have been, even when I laugh at her performance occasionally, I believe she serves the film’s purpose in bringing the strange perception of small town citizens who have naïve and picturesque about the world. Kyle Mac Lachlan definitely comes off as eccentric and voyeuristic in a comical way at times that when he stares awkwardly with no expression or makes subtle jokes, he can be as strange as the darkness he falls into. That strangeness still works for him to convincingly make Jeffrey be curious, naïve, and perverse about what he discovers that he helped move the story along. Dennis Hopper hit the energy pitch hard as Frank Booth in his style of method acting; the more loud and vulgar he got, he would sound funny, and the more ferocious he got, he would get scary. Isabella Rossellini may have felt embarrassed by the experience and that viewers were picking on for how abused and helpless her character was, but her portrayal of Dorothy made her someone I could feel sorry for and feel disturbed by her sadomasochism as well. She had this dark and exotic aura about her that made her appear as a femme fatale out of film noir and would change in her behavior all the time to make her more unpredictable. Just when we think she may be involved in murder from the beginning, we get disturbed by her torments and feel for her as a victim. If she had been too cold and vain as a sexualized woman in film noir tends to get portrayed, she wouldn’t have come across as a serious victim and we would have expected her to act tough in the situation. Her make-up, black hair, and her red and blue silk can make her look glamorous and eloquent, but not too glamorous since she appears very sad and Gothic like a woman who is starting to fade from that glamour. Whenever she sings “Blue Velvet” on stage, she sounds very sad in her lyrics because of wanting to be free and live happily again with her family when the last lyric “…and I still can see blue velvet through my tears” comes out of her voice. Beneath her beauty and soft voice, she is a sad and broken mother and wife who wants to regain happiness. That is what the film is all about, trying to regain beauty and innocence as one falls into a dark pit and tries to get out of it. The more Jeffrey tries to live through his dangerous experience, we can hope for him to return to the safe and normal life of suburbia and leave the “strange world” behind. Blue Velvet still remains a strange piece of art, filled with beauty and horror that can be found in Lynch’s other work and helps him stand out as a visionary in artistic cinema.
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