Review of Blue Velvet (1986) by Kenneth L — 08 Oct 2011

I've written bad reviews of David Lynch movies before, but this one is probably his masterpiece, and it is indeed great. It's no less weird than most of his other films, but here everything just clicks and the movie totally works.

The story (and, unlike in some other Lynch films, there is one here) follows a college kid (Kyle MacLachlan) who returns to his small suburban town, romances a nice high-school girl (Laura Dern), finds a severed ear in a field, and becomes embroiled in a mystery involving a battered lounge singer (Isabella Rossellini) and the violent psychopath who holds mysterious sway over her (Dennis Hopper).

Watching this, I think I finally realized what separates the Lynch productions I love from the ones I hate. The best things Lynch has made - Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man, Twin Peaks - all have a central protagonist who makes some sort of sense as a human being and with whom we can identify. MacLachlan's character here is basically a nice kid who is scared but intrigued by the weird things he witnesses, and we can understand his motivations and reactions. As long as we have that element of a comprehensible character to hold on to, Lynch can take us as deep into weird territory as he wants, and it's fine. We don't have to understand everything, but we know that the character doesn't either and so we feel like the film bears some relation to reality. In the worst Lynch film - I'm thinking of Lost Highway - we don't get that at all: the main character there is barely developed, and then he literally turns into a different person anyway. Lost Highway simply sets us adrift in surreal craziness without anyone or anything to care about in the narrative at all, and so it's impossible to invest in the film. In Blue Velvet, some crazy inexplicable disturbing things happen, but we are nevertheless able to care about it because there are some vaguely human characters.

MacLachlan's performance here is just what the movie needs: a straight-ahead, earnest, likable kid. Isabella Rossellini's performance is phenomenal - you've never seen an actress be so vulnerable. She has to put up with a lot in this movie, but she's always convincing and you always care about her. Hopper's character is a one-dimensional psychotic villain, but man, what a villain. This is one seriously messed-up, evil guy, and you get tense and nervous whenever so much as the threat of his presence is felt. Laura Dern is good as the high-school girl.

The movie does make a good case for Lynch being a great director. The opening sequence is really effective, and the famous closet scene is, just, wow. I even picked up hints of Hitchcock in that sequence and in the climax of the film. A lot of scenes are shot in slightly askew ways, enough to be creepy without being distracting or overly noticeable. I still need to see some more Lynch movies, but by the end of this semester, I will probably have seen them all (my film class is focusing on Lynch, and we're watching nearly everything he's made, and I'll probably watch the couple we don't on my own). But out of what I've seen, this and the TV show Twin Peaks are his greatest works, and both are truly excellent. So, there we are - I suppose I'm finally a card-carrying member of the David Lynch fanclub.