Review of Blue Velvet (1986) by Horrorboy — 01 Jan 2011

Blue Velvet is a tough film to approach. Its surrealism aspects may swiftly guide some away, but the others that stay are truly in for a surprising film. The plot focuses on Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle McLachlan) a young man that ventures down to his hometown of Lumberton after his father suffers a severe stroke.

After visiting him in the hospital he ventures his way home, taking a shortcut through an abandoned field. There he finds the remains of a human ear and takes it to the police. After some investigating, Jeffrey finds his way into the grasp of a strange woman named Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) who develops an unusual attraction towards Jeffrey.

He then begins to stalk her a little, and the story kicks off from there. Jeffrey comes to a close encounter with the main antagonist of the story, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper). He is a violent sociopath that snorts amyl nitrite through a gas mask, which triggers him to experience constant amounts of pleasure and rage and inflict mass amounts of sexual anger towards Dorothy.

Frank has kidnapped Dorothy's son and husband in exchange for her to be his sexual servant. Jeffrey discovers this and tries to help her get them back. While this plot sounds strange and complex, it's actually supposed to be.

That's what makes this film so brilliant. It's emotionally charged atmosphere and characters pulls you in to experience the surrealism that is inflicted upon these characters. Directed by David Lynch, who is a master himself at surrealism, presents the film in such a strange and bizarre film that it's completely hard to imagine what's going on.

The film itself is beautiful because of this as I have truly never seen a movie as original and as creative as this. While Blue Velvet is criticized due to the fact of the sexual aspects of Rossellini and how awful she's treated during the span of the film, it actually shows how broken she is and the amount of pain and suffering she would go through in order to maintain her peace and to make her way back to her son and husband.

A lot of people tend to spew hate on the film because they tend to think that it's trying to go for a realistic approach. In any means it is NOT. The acting is great from the 3 main leads and the strongest role definitely goes to Hopper.

Frank Booth is indeed a creepy, creepy villain. It's one of the late Dennis Hopper's best performances in a film as he is both haunting and hilarious. All in all Blue Velvet is a tough film to swallow, its contents are both graphic and surreal.

Its a brilliant film that makes you think of the inevitable, that makes you think of what is real, and what is the surreal.