Directed by: David Lynch.
Written by: David Lynch.
Starring: Isabella Rossellini (Dorothy Vallens), Kyle MacLachlan (Jeffrey Beaumont), Dennis Hopper (Frank Booth), Laura Dern (Sandy Williams), Hope Lange (Mrs. Williams), Dean Stockwell (Ben), George Dickerson (Detective John Williams), Priscilla Pointer (Mrs. Beaumont), Frances Bay (Aunt Barbara), Brad Dourif (Raymond), Jack Nance (Paul), Fred Pickler (Yellow Man).
Blue
Velvet is a modern noir set in suburbia, where the perfect façade covers up
shocking violence and depravity. Lynch does nothing to hide this – the first
scene in the movie is a montage of the seemingly perfect suburban neighborhood
– white picket fences, smiling firefighters, lawns being watered, dogs being
walked. And then one of those men watering his lawn simply collapses, and
Lynch’s camera shows us that lawn, and then the seething, writhing violence of
the insects just below the surface. Filmmakers have been picking on the suburbs
at least since Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt in 1943 – where a serial
killer (Joseph Cotton) kills a series of women, and only his niece (Teresa
Wright) can stop him. Lynch himself would continue with this in Twin Peaks –
although Twin Peaks could hardly be called a suburb, but simply a small town,
which just makes Lynch’s point even clearer – there is violence and depravity
everyone. You cannot escape.
Jeffrey
Beaumont doesn’t know this at the beginning of Blue Velvet. He’s a university
student who comes back to his hometown of Lumberton for a while. It was his
father we see collapsing in the opening, and Jeffrey is needed to help run the
family hardware store while he’s in the hospital. It’s while walking home from
visiting his father, through the woods, that he finds a human ear. He brings it
to the police station and shows it to Detective Williams - “That’s a human ear
alright” – he confirms. Jeffrey is fascinated by this, and wants to know more,
but Williams, logically, will not tell him more about the investigation when he
visits his house later. That’s not true of Williams’ daughter, Sandy (Laura
Dern) – a high school senior, who has overheard her father talking about a
singer named Dorothy Vallens. Sandy knows where Dorothy lives – and Jeffrey
cannot help himself. He breaks into her apartment to watch Dorothy – and is
shocked twice. Once when Dorothy discovers him, and once again when she tells
him to hide again because Frank is coming. These twin scenes sets the depravity
of the movie in motion – first with Dorothy abusing Jeffrey, and then Frank
abusing (much more harshly) Dorothy. A smarter man than Jeffrey would leave it
alone – but he cannot do that. He’s drawn to Dorothy, and wants to protect and
help her. He figures out what Frank has done, and decides to help. Meanwhile,
he’s also falling in love with the innocent, virginal Sandy, which complicates
things. Blue Velvet is about that pull in Jeffrey between these two women, who
are film noir standards – the femme fatale the hero cannot help but be drawn
to, and the innocent naïf he should be
drawn to. But Lynch complicates things here more than a little. Dorothy is not
a typical femme fatale – but a wounded woman, a victim of horrific crimes, who
has grown used to her abuse – and sees it as normal. Jeffrey doesn’t really see
her like that though – she is to him both a sexy older woman who wants him, and
a damsel in distress that needs his protection. She gets him to do things to
her that haunts him afterwards. It’s only near the climax – in a scene where
she shows up on her lawn naked (the scene that offended Roger Ebert to no end)
– that he finally grasps just how damaged she is.
Blue
Velvet is as effective as it is because of how Lynch is able to play with tone
throughout the movie. Those opening shots are beautiful, but deliberately
phony. Other than those writhing insects, the early scenes in the movie play
almost like a comedy, and certainly Jeffrey’s investigation comes across as one
step removed from a Hardy Boys novel (later, in Mulholland Dr., you can see a
Nancy Drew investigation!). Jeffrey’s plan to get into Dorothy’s apartment the
first time – with a fake bug sprayer – so he can prop open a window or steal
keys is something that would only work in those books. Then he’s got the
spunky, beautiful sidekick Sandy – who first walks out of the shadows like a
Hitchcock blonde. These two are hopeless innocents who do not understand the
world they are entering.
Things
take an abrupt turn when Dorothy finds Jeffrey in the closest. It’s no longer a
game then, as she forces him to strip, and threatens him with a knife. Things
go from intense to insane with the arrival of Frank Booth, who sucks some of
gas out of a canister, and acts both like a psychopath, swearing every other
word, and a child (“Baby wants to fuck”) – who makes an immediate and
terrifying entrance into the movie in that first scene. The lightness of those
opening scenes is gone, replaced by shocking violence and horror. Later, there
will be another terrifying sequence with Frank – a surreal, nightmare of a car
ride for Jeffrey, who may finally get what the hell he’s gotten himself into.
The
performances in Blue Velvet help a great deal. Agent Dale Cooper may be
MacLachlan’s most famous role for Lynch, but Jeffrey Beaumont is a close
second. He has that innocent look about him – he’s smart, but not as smart as
he thinks he is. He thinks himself a grown-up – the world of high school is
almost quaint to him now, big college man that he is. But he’s delusional. Dern
is wonderful as Sandy – who like Jeffrey, wants to believe herself to be an
adult, when really she has no idea what the world is like. She is beautiful and
popular – dating a football star – but her life is mundane. She wants to be
involved in the investigation, until she realizes what that means. Rossellini
has never been better than she is as Dorothy – which is probably the most
complex role in the film. She has to hold back so much, play so many different
notes. And Dennis Hopper’s Frank Booth is quite simply one of the most
memorable, and terrifying screen villains in history. A depraved maniac, as
only Hopper could play him, he does what so few memorable movie villains fail
to do – make you hate him. He isn’t a charming psychopath like Hannibal Lecter,
who you secretly (or not so secretly) root for, nor a sympathetic one like
Norman Bates. He’s just a depraved, terrifying human being.
Coming
off of the overly complicated Dune, Lynch kept the narrative of Blue Velvet
simple. It’s got a classic noir setup and mystery – even though Lynch doesn’t
seem overly interested in that mystery. It’s pretty much tossed aside, the
resolution comes quickly, because he doesn’t really care about it. The whole
mystery starts because of an ear in a vacant lot (but why would the people
responsible for that ear no longer being attached leave it there), and ends,
with a little bit of a whimper. That’s because Lynch is more concerned, as
always, in the themes of the movie than the narrative. He is showing American
suburbia – that white, middle class enclave (and yes, it’s almost all white in
Blue Velvet – save for two, black men – who are completely non-threatening,
wisecracking, hardware store employees) as being a place of delusion. The end
of the movie – not the climax, the scenes after that (which, unlike the climax,
I remember) – show this clearly. No matter what happened, Jeffrey and Sandy
have moved on – forgotten or buried what happened. There is a robin with a
beetle in his beak though – and we know he hasn’t forgotten. And neither has
Dorothy – who we see in a final moment that should be happy, but isn’t. She
doesn’t have the luxury of Jeffrey and Sandy – to forget and move on.
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