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kcremer [ 5.0 ]
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I've now seen three David Lynch films and disliked them all. I watched "Dune" in the theater when it came out and to this day I can't find a more boring movie (I know I was only 9 then, but I had a tendency to like everything I watched back then because it was so fascinating to watch movies in the theaters, and I still hated this one!). The other one was "Mulholland Drive", a story wound way too tight for my bourgeois hands to unravel. Now I've seen "Blue Velvet". I concur with pretty much all of DokBrowne's elaborate critique, and I'd also like to add something: Why was Kyle MacLachlan's character so obsessed with investigating the nightclub singer? So much so that he's willing to risk his life by sneaking into her apartment (which he knows could be under surveillance at any time by some badass-looking thugs). The only reason I could come up with is that without this inexplicable motivation, Lynch would have no story to tell. Not impressed at all.
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Corto [ 10.0 ]
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It's hard to say anything about this film, and yet there is so much to be said about it. But the fact is that Lynch hits hard on... something, and it is obvious that this divides opinions; some praise Blue Velvet and others smash it, like Roger Ebert with his one-star review. To me the intensity, the vitality and the dreamlike grip of Lynch's vision meant a masterpiece. "Sexuality equals nightmare" is the best definition of Blue Velvet I've heard.
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DokBrowne [ 4.5 ]
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Not nearly as pretentious or phony as "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Drive", though the linnear, straightforward nature of it also happens to make it feel much less fascinating than those. In fact, if I interpreted the movie correctly - and by all the reviews I've read, I gather I have - it seems pretty basic. Perhaps in 1986 it was shocking to discover the bizarre, semi-surreal underbelly of American culture, specifically the suburbs, but since (if not before, I don't know) then that idea has been indoctrinated into our minds by every wannabe sideways-thinking artiste who thinks he's exposing critical truths about society rather than just ripping off trendy rebel fashions. I stopped caring about the oh-so-creepy dichotomy between naive good and depraved evil a long time ago, probably when I was still a kid, so unless the story's got something fresh or bold or extreme or somehow original to say, then I'm sorry that my cynical, desensitized mind doesn't find it easy to acknowledge. "Blue Velvet" ain't that bad, actually; at least Lynch's weird side allows for some generally mesermizing scenes (even if they don't amount to much afterward, and none of them come close to the more haunting moments in "Mulholland Drive"), all of them involving Dennis Hopper's psychotic Frank. The story falls into a lull whenever he's absent, which, discouragingly, accounts for almost the entire first hour and long patches during the rest. Kyle McLachlan and Laura Dern just weren't very interesting, as characters or actors. So they were the symbolic embodiments of naive suburban normality, with elements of '50s innocence (their corny vernacular, the classic convertible, their square attitudes) - they could at least be appealing or engaging or something. Since I don't think there was much more to the movie than this theme of bland, blithe normality vs. horrifying, repressed reality, I suppose we're to be sincerely (at least a little) emotionally affected by the outcome, but if that's the case, it's a letdown, since I wasn't that concerned with the fate of the characters, and having a relatively happy ending belies the point of Lynch's statement about humanity and whatever. I sensed there an air of irony in those final scenes as they echoed the opening of the film but for the altered detail of the bird holding a bug in its mouth rather than the camera panning into the grass to show us the bugs in the first place, but I could never really detect it strongly enough; therefore, I think I might just be reading too much into it as ironic happiness and triumph have become the convention for movies like these. Really though, the bug in the bird's mouth? That's not really supposed to insinuate the small victory of good over evil (as paralleled by the story itself), is it? Is it, jeff_v? You said it was the best movie of the '80s after all. Not that I doubt your intelligence, though of course I disagree with that assertion, but I wonder what you see in this movie that I don't. Granted, I'm not an insightful person. I'd love to understand the deeper meaning of art in all mediums, but I'm not ever clever enough to solve it all on my own. I'd rather read or hear an analysis performed by someone else. I'm fully willing and eager to examine and appreciate the ideas behind someone's art, but I need a translator to assist my feeble mind. And I know that Lynch, in the grand maddening tradition of Kubrick, refuses to give answers (which always seems a little suspicious to me, like they don't even completely get it themselves so they try to look enigmatic and wise by playing hard to get, but that's probably just the frustrated ignorance talking for me), so if anyone can explain the brilliance of "Blue Velvet" to me, I'll, uh, be rather grateful. I hope it doesn't amount to the conclusions I've already put together, either, 'cuz like I said, I GOT the underbelly of darkness thing with the very first motif he used (panning across the peaceful, sunny neighborhood and showing the guy have a heart attack, then delving into the grass to show the bugs) and it might have been ambitious had he tackled more than just the one issue there. There may be a lot of say about it, but the movie was a little long and repetitive anyway. Could he've accomplished the same effect in half the time? I imagine so. Not that I would've raised my opinion of it as a result, but nonetheless. The point was made quickly, with nothing else to do but repeat the point over and over by example. Ultimately, the only thing that separates this disturbing little tale from all the other disturbing little tales is the Lynchian touch of oddity. A rowdy gang of violent psychos isn't anything new, but a showstopping, out-of-the-blue lip-synched jazz musical number by a pale-faced, lipstick-wearing, frighteningly calm, inexplicably-motivated Dean Stockwell (perhaps the forebear of Robert Blake's memorable role in "Lost Highway"?) certainly isn't to be found in most movies. Incidentally, just like Robert Blake, Stockwell's briefly seen, unaccounted-for character was the best part of the movie. He was compelling to watch, and, despite his limited appearance, there were dimensions to him that you kept wondering about (although I guess you could just sum it up by saying we was drugged out and that's it, but don't ruin it for me). Hopper was only slightly less noteworthy because of his overacting (whereas Stockwell used only small gestures) and the fact that we saw much more of him throughout the picture. Plus my main memories of Dean Stockwell are from the TV show "Quantum Leap" which I happened to love (bite me), and on which he played the lovable, cigar-chomping hologram Al, so seeing him as a creepy, sadistic nutjob hits a more unique note than watching Hopper in the same role I've always known him to play. His (Hopper's) facial tics and the sheer curiosity of what he's going to say or do next were powerful assets to him, however, and he's really the center of the movie. Could that possibly be a larger point that Lynch is trying to make, that the purely, disgustingly evil Hopper is the figue we can't help but want to see the most, especially in contrast to Kyle McLachlan's comparatively dull do-gooder protagonist? I kinda doubt Lynch would be that meta as to indict the viewers themselves in his delineation of the theme (also because McLachlan's supposed to be complicated himself in the way he starts to act out Frank's sado-masochism with Dorothy), but who knows, and hey, at least I managed to extract some new meaning out of the movie. If I cared enough to dwell on its essence for this long (for me this is long, anyway), then there must be something to be said for its value. Still, a 4.0 rating sounds about right
P.S. And personally, I believe "Twin Peaks" was a vastly superior retelling of the same concepts. Yeah, that was one (the only) David Lynch product I actually liked, and a lot. The crucial difference is that a TV series gives time to flesh out and explore all of Lynch's crazy thoughts in detail, rather than slopping them together in one messy, shapeless and thusly inferior package known as "Lost Highway" and/or "Mulholland Drive". So there. If you're a talented artist, then you should be able to find a way to condense your thoughts and the expression of them into 2 hours of film, but maybe Lynch's are just so profound, deep, and ambitious that they require a timespan 10 times that length for completion. ...yeah, I don't really think so, either. Cool theory, though
P.P.S. There is one persuasive analysis of it that I've read, and it's online critic James Berardinelli's, found here: http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/b/blue_velvet.html
It's just his review, and it covers much of the same territory, but he expresses himself clearly and thoroughly. I was nearly provoked to change my mind about the movie altogether, buuuuut nah. I'm a jerk
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Dancing_P [ 9.0 ]
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I don't ''get'' David Lynch. I don't particularly like to pore over pages and pages of explanations to understand what boils down onscreen to two hours of nonsense. I don't ''get'' David Lynch, but I like his stuff. Blue Velvet is undeniably weird and messed up (much like the majority of his body of work) but at least it does so within a compelling, coherent storyline. Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) is a college student who returns home after his father has a stroke; walking home from the hospital, he finds a human ear in a field. He takes the ear to the local chief of police, but the police won't let him know any of their leads. He decides to take matters into his own hands and, accompanied by the chief's daughter (Laura Dern), he unravels a mystery (involving nightclub singer Isabella Rossellini) hidden deep within the woodwork of the quaint little town of Lumberton. Lynch explores the underbelly of the perfect, white-picket-fence community with a sort of double-edged take; Blue Velvet begins like a satire and then becomes a profoundly disturbed drama (while retaining a sort of grandiose, over-the-top humor). Everything is tremendously over-the-top (except for Laura Dern, who appears to be furniture moreso than anything else) but all of it coheres, which is more than I can say about some of Lynch's other works. His metaphors are clear, concise and well-inserted into the film. Dennis Hopper steals the carpet under everyone as Frank Booth, an amyl nitrate-huffing maniac who crosses paths with Jeffrey, but everyone here is notable. This is everything that you associate with the name David Lynch, brilliantly executed.
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| Weighted Rating | : 7.5 |
| No. Ratings | : 18 | |
| No. Reviews | : 8 | |
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