Blue Velvet - a Retro Review

I enjoy movies like everyone else. However, I try to shy away from the mainstream fare with its formulaic plots, digitally enhanced effects and stunts, cardboard characters that read dialogue that doesn't ring true, and gratuitous sex scenes tacked on for an R rating. Don't get me wrong. I see the value of the sex scenes as much, if not more than the next person, but I expect them to be believable, and not to be in the film only because some Hollywood suit says it is necessary to get a certain demographic into the theater.

My requirements for what make a movie engaging and enjoyable were met and I was completely drawn in the first time I saw Blue Velvet directed by David Lynch. What Lynch does so well in this movie is to give us a peek beneath the surface of small town American suburbia at the underbelly that most of us either are unaware or choose to ignore by staying on the "right" side of town so that it does not infringe on our insulated existence.

Blue Velvet grabbed me during the opening sequence which paints an exaggerated, "too good to be true" cinematic picture of small town American suburbia, where the fences are white picket, the lawns are green, the flowers bloom bright and enthusiastically, firemen wave happily at citizens as they ride by in their shiny red trucks, and crossing guards protect well-behaved children as they cross the street. However, Lynch quickly jerks the green lawn out from under our feet to show us what lurks beneath this Norman Rockwell dream.

The father of the main character of the film, Jeffrey Beaumont, is watering his lawn when a kink (foreshadowing of the dark behavior of some of the characters Jeffrey will meet as well as a dark side he discovers within himself) forms in the garden hose. As Jeffrey's father struggles to untangle it, he suffers a stroke/seizure and falls to the well manicured lawn still holding the hose as it sprays into the air from his clenched hand. His dog jumps on his chest and barks and plays with the spray, oblivious to the condition of his owner. The camera tracks toward the green lawn and burrows below the surface of the thick, green grass that Jeffrey's father has been watering, revealing this underworld to be populated by hostile, noisy insects. The camera focuses on two beetles involved in a battle to the death.

The movie is not even at the four-minute mark yet, and suddenly it is obvious that this is going to be a very unusual, intriguing joy ride. This is the type of storytelling and imagery I am looking for when I watch a movie. Anything less suggests laziness on the part of the filmmaker.

If the opening sequence isn't enough, Lynch veers a little farther off the Hollywood beaten path when Jeffrey Beaumont, walking home from visiting his ailing father in the hospital, discovers a severed human ear in a field and picks it up and brings it to the police. I'm not going out on a limb when I say any movie in which the plot is set in motion when the main character discovers a severed human ear, has got my undivided attention for the duration of the film.

Shortly after this discovery, as the ear sits on the coroner's table, Lynch digs even deeper beneath the surface of this postcard perfect suburbia, as the camera zooms in on the ear and descends deep inside the ear canal into its darkness, metaphorically beginning the descent that the film narrative and Jeffrey himself will take as he tries to solve the mystery of his discovery, and meets the sordid, evil and dangerous underbelly of his home town that he did not know existed.

The most powerfully horrifying and engrossing scene in this movie or any movie as far as I am concerned is the joyride scene (the entire scene begins at about 1 hour and 10 minutes into the film and runs through to about 1 hour and 26 minutes and must be viewed in its entirety for the full emotional effect) which occurs when Jeffrey gets in over his head on the wrong side of town as he tries to unravel the mystery of this human ear. He is confronted and taken against his will on a journey into the human equivalent of the hostile insects and warring beetles under the green facade of his father's lawn.

Frank Booth, played flawlessly by Dennis Hopper (who you actually believe is a soulless killer) and his sociopathic posse take Jeffrey on a "joyride" to "Ben's" place where he comes face to face with a dark side of life that is frightening and mesmerizing at the same time.

Scarier even than Frank Booth is Ben, played chillingly "suave" by Dean Stockwell, who has a fondness for wearing makeup, lip singing to Roy Orbison, and taking pleasure in inflicting pain on others, for the amusement of himself and the sycophantic Frank and his like-minded mob of followers. The scene culminates in an emotionally disturbing roadside altercation between Jeffrey and Frank Booth.

This scene had a profound impact on me the first time I saw it and even now when I watch it years later. Any criticism the film may receive about Frank Booth and his posse and Ben being exaggerated caricatures of evil for cinematic effect is unwarranted. For starters, visit any 24 hour retail store in the late hours of the night, and you will see similar characters trolling the aisles - It's like a David Lynch casting call. But more importantly, aside from the superficial appearance of the characters, who hasn't in their youth, or maybe even later in life dealt with the wrath of bullies that seem to run in packs like Frank Booth and his hangers on? Bullies who had that same vacant, soulless look in their eyes and seemed to derive genuine amusement and gratification from hurting and demeaning others. These bullies had to grow up and become adults, and they did not change into kind, gentle people overnight. They are still out there as functioning members of society. They are just not immediately apparent, unless you burrow beneath the shiny facade presented to the public.

Another reason this movie had such an emotional impact on me was because even though I've always been a good law-abiding person and tried not to get mixed up with people who seemed to be trouble, I have come to find out that there is a thin line you walk sometimes between your normal everyday green lawn suburban life and stepping into the abyss and becoming tangled up with the warring beetles beneath the surface, where before you know it, you are in over your head.

As careful as I was, I've found myself in situations more than once that could have easily been similar to, but not as extreme as Jeffrey's fictional "joyride." It might have been something as simple as going out with college or high school acquaintances and being the passenger in a car with no control over the destination. Then suddenly realizing too late that the journey had taken a turn for the worse, while powerlessly watching it begin to spiral out of control like a dream or a movie in front of my eyes, where my only options were to jump out of a moving car to get out of the situation and hope to survive and limp back to the safety of my normal world, or ride it out and hope for the best. I have often wondered if this is the situation an innocent passenger finds himself in right before falling victim to a drunk or reckless driver with whom he has gotten into a car and surrendered control.

Lynch is at the top of his game with Blue Velvet and does a superb job in this pivotal scene, and in the film overall of exposing the dark, evil underbelly of suburban life, that we all know exists in this world, whether we want to accept it or not, and tapping into the terrifying reality of how it is much closer than we like to believe. If you think you are safely protected from what lies below the gift wrapped facade in your little corner of the world, you only need to look as far as the most recent religious figure or politician caught for pedophilia, politician or religious figure caught in a sex sting, or political pundit or reporter with a questionable past, or even the latest road rage incident or random mass shooting. This underbelly is more prevalent than you think. The evidence is there, you just have to look past the white picket fences and beneath the well-manicured lawns.

*Warning: Some of the source links below contain profanity.

Sources:

Opening sequence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM975_Ld9S0

Joy Ride scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH8FEZvaiAI

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090756/