Blue Velvet

Among the most critically acclaimed movies of 1986, Blue Velvet was director David Lynch's commentary on small-town America, showing the sordid backside of the sunny facade. That said, the film is not strictly a condemnation of the American small-town so much as it is a kind of coming-of-age story. Lynch described the film as "a story of love and mystery." This statement may ostensibly refer to the relationship between the film's protagonist Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) and the police detective's daughter Sandy Williams(Laura Dern) and the mystery they attempt to solve in plucky Nancy Drew style, but it might also be seen as a statement about the mingling of affection and fear that arises in the movie's examination of the fictional but truthful setting, Lumbertown. One can see Blue Velvet as a coming-of-age story, not only for Jeffrey, but for the idea of the idyllic American small town. The loss of innocence may be regrettable, but is ultimately necessary.

Isabella Rossellini in a scene from the film Blue Velvet.

The story really begins when Jeffrey, walking back from visiting his father in the hospital, discovers a severed ear in the grass by a lake. After turning the ear over to the police, Jeffrey decides to find out the story for himself, and with the help of Sandy, gets enough information to start his own investigation. The trail leads to Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) a nightclub singer whose husband and son have been kidnapped. Thus, the story begins as a rather traditional mystery, but the tradition drops away as Jeffrey comes face to face with the most disturbing of people, particularly the demonic kidnapper, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper). Frank is a killer and drug dealer of almost inhuman proportions and perversions. He alternately calls himself "daddy" and "baby" as he beats and rapes Dorothy.

That the story has a reasonably happy ending, with villains vanquished and Jeffrey united with Sandy, is not altogether comforting. The film may return to the bright colors and idyllic lifestyle presented in the opening scene, but the audience now knows that something else goes on below the surface. Jeffrey and Sandy tell each other that it's a strange world, but they say it whimsically, the facade restored for the characters, if not for the audience. Perhaps the most significant scene of the film is when, in his own sexual encounter with Dorothy, Jeffrey strikes her on her command. With the blow Jeffrey crosses over from an innocent trapped in a situation beyond his control to a part of the things that go on behind the closed doors of Lumbertown.

The film was a risky one. David Lynch, though recognized for work on films like The Elephant Man and Eraserhead, was coming off the financial failure of Dune. Moreover, this was the first film that was entirely his. He had written the script and insisted on full artistic freedom on what was to clearly be a rather disturbing film, with a violent sexual content unlike any that had previously been seen on screen. He was granted such freedom after agreeing to a minute budget of five million dollars, and half salary for himself. The other half would be paid if the film was a success. It was. The film garnered Lynch an Academy Award nomination for his direction. Despite such accolades, the film was not embraced whole-heartedly by all. The Venice Film Festival, for instance, rejected it as pornography.

The stunning direction of the film combines bald faced directness in presenting repelling scenes of sex and violence with subtle examinations of the mundane. By slowing the film, for instance, the pleasantness of Lumbertown in the open air seems dreamlike and unreal. While shots like these establish an expressionistic, symbolic screen world, others realistically place us in a situation where we see what the characters see, hear what they hear, and these perceptions form an incomplete picture of the action. Similar techniques crop up in earlier Lynch films, but it is here, in what many consider the director's masterpiece, that they come to full fruition. The direction of Blue Velvet paved the road for the similar world of Twin Peaks, Lynch's foray into television, which itself widened the possibilities of TV drama.

Stylistically, Lynch's body of work, and particularly Blue Velvet has greatly influenced filmmakers, especially those working independently from the major Hollywood studios, and even television. Moreover, Blue Velvet strongly affected many of its viewers. The large cult following of the movie suggests that it perhaps opened many eyes to the different facets of life, not only in small towns, but in all of idealized America. Or more likely, the film articulated what many already saw. Frank may rage like a demon on screen, like a creature from our darkest nightmares, but the discomfort with the pleasant simplicity of Americana, the knowledge that things are rarely what they seem, is quite real. Blue Velvet reminds us of that, even as it looks back longingly, if now soberly, at the false but comforting memory of a romance with the American ideal.

Chion, Michel. David Lynch. London, British Film Institute, 1995.

Kaleta, Kenneth C. David Lynch. New York, Twayne, 1993.

Nochimson, Martha P. The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood. Austin, University of Texas Press, 1997.