Much as Alex de Large's lust (blood and otherwise) was irremovably linked with his appreciation for fine music, David Lynch's dark places seem to find most comfortable form in his color palettes, his careful framing, and his evocations of communities in storybook-plain imagery. Blue Velvet is likely his most successful work not because of its narrative sophistication or humanity (it is bested in both of those categories by The Straight Story), but because it directs its energy at perhaps the broadest swipe of his whole career: the mythical small town and its parallel underworld. Lynch offers no particular insight or commentary to this overused motif, but he does reduce it to its barest visual signifiers (shadow and light, birds and insects) to best engage the id that supposedly lies beneath it.
To have to describe the plot of a David Lynch film is to feel inadequate; to hear his logic is to question it. Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) is the kind of square-jawed protagonist that the Eisenhower era pushed as the kind of boy you'd want your daughter to marry: college-educated, polite, and totally lacking in any distinguishable personal qualities. When he returns to his hometown of Lumberton to help his father recover from an injury, only to find himself compelled into a violent sexuality that he never knew existed, Lynch never even attempts to a give us any background to justify it; it's simply a matter of course that he will follow leads, solve the mystery and romance the blond Sandra Dee stand-in (Laura Dern). In all likelihood, it is his very lack of description that makes his journey at all palatable.
In this case, the inciting vessel is a severed ear that Jeffrey finds lying in the middle of a field near his home; on his own initiative, he traces it back to the home of Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), a sultry lounge singer who speaks in an accent totally alien to that part of the Pacific Northwest. He sneaks into her home ostensibly to find information, but implicitly to derive a certain pleasure from invading her home and using her things. When she comes home and finds him there, she threatens and abuses him, only for Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a demonic and impulsive figure, to enter and rape her, utilizing the very same language that she had moments ago directed at Jeffrey.
Upon release, Blue Velvet elicited some strong reactions, most notoriously from Roger Ebert, who felt that the abuse visited on Vallens was distasteful and cruel. While it is true that the majority of the violence in Velvet is directed at women (and that they are the subject of nearly all the film's nudity), it would be misleading to think of the female characters as any less enabled than their male counterparts. If anything, they are eminently more likeable and sympathetic, as they are neither duplicitous and naïve (like Jeffrey) or vengeful and abusive (like Frank). But they are, like everything else depicted on screen, depicted as fetishized objects at play in a larger fetishistic act, being a portrait of a world in which there is no release without repression, and no satisfaction without reciprocal abuse.
Believe it or not, some of the most vile, degrading pornography (a term applied to this film on more than one occasion) ever produced originated during the Victorian era, a period remembered historically for its almost cartoonish vision of womanhood, issuing restrictive modes of dress and behavior to any young woman hoping to be married. Though doubtlessly obscured by sepia-tone hindsight, the American fifties were much the same way, leaving ample room for both Pat Boone and Bettie Page in the national memory. While not directly set in this time period, Blue Velvet doesn’t let a shot go by without recalling it, whether in its soft focus so beloved by Douglas Sirk, or its obsessively trimmed lawns that barely cover hordes of hungry beetles.
If anything, the bright side of the equation is more effectively realized than the dark; while nearly everyone has some basis for appreciating the aesthetic of Lumberton, the world that Booth calls home is far more distinctly Lynchian. Aside from uninhibited violence, Booth is an enthusiast of blue velvet robes, lip-synch performances, and inexplicably bizarre furniture, upon which stuffed clowns can be placed. It isn't just the polar opposite in its appetites, but in its refusal to at any point be orderly, dignified, or uniform in appearance. It's the underworld as imagined by Archie Bunker, where all things out of step with the mainstream, be they sado-masochism or modern art, are inherently linked.
But it's in this dichotomy that Blue Velvet makes its most lasting statement, whether Lynch even intended it or not. As one might expect, the men who consumed all that vicious pornography in the Victorian era were the same men who acted as guardians of morality by day, constructing their own masturbatory fantasy with which the rest of society was expected to fall in line. As the façade of Lumberton grows more and more pristine, its underbelly pushes further and further away, creating a larger and larger breach through which people like Frank Booth can gather their prey. If his night shadows are the face of human depravity revealed, then Lumberton is the proverbial candy from a stranger, no less a fetishistic imagining than his wonderland where no desire goes unfulfilled or unpunished.
BONUS FEATURES
Originally, Blue Velvet was going to be four hours long, so at a frame under two hours, it's fair to say that a good deal wasn't seen in theaters. The 'newly discovered footage is the highlight of this Blu-ray release, and it is curious to see what David Lynch's further ideas of this world are, particularly the way that people dance when they're at college. Otherwise, most of the features are carried over from the DVD, including the documentary 'Mysteries of Love', some outtakes, a clip from Siskel & Ebert's initial reaction, some vignette reflections on some of the film's more distinctive bits, and some of the original promotional trailers and tv spots.
"Blue Velvet" is on sale November 8, 2011 and is rated R. Crime, Drama. Written and directed by David Lynch. Starring Dennis Hopper, Hope Lange, Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Isabella Rossellini, Dean Stockwell.
