It's hard to believe it's been 25 years since BLUE VELVET set of a national controversy over what should and shouldn't be seen on screen. Couple that with what's been released since and it seems almost appears quaint. And yet it still has the ability to shock and make you feel ill at ease while watching it.
The film opens with an idyllic scene in a small town: kids playing outside, the fire truck driving by with waving firemen on it and a man out watering his lawn. But this same man has a heart attack, falls and the camera then slowly moves into the grass to see a swarm of ants moving around frantically. This was a world director David Lynch was trying to let us understand, a world where things always seem normal on the surface but lying just beneath was a topsy turvy world where something just odd enough to seem evil was going on.
Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle McLachlen) returns home from college to help out after his father's heart attack. While walking home from the hospital after visiting his father, he comes across a severed ear in a vacant lot, He takes the ear to the local police and detective Williams assures him that he'll look into it. Stopping at Williams home later, he meets his daughter Sandy (Laura Dern). Sandy tells Jeffrey that she overheard her father talking about a woman who was under investigation that the ear might be tied to, a woman named Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini).
Their curiosity raised, the young couple decide to look into the matter on their own. They visit a local club where Vallens sings and decide to go further with it. Jeffrey poses as an exterminator and goes into Vallens apartment to set it up so he can get in later. He does so leaving Sandy downstairs to watch for Vallens. Unable to hear Sandy's car horn he hides when he hears Vallens enter her apartment. Watching voyeuristically from the closet, he watches her undress and listens to her phone conversation. Bumping into a coat hanger he is caught and forced from the closet at knife point.
Vallens questions him, knowing for sure that there must be some reason he is here, something to do with other things happening in her life. A knock at the door and she pushes him back into the closet then lets in the man from the phone, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper). Jeffrey watches as Frank degrades Vallens, inhales gas from a tank and then rapes her. He then leaves and Jeffrey comforts Vallens.
This leads to a story that goes down separate yet intertwining paths. The one has Jeffrey talking about the things he learns with Sandy while trying to find out what is going on, the second is his involvement with Vallens. Vallens and Jeffrey's relationship is sexual but she has a knack for sado-masochism that both frightens and yet excites Jeffrey.
Jeffrey begins to follow Booth and to see what he's up to. With information from Sandy he knows that this man is both dangerous and somehow involved in most of the crime that takes place in town yet for some reason he's never been caught. As he leaves Vallens one night, he runs into Booth and his crew just outside the apartment. They take Jeffrey on a nightmare ride through the strange world that Booth inhabits and leave him beaten and worse for wear at the end of the night.
Jeffrey is left to decide what to do. Does he get out while he can or try to save a woman he has concerns for but doesn't love? Does he love Sandy or was he merely using her? And what about the strange way he's been behaving lately?
Lynch has always looked at the world differently than most people. All of his movies reflect this but perhaps none quite as much as BLUE VELVET. As with the ants at the beginning of the film, he wants us to take note that the world may appear one way on the surface but lying just beneath that is a world that is filled with brutality and things we'd rather not know about or witness. And yet a certain amount of curiosity exists in us all where we want to at least take a peek at that world.
When the film was initially released it caused quite a stir. First and foremost because of the in your face brutality of the Frank Booth character whose vicious expletive infected rants seemed cartoonish and frightening at the same time. This was someone you never wanted to meet. But the most controversial aspect was the performance of Rossellini who was subjected to the brutality of Booth. While a great performance, many critics were shocked that Lynch would subject an actress to this sort of thing. It went so far as to have nationally syndicated critics Ebert and Siskel debate the validity of the movie and the roles with Siskel defending it as art and Ebert decrying it as inhuman (which if you've ever seen BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS which Ebert co-wrote makes you wonder why he didn't feel that way earlier).
The film continues to hold its status as shocking to this day. Perhaps not quite as much after having been exposed to films like HOSTEL since then, but it still can take you back. The performances of both Rossellini and Hopper are amazing. Hopper's Frank Booth has become a film icon, a bad guy that movie fans know by name and deservedly so.
Lynch hasn't done much lately and that's sad. His movies were thought provoking if nothing else. At least we still have what he's done in the past to watch. The blu-ray release here also contains a number of items including making of documentaries and a clip from AT THE MOVIES which featured the discussion between Ebert and Siskel. Fans of Lynch will want to add this to their collection. All others may want to watch it but be aware of the violent world in which you are about to enter.
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