Blue velvet returns
Let it put its disease in you
KERRI WOLOSZYN STAFF
“It’s a strange world,” says Jeff ery Beaumont in David Lynch’s 1986 masterpiece Blue Velvet, and a strange world it is indeed.
Blue Velvet begins in the colorfully suburban town of Lumberton where Jeff ery (Kyle MacLachlan) returns home to visit his sick father. On a walk Jeff ery comes across a severed human ear in a fi eld and, Good Samaritan that he is, brings it to a local police station. Th e local detective tells him that they will investigate but that Jeff ery should stay out of it. Of course, once you are told not to do something you want to do it even more and, as a result, Jeff ery begins his own investigation into the mystery of the ear. With the help of the detective’s daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern), Jeff ery begins his search for the truth.
Th e investigation results in the discovery of seductive lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), sexual psychopath Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) and an urban
Directed by: David Lynch
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underworld of kinks and murder that Jeff ery never knew existed. As Jeff ery watches Dorothy and Frank play out their disturbing sexual games from inside Dorothy’s closet he is both shocked and intrigued. Yes, it’s a strange world, and Jeff ery just might like it that way.
Blue Velvet is both a detective story and a coming-of-age drama. Jeff ery moves from naive innocent at the start to confused hero at the end. As in all Lynch fi lms, Blue Velvet’s haunting imagery (a woman dancing on the roof of a car while Jeff ery is beaten, a heavily made-up Dean Stockwell lip synching to Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams”) is beautiful. However, unlike gleefully convoluted Lynch fi lms like Mulholland Dr., Blue Velvet is made up of long, straightforward scenes that make for easy viewing. Lynch divides the world of the fi lm into two areas, the suburbs and the city (as well as a brief and horrifi c “ride” to the country), and problems arise when characters from the two areas intersect. Th e question becomes, where do people belong?
By the end of the fi lm, we are not sure where we belong. Is the calm, quiet normalcy of suburbia any less strange than the madness of the city? Th e strangeness of the world for us, like for Jeff ery, is what makes it so compulsive to watch.
Blue Velvet runs at Cinematheque until Oct. 4 and is available on DVD.
