Left Field Cinema

David Lynch

An enigma of modern cinema, no other film maker has created such vast and inexplicable mysteries, conjured from what could be considered a deeply disturbed subconscious. Elusive, cryptic, genius. Three adjectives which can be used to describe the work of Lynch – they could also easily be countered by the words vague, pointless, and pretentious. Lynch’s work is divisive even amongst the most devoted fans, but no matter what your view on the material, no one can deny the conviction. His feature debut Earserhead, is in many ways what people come to expect from the man, a vague plethora of monochrome images creating a fractured story of a mutant infant in a post apocalyptic world, it is a radical film and took over five years to create. Lynch himself refuses to say a word about it and leaves it completely to the viewer to draw their own interpretations from the film. Terrance Malick tried to secure financial backing for the film and Stanley Kubrick rated Eraserhead as one of his favourite films; this is enough to warrant a viewing from any cinephile. It is The Elephant Man which earned Lynch his place as serious film maker. Based on Sir Frederick Treves and Ashley Montagu’s book. It is a serious, emotional, and moving piece of cinema, and often referred to as Lynch’s greatest film; however statements of that nature can be applied to virtually every Lynch film. If you asked ten Lynch fans which of his films were their favourites you’d quite possibly receive ten different answers, even Dune, his third film, and possibly his biggest cinematic mistake. A box office failure, Dune would be the first and last time anyone gave Lynch a significant budget, his style and techniques are too risky for major studios. But without money - Lynch thrives.

With Wild at Heart, the Twin Peaks series and feature film Fire Walk With Me, Lynch’s descent into American weirdness continued, a successful series upon broadcast, audiences across the world tuned in to find out who killed Laura Palmer. It’s ingenious blend of comedy and horror, romance and perversion would solidify the first series of Twin Peaks as one of the edgiest television series at that time (although it’s reputation is somewhat marred by a severely steep drop in quality for the second season which was compromised early on by studio executives. Then came Lost Highway, as dark and disturbing as any of his work, a film split into two halves, it is simultaneously baffling and engrossing. Characters switch actors and actors switch characters, a darkened decent into chaos and madness with no easy answers if any answers at all. By this point negative opinion had hit its hardest about Lynch’s continued obsession with the bizarre, unstructured and illogical worlds he creates on film. To silence his critics he created the appropriately titled The Straight Story about an old man taking a long tracker ride to see his ill brother. It is a touching and emotional road movie and is as far from Lynch’s trademark style as physically possible. Once that point was made to the naysayers, he threw himself head first back to the place he feels most comfortable with two films, Mulholland Drive, another contender for his greatest film, and INLAND EMPIRE, another contender for his worst. But both films equally fill the opposite category, which returns to the earlier statement about the divisive nature of Lynch, he literally rips audiences in two with these films, and being a fan of one does not mean you will enjoy the other. The common ground makes them almost parts two and three of a trilogy started by Lost Highway. According to Lynch all three films make sense and much has been published on their meanings, where they begin and where they end is just the start of the mystery. Where Lynch will take his seemingly irrational films next is the greater mystery and ones which fans relish. Love him or hate him, his status can not be denied, he is a true auteur, a radical, an enigma, and one which should be cherished if for nothing else then for his complete uniqueness.

The Film

The film’s opening credit sequence plays out over a static shot of decadent blue velvet curtains, a bombastic and melodramatic score from Lynch’s musical alter ego Angelo Badalmenti. The orchestration is whispery and upbeat and immediately brings to mind the classic 1950s melodramas from Douglas Sirk. Lynch wastes no time in paying homage to the classic Hollywood period with this opening. The score fades, and a sweet pop song replaces it, “Blue Velvet” by Bobby Vinton. While this tune plays out, Lynch shows a number of classic small town American images: the white picket fence, a man waving to the camera while riding on a fire engine, a shot of the typical American male watering his perfect lawn. Yet also during this opening sequence, a unnamed woman is watching Television, on which a gloved hand is pointing a gun at an unknown assailant. This immediately indicates that something is not all that it seems in this small town. It is interesting to note that Lynch indicates the initial unease within the setting by showing classic Hollywood image of tension, this adds to the feeling that Lynch is clearly commenting on and homaging the early films of the USA. The man watering his garden collapses, then the real dark soul of the film is revealed. The camera creeps into his manicured lawn and the audience are treated to menacing images of insects attacking each other. Beneath the perfect small town façade there is a lurking darkness and evil. Lynch captures the beautiful dichotomy of tones he manages throughout the film in this brilliant opening sequence. The marriage of melodrama’s light and colour, and film noir’s darkness.

Lynch chooses to introduce the film’s protagonist at this point, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle McLachlan) goes to visit his hospitalised father. While coming back from the Hospital Beaumont stops to throw some stones at a bottle of beer, he finds a severed ear covered in ants. This is one the most iconic images of American Cinema, such a strange choice, simultaneously disturbing and intriguing for both the audience and Jeffrey. We both want to know the how and why, Lynch draws us into the film absolutely with this single mysterious conundrum. Jeffrey takes the ear to the police immediately, where in follows another important facet of the film, the darkly funny offbeat humour; this is captured in it absolute in the exchange between the lead detective and Kyle McLachlan’s character. Dark humour is something that has always been at the heart of best Lynch projects. We can already see from the unfolding plot that Jeffrey seems almost too keen, almost unrealistically fascinated, with involving himself in the subsequent investigation. He is as eager as Lynch makes the audience.

A stylistic choice that Lynch uses many times throughout the film is the shot of a stairway hidden in darkness; this classic film noir style imagery is emphasized numerous times throughout the plot. On the first occasion Lynch chooses to show a dark stairway, he shoots the scene from the bottom of the stairs looking up, with the camera facing the bright light of the opening door as a silhouetted Jeffrey appears. This is then juxtaposed against the shot of a similar instance occurring on a Television during what appears to be a classic movie. Once again Lynch is placing his film within a film noir canon. As he presents this juxtaposition it takes away the feeling of menace and danger from the film. If we are in an old Hollywood classic, how much trouble can we get into?

A classic Hollywood plot from the days of Studio System was where the lead male character would conduct a private investigation into a crime, most film noirs played against this background. Lynch’s Blue Velvet is absolutely nodding to its past by playing with this storyline; however Lynch also tinges the film with blustery touches of melodrama. The films combination of these two divergent tones does not work any better than the introduction of the Laura Dern character. The first time we see Sandy in a picture at the detective’s home where Jeffrey has gone to find out more about the case. This nod to the film noir Laura (where a detective falls in love with a painting) will not be missed by many cinema fans. As Jeffrey leaves the house, after being asked not to involve himself in the investigation, a voice from the complete darkness is heard. The music and cinematography in this scene combine to create horrific film noir imagery, the film switches on a dime and the tension is ratcheted up incredibly. As the voice walks onto the screen and we can see it is Sandy, the music alters to a lush romantic score, to encompass this blonde innocent wearing a pink dress. The love interest is the detective’s daughter! There could not be a more melodramatic turn of events. The subsequent scenes of Jeffrey and Sandy play against this Norman Rockwell style small town American setting, a teen romance with overwrought performances and unspoken longing. As the plot progresses the two meet a number of times in a 1950s style diner, an indication of an idyllic time in American history. An innocent escape from the darkness that Jeffrey has to face elsewhere. This half of the film is tinged with oddness, as any good melodrama would be, but it also is rather light and airy. The dialogue is fun and the audience would like to see a romance begin, it feels like James Stewart and Donna Reed meeting in It’s a Wonderful Life after the prom, Angelo Badalmenti’s jazz inflected score for this teen romance helps greatly.

However, this is not what David Lynch is here to offer us. Sandy through an intentional plot contrivance and convenience directs Jeffrey to the home of Dorothy Vallens. This is where the film noir plot lines take centre stage. Dorothy is the femme fatale of the piece and the complete opposite from Sandy. Jeffrey plan to infiltrate the house seems childish, almost Hardy boy esque, however he manages to get inside Dorothy’s apartment to snoop around and see what he can find out. Dorothy comes back and Jeffrey hides in her closet. This scene takes place in the voyeuristic cinematic lineage, the most convincing comparison can be drawn to Hitchcock Rear Window but Lynch adds additional danger and intimacy to surpass even Hitchcock basest desires. Lynch shoots Rosselini close in on her face and body, giving the audience what would be Kyle McLachlan’s perspective, the voyeurs in the audience rejoice. This is Peeping Tom for the 1980s. Then suddenly Lynch allows Rosselini to hear her intruder. She gets a knife, your sympathy as an audience member oscillates wildly at this point between our protagonist and the wronged party who privacy has been invaded. Much like in Psycho where Norman Bates has to dispose of the body in the car by pushing it into the swamp, the audience know he is doing something wrong, getting rid of a dead body, yet the sympathy of the audience switches to him when the car gets suck in the swamp, we are willing him to succeed. Here you know what Jeffrey did was wrong but Lynch shoots in the way that you hope no harm or crucially embarrassment comes to him. This is the masterstroke by David Lynch, by turning the tables on the voyeur; he is also turning the tables on the audience. The scene is incredibly uncomfortable to watch, then Lynch takes it further. He eroticises the moment, and shifts the audience emotion again. You relax, thinking against hope that this teen has stumbled into the ultimate male melodramatic sexual fantasy.

But then enters the darkest presence of both the film, and arguably any film. The audience are once again trapped in the closet with Jeffrey, as Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) enters. The voyeur is back in the cupboard, the audience is once again powerless, with this lack of power comes fear of the unknowing. The audience cannot help but to be drawn to the humiliation and brutalisation that Frank will commit upon Dorothy. This audience manipulation is so thorough and condemning that even Michael Haneke would approve, we are punished as Jeffrey is for being voyeurs and for not speaking up against the violence committed upon women in cinema. Lynch’s main goal, the linking of sex and violence; invokes a distressing cross over to the activities which are felt by the majority to be completely separate. The character of Dorothy seems to accept, even welcome, the sexual violence that Frank puts her through, she seems to have an ecstatic reaction to it. Lynch directorially comments on this on numerous occasions with his shot selection, most notably the close up on brightly made up red lips. Sex and sexual power is here directly connected to violence and death; Lynch takes this one step further and with Blue Velvet states that this connection is not the exclusive domain of criminals or gangsters but that even a well meaning, kind hearted university student can behave in this way if he is allowed to. This is his thesis and one which challenges the films outcome in an unexpected way, Jeffery’s curiosity leads to his corruption and the end of innocence, his contrasting relationships with Sandy and Dorothy speaks of a duality within Jeffery’s desires. The need for care and love, the need for violence and passion.

Frank Booth is one of the most horrific characters to be committed to celluloid, the plaudits must go to Dennis Hopper who is doing his over-the-top best as Frank, the violent sexual deviant who blackmails women into sex, routinely goes from placid to intensely angry and also acts out violently when someone says or does something that offends them. In any other film Hoppers performance may well have fallen into the annals of overacting legends, but in Blue Velvet he fits in just fine. Perhaps his sexual proclivities and unexpected bursts of violence have dated a little since the time of production in 1986, but he still remains contextually a remarkably memorable screen villain like James Cagney’s portrayal of Tom Powers in The Public Enemy from the 1930’s or the numerous actors involved with first bringing Darth Vader to the screen in the original Star Wars, even though neither portrayal is particularly edgy now (and worse still in terms of the latter they just look a bit silly). But with their context in mind we can still appreciate how unnerving they once were. Dennis Hopper’s Frank fits very firmly into this category, when compared to other villains in the mid-80’s he stands terrifyingly tall above the rest.

Despite seeing the terrifying figure of Frank rape and brutalise Dorothy, Jeffrey still seems intent on solving the mystery. The audience has realised the danger, but Lynch has subtly shifted the focus of the picture. We are not stuck in the closet watching Jeffrey but not warning, nor stopping him, from the danger that is coming his way. The audience has replaced Jeffrey as the voyeur. From here on the film descends into the darkest Lynchian nightmare, as the mystery continues. Blue Velvet reaches its apex when Jeffrey meets Frank at Dorothy’s apartment and he is kidnapped. We are in the most horrific Film Noir territory. This whole section of the film is immensely disturbing, Dennis Hopper spewing forth invective and violence from his mouth. Yet the dialogue remains very funny, and Lynch draws the audience in, with both this and the tremendous use of music.

One of Lynch’s greatest strength as a filmmaker is his brilliance at using music to score and counter point a scene. Throughout his career he has manufactured powerful scenes by incorporating startling music choices, think of the room of prostitutes singing a reverb heavy Locomotion in INLAND EMPIRE. But Blue Velvet is the pinnacle of his musical moments. Roy Orbison’s In Dreams being lip-synched by Dean Stockwell, while Frank looks on with a wounded and vulnerable face. The scene is nightmarish, yet beautifully shot as Hopper and Stockwell stand apart from the group in front of heavy green drapes. This is probably the finest scene Lynch has captured, it has every thing you would want from the man, it has pop music, an undertone of sadness, an edge of violence and dank weird creepiness that no-one else in cinema could possibly hope to reach.

The spiraling dark journey which follows this scene is one of the most disturbing and ambiguous set of events in a mainstream Hollywood movie. Jeffrey finds himself being beaten while Frank kisses him, covering his face in garish lipstick. But perhaps most sensibly what Lynch leaves to the audience interpretation is whether Jeffrey was then raped by Frank, the most complete destruction of innocence that can occur. Lynch shows Frank begin his rape ritual as it began when he raped Dorothy before, but this time looking at Jeffrey, then a beating takes place, In Dreams is being played, a woman dances on the roof of a car, then Lynch cuts to a flame which he has previously used to emphasize sexual violence.

A beaten and bruised Kyle McLachlan wakes up in the daylight, but this is not the candy coated Technicolor esque bright daylight of before in the film, but rather a less lustrous colour. Jeffrey sits on his bed and weeps for himself.

The rest of the film does not attempt to reach this height of dark perversity again but rather it moves back to a more traditional melodramatic plotting, where the only way for the film to conclude is for Jeffrey to see the events through to a conclusion. How the film is eventually resolved should be savored and not spoiled, yet throughout the remaining plotting there are numerous references to Hollywood of before: early Gangster films, Universal Horror imagery, Douglas Sirk melodrama and deepest of film noir plotting. These homage’s to the classic movies of the Studio System is something Lynch would flirt with throughout the rest of his magnificent career, the retooling of The Wizard of Oz for Wild at Heart or the investigation into the darkest of Hollywood’s soul in Mulholland Drive and INLAND EMPIRE.

It’s important to point out that for a Lynch film it is perfectly acceptable to be surprised by the fact that this film even has a plot to speak of, let alone one which makes sense and follows a very ordered structure, but ordered and structured it is. This is the middle ground of Lynch’s filmography, not as wild or audaciously illogical as his later works like Lost Highway or INLAND EMPIRE, but less coherent than The Elephant Man, Dune, or The Straight Story. Lynch’s peculiarities are present and correct, but in the world of Blue Velvet they stay strictly within the realms of this dimension. Not only does the plot stay on a linear track, but also the characters remain very much themselves, identities are not switched, lives are not swapped, they may end up very different from where they began but that is due to the events of the story rather than some mystical convergence which we neither see nor understand. It is a mystery movie, but a mystery that can ultimately be solved, a mystery which can be solved without reading endless text written about it on the internet. Blue Velvet does not ride through any of Lynch’s trademark portals but rather stays very rooted in its nightmarish vision of suburbia, yet the film ends very much on a note of redemption and one could say hope. The robins are singing come the end of the film.

The cast of Blue Velvet are very strong, McLachlan and Dern work very well together, they have a very fragmented chemistry - deliberately so. The only problem is they both look too old to be playing teenagers, but this is a continuing quibble with Hollywood productions and one which is most certainly not exclusive to this film. Mclachlan’s Jeffery in particular has a very wide arc, but one which strangely folds back in on itself at a later stage. His portrayal of a man who is dragged head first into a world he doesn’t know about and doesn’t understand is one done with commendable restraint. Dennis Hopper as mentioned before is electric as the wonderfully weird Frank Booth, his gang of misfits are all brilliantly realised with great little cameos from the best of 1980s character actors like Brad Dourif, Jack Nance and Dean Stockwell. Yet the heart of this movie, playing the most broken femme fatale is the wonderful Isabella Rosselini, she is as equally fearless as the volcanic Hopper in the film.

Blue Velvet is filled with hints of what was to come in Lynch’s career, visually it is extremely dark, Lynch famously never shot scenes with a day for night filter but prefers to film in the dead of night, under lit, menacing and deadly. Other visual signs are present, contrasting red and blue colour pallets at times, red curtains, black and white square tiles on the kitchen floor, fish bowl perspective shots. Other moments are so obviously Lynch like that it feels like the director has invented his own set of clichés: Dean Stockwell, playing a man in make-up singing a lounge routine, cutaways to beetles rummaging around in the grass below suburbia, music by Angelo Badalamenti, teenage love triangles and high school students investigating crimes. Just add a midget talking backwards and a lama surprising and FBI agent who likes Cherry Pie and you’ve got yourself a generic Lynch production. Blue Velvet is a masterpiece and indeed his greatest film to date; it embodies the strongest elements of both his straighter narratives and his more bizarre worlds.

M.Dawson and W. McLachlan