On Sept. 18, a friend and I went to the re-screening of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” a disturbing psycho-thriller originally released on Sept. 19, 1986, screened at the Coolidge Corner Theater. If you don’t already know who David Lynch is, just know that Lana Del Rey quoted him as a huge influence. Personally, I would say that as we can see the America in real life descend into madness, there is no better time to dive into the dark Americana dream-vision of David Lynch. Blue Velvet captures the nightmare hiding behind the American dream — a strange, unsettling vision that echoes disturbingly in today’s fractured world. Jeffery (Kyle MacLachlan), a high school boy in Lumberton, discovers a severed ear and then delves into the underbelly of the Lumberton with his high school crush, Sandy (Laura Dern), daughter of the local police officer, a blonde girl embodying the naïve innocence of the American dream. He then learns about kidnapping, sexual slavery and corruption through a barrage of voyeurism, mixed with scenes of small town life (the ever so classic high school dances and dates in diners) here and there.
The sexual material in the film remains profoundly disturbing. Isabella Rossellini’s peak performance as Dorothy, the opposite of Sandy, is so realistic and devastatingly convincing that most other actresses would not dare to experiment with scenes of such emotional intensity.
American cinema has long used satire to dull the edge of sex and violence. Here, Lynch suggests that perhaps these themes deserve to be treated with the gravity they command. And yet, some would argue that given the sheer force of the darker scenes, one is left frustrated: Lynch does not follow his own insights all the way to their consequences. For example, one disturbing scene sees Dorothy ask Jeffery to recreate the scene with her abuser, murmuring “hit me” in his ear, but Lynch leaves it there without exploring the psychological effects further. Meanwhile, the end of the movie almost seems too good to be true. Sandy tells Jeffery that she had a dream of robins, signifying love that will solve everything (she tells him this in front of a church, as expected). And at the end, after bloody murders, severed corpses, yes, there it was: Jefferey listening to the song Blue Velvet, waking up from a dream, with robins. The scene was almost too neat, which asks us, has anything actually been resolved? Or was it all a dream?
But perhaps this refusal and ambiguity is deliberate. Perhaps Lynch is suggesting that the mechanism of American culture is bipolar, leaping from nightmare to the tidy illusion of small-town happiness — the stark contrast between Christian symbols and repressed desires; of Freudian toxic masculinity and young, innocent love. What I have always enjoyed about Lynch’s movies is that he never offers a manifesto; his films are experiences. That is why I would recommend Lynch’s films to everyone (and I have already warned you about the disturbing scenes), as words cannot even capture a fraction of its full, dark glory.
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