Blue Velvet Review
David_Lynch's map of the terrain between wet dream and nightmare, Blue Velvet reaffirmed the director's status as one of the most vital talents in American filmmaking, and achieved a mood and tone which would indelibly influence popular culture for the remainder of the 20th century. Though much of the film revolves around a compelling, lurid mystery -- executed in a tense, economical manner that might have made Alfred_Hitchcock proud -- Blue Velvet is more interested in the mysteries of desire and the horrors of unchecked deviance. Lynch uses the form, style, and mood of a film noir to challenge and ultimately subvert notions of innocence, sexuality, and love. Even the casting reflects the director's agenda: Lynch's fresh young heroes, as played by Kyle MacLachlan and Laura_Dern, are like leads in a 1950s hygiene film; he pits them against two icons of a lost Hollywood, Isabella_Rossellini and Dennis_Hopper, the latter turning in a jolting, career-resuscitating performance. Though it specifies no particular time, Blue Velvet's "golly gee" milieu of Lumberton, replete with soda fountains, convertibles, and hardware stores, is a Reagan-era idyll, an exaggeration of the 1980s concept of the American Dream. But from the moment Lynch's camera delves underground (in a surreal, Buñuel-like moment) to take in a thriving community of ants, it's clear that the director is more interested in the Reagan of Kings_Row (1941), and in the grotesque despair that lurks beneath the surface of placid middle-American life. The film was a breakthrough for Lynch in the way it melded the dream worlds of Eraserhead (1977) and Dune (1984) with the more literal, narrative approach of The_Elephant_Man (1980): its densely saturated, red-white-and-blue color scheme was stunningly photographed by Fredrick_Elmes; the haunting, expressionistic soundscape was designed by frequent Lynch collaborator Alan_Splet. Michael Hastings, Rovi
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