In David Lynch‘s eye, normalcy is a thin veneer on reality. A smiling firefighter waving from the side of a red firetruck. The green yard between the white picket fence and the middle-America house in a quiet neighborhood.
Move the camera in closer to that little crack in the veneer — closer and closer still — and you see the dark rot of reality, such as early in Blue Velvet when Mr. Beaumont (Jack Harvey) has a seizure and falls to the ground as he’s watering the lawn. While the dog snaps at the stream of water shooting from the hose in Mr. Beaumont’s hand, Lynch’s camera looks to the right and moves toward the lawn, then closer to the blades of grass, then between them to the earth that teems with loudly munching beetles.
I saw Blue Velvet — this week’s club pick — when it first came out 35 years ago, and haven’t rewatched it in its entirety until now. I remembered the premise and a few key scenes, so it was almost like watching it for the first time.
Aside from the indecipherable Eraserhead, this is the first truly Lynchian feature. You can see similar touches on his subsequent projects, particularly the quirky, weird, and often hilarious series, Twin Peaks.
Lynch takes queues from Alfred Hitchcock — in the lush visuals and in building suspense — but introduces much more overt sexual content. Yet, time has lessened the impact of the movie from my original impression. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some intense portions. But if Blue Velvet were filmed today, more would be shown in those intense scenes than what is implied in the movie. Even four years later, Wild at Heart is much more graphic and violent than Blue Velvet. Still, it leaves you feeling uncomfortable.
Returning to a theme from a couple of weeks ago, what are contemporary audiences missing regarding the sentimental song the movie is named after, Blue Velvet, as well as Roy Orbison’s In Dreams.
Despite Bobby Vinton’s 1963 version of Blue Velvet having been released when I was a child, Blue Velvet seems like a song from another era. I’m not familiar with Orbison’s song. Neither evokes any specific image in my mind. What significance does it have for Lynch? Does it signal an aspect of the movie that I don’t recognize since I’m not from his generation? Or, is their use simply an extension of Lynch’s veneer, where those melancholy songs thinly cover the horror lurking beneath?
I don’t think that misaligned association prevents us from enjoying the film, but maybe, when watching Blue Velvet today, we have a different interpretation than Lynch intended. I guess that applies to any movie from the past.