Blue Velvet

“I can’t figure out if you’re a detective or a pervert.”

“Well that’s for me to know and you to find out.”

In 1977, the yet unknown David Lynch made his surrealist debut feature Eraserhead: a film about the terrifying fear of fatherhood. Think “Son of the Mask” – except not execrable. After this promising start, he literally filmed the first script to land on his desk – The Elephant Man. The melodrama received a score of Oscar nominations, including a Best Director nod for Lynch. It also turned the head of one George Lucas, which approached Lynch to direct the finale of the Star Wars trilogy – Revenge of the Jedi. Lynch turned it down, calling Star Wars Lucas’ vision, his baby.

Instead he took a three movie deal from infamous Hollywood producer Dino DeLaurentiis (Disclaimer: not a real dinosaur). The first film was his ambitious, expensive adaptation of the sci-fi opus Dune which was… a total flop, critically and commercially. DeLaurentiis chopped an hour off the running time, replacing it with an exposition-heavy voiceover. (Even worse than Blade Runner’s.)  What remained was a plodding, yet rushed “Star Wars rip-off”. Lynch was horrified with the result. He went so far as to take remove his director’s credit from the  extended TV cut (“directed by John Smithee”). He vowed never to make another film – unless he himself had the final cut. Luckily for audiences everywhere, DeLaurentiis gave him this privilege. Lynch had a chance to redeem his reputation with his next film, Blue Velvet.

Film Noir was not new to Hollywood. Thrillers involving hardended gumshoes, brunette femme fatales and mysterious MacGuffins (in the vein of The Maltese Falcon) had been endlessly repeated since 1941. But Lynch subverting our expectations by taking these tropes out of shadowy urban comfort zones into sunny small-town Americana. Lumberton is introduced as your stereotypical happy-clappy 1950s-era town. (Think Back to the Future’s Hill Valley.) But this nostalgic idealised setting is gravely disturbed in the opening scene. The beetle motif foreshadows the unthinking evil in our midst.

Our hero Jeffrey Beaumont returns to Lumberton. But he doesn’t quite fit in anymore. His appearance hints at his non-conformity: his wears a silver earring, his hair is too long, his eyes too dark. Jeffrey’s boredom with small-town tedium propels him into its mysterious, seedy underbelly. His insatiable, voyeuristic curiousity scares Sandy, his blonde sweetheart. She fears for his safety – and rightly so. Jeffrey falls into the seductive arms of the brunette Dorothy. (Her Wizard of Oz-inspired name underlines Jeffrey’s departure into this new surreal world.)

Sandy represents  the naive, innocent, pre-feminism social convention of 1950s America. She is wholesome and supportive to his ego. She enkindles “the blinding light of love” in Jeffrey’s dreary life. However, she is rather plain in appearance. She does not appeal to his id, his lust. Instead it is Dorothy and her mysterious world that excite him. They promise him carnal hedonistic, pleasure with no adverse consequences. No strings attached. Jeffrey’s sexual frustration due to social constraints call to mind Brad and Janet in 1976’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Or even Dr Jekyll in the even more restrictive Victorian society. Our protagonist is offered sweet release – but at great cost.

Jeffrey incurs the wrath of Frank, played by Dennis Hopper in his most memorable screen role. Hopper holds nothing back in his performance. Frank is true to his name: direct, outspoken and brutal. He acts brashly, selfishly and with no concern for the future. His sentences are peppered with expletives – no small matter in a pre-Reservoir Dogs film. He claims to “fuck anything that moves”. He demeans and assaults women mercilessly. Frank represents Jeffrey’s id, his dark side. Echoing the lyrics of Roy Orbinson, Frank whispers, “In dreams, I walk with you. In dreams I talk to you. In dreams, you’re mine.”  But more than that, he is every man’s id. He is our unconscious desire, our power fantasy. Frank scares us because we in his eyes, we see into our own soul. We see the worst of ourselves and of humanity.

The battle between love and lust, good and evil, virtue and sin, conformity and disobedience… These are internal battles that will never be fully resolves. They are the result of free will. Lynch takes a potentially bland and forgettable erotic noir with (deliberately?) stilted dialogue and transforms it into a timeless, universal exploration of the human condition. That is what makes David Lynch a true auteur, a master of cinema. And Blue Velvet his masterpiece.