#134: Blue Velvet
Release Date: September 19th, 1986
Format: Theater (The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, CA)
Written by: David Lynch
Directed by: David Lynch
3.5 Stars
I have a David Lynch hot take: I don’t think he’s a particularly good storyteller. But damn he has good taste, and that goes a long way.
Watching Blue Velvet tonight (my second time seeing it), I was intrigued. I was stimulated. I was interested.
But I wasn’t enthralled.
The story is about a college kid, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlin), who returns to his hometown and finds a severed human ear in a field. This discovery sets him down a path towards a dark, violent underbelly that exists in this small suburban town.
What I liked most about the story is that before Jeffrey discovers the ear, he was clearly living an unexamined, blissfully ignorant life. He went off to college because that’s what middle-class kids do after high school. He drove a convertible that he thought was cool. He’s sure he’ll land some sort of job after graduating, but what kind and where? Who knows? But things like this work themselves out for the Jeffreys of the world. He’ll be fine. He’s handsome enough, and with the career will come a nice suburban wife and 2.5 kids and a dog.
But there’s that ear. And a rumor that a lounge singing femme fatale named Dorothy Valens (Isabella Rossellini) might have something to do with it. Or maybe it’s her drug and beer-fueled boyfriend, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper, completely unhinged).
Jeffrey wants to know more. He’s compelled to know more. And we, the audience, want to know more too.
I think the movie is most successful when it’s at its most Lynchian. He’s gifted at capturing elusive and fleeting feelings. His camera is thoughtful, and his use of music is exquisite. He elicits bizarre and provocative performances, and let’s face it, he’s cool as hell.
I just wish his storytelling style spoke to me like it clearly does for his most passionate fans.
That said, mere minutes after walking out of the theater with D, I wanted to watch Blue Velvet again. Like Jeffrey, I’d had a solid glimpse of Lynch’s strange vision, but was left thinking that there might be more there.
Addendum: What gets lost with David Lynch’s appeal is context. When Blue Velvet came out in mid-September of 1986, Top Gun was in its 19th(!) week at number one at the box office. Stand By Me was at number two, in its 7th week. The Karate Kid Part II was number three, in its 14th god damn week since being released. That’s incredible to consider in 2025, when a massive release, let’s say Wicked, drops out of the top five of the box office in its 7th week. The mid-’80s had such an appetite for commercialized, feel-good films that they sometimes dominated the top of the box office for months at a time. But below those massive hits, there was space for the weirdo auteurs. Not all Americans wanted to see Top Gun a half dozen times in theater, so it really did create a vacuum for the films of Lynch, David Cronenberg, Tim Burton, etc. to gain traction at the fringier edges of mainstream cinema.
