Review on Blue Velvet

Review on Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet

This film resembles an uncanny appearance to that of a Trojan horse, its sweet and nice on top with a friendly neighborhood and tidy gardens, but delve deeper and beyond this and you will find horrors and disturbing scenes of sexual behavior that is incredibly evil and hard to watch. Roger Ebert expresses this in a review on Chicago Sun-Times. 'The movie has two levels of reality. On one level, we're in Lumberton, a simple-minded small town where people talk in television cliches and seem to be clones of 1950s sitcom characters. On another level, we're told a story of sexual bondage, of how Isabella Rossellini's husband and son have been kidnapped by Dennis Hopper, who makes her his sexual slave. The twist is that the kidnapping taps into the woman's deepest feelings: She finds that she is a masochist who responds with great sexual passion to this situation.' (Chicago Sun-Times, 1986) After finding a human ear in an abandoned plot, Kyle MacLachlan chooses to pursue investigating, even despite the warning from the police. There are feelings of tension when he is deciding to go into Rossellini's apartment, even when he is hiding in the cupboard there is a sense of suspense. More so when you see what happens next and despite MacLachlan choosing to pursue his investigation further you feel the essence of danger increasing and wonder what he is getting himself into. This fear is mentioned in a review on Time Out London. 'The seamless blending of beauty and horror is remarkable - although many will be profoundly disturbed by Lynch's vision of male-female relationships, centered as it is on Dorothy's psychopathic hunger for violence - the terror very real, and the sheer wealth of imagination virtually unequaled in recent cinema.' (Time Out London, 1986)

 Kyle Finds a Human Ear

There are at some times in this film that are similar to Eraserhead, such as a strange zoomed up view of the insects in the lawn and a scene near the end where a man is just standing there in Rossellini's apartment with a gun shot wound to his head with what appeared to be brain matter coming out. This film shows the strangeness and disturbing scenes coming from director, David Lynch as mentioned in a review on Variety. 'Blue Velvet finds David Lynch back on familiar, strange, territory. Picture takes a disturbing and at times devastating look at the ugly underside of Middle American life. The modest proportions of the film are just right for the writer-director's desire to investigate the inexplicable demons that drive people to deviate from expected norms of behavior and thought.' (Variety, 1985)

           

Kyle MacLachlan & Isabella Rossellini

List Of Illustrations


Figure 1, Lynch, David. (1986) Blue Velvet. [Poster] http://digitalpolyphony.webs.com/trippyandweirdmovies.htm (Accessed on: 18.01.11)


Figure 2. Lynch, David. (1986) Kyle Finds a Human Ear. [Screen Cap] http://hannahpoturalski.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/blue-velvet/ (Accessed on: 18.01.11)


Figure 3. Lynch, David. (1986) Kyle MacLachlan & Isabella Rossellini. [Screen Cap] http://www.askmen.com/entertainment/movie/blue-velvet.html (Accessed on: 18.01.11)

Bibliography

Ebert, Roger. (1986) Blue Velvet. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19860919/REVIEWS/609190301 (Accessed on: 18.01.11)

Time Out London. (1986) Blue Velvet. http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/68161/blue_velvet.html (Accessed on: 18.01.11)

Variety. (1985) Blue Velvet. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117789411?refcatid=31 (Accessed on: 18.01.11)