Oh David Lynch. I have seen Mulholland Drive, a very famous film by David Lynch, so I knew what to expect when I heard we were watching Blue Velvet. David Lynch is considered one of the great filmmakers of our time, and I can see why, yet I am not a huge fan of his films (sorry!) His films can just be too weird for me and my liking's.I did really like the way this film was put together however. The reading discusses how Lynch uses the 50's pretense to mess with the audience's head. The postmodernism of the film where Lynch toyed with the time period in which the film took place was clever. The opening of the film couldn't have been more 1950's America. We see perfect little houses, a smiling happy firemen, and a white picket fence with red roses and a beautiful clear blue sky behind it. Then, some guy collapses in his yard while watering it while a little boy looks on. Immediately the audience knows that the film isn't what it seems like it's going to be. Bye bye to the happy images we saw because the movie was about to get weird--real weird.
The characters in this film also intrigued me. Jeffrey was an interesting lead and its hard to know what his motivation was for things he did in the film. We don't get a back story on any of our characters, and by the end of the film we don't know much more about their lives then we did before. That's one part of the film that made me not like it as much; I didn't care about the characters I was watching and there was no connection to them. Dorothy was a messed up woman because of what this Frank Booth character was doing to her, yet we don't know how she was before all this happened. The dry humping scene was by far the weirdest thing I have ever watched. Afterwards, we can see Dorothy is shook up from this, yet 5 minutes before she was victimizing Jeffrey. I don't know if Dorothy just wanted to treat someone the way she was being treated, as almost a release, or if she just enjoys weird rough sex like that. I think Jeffrey was drawn to that because it was a new experience (or so we believe since we don't know about his previous sex life) and what 20 something year old college man wouldn't be intrigued to try that with an older woman? Frank Booth was an interesting villain to say the least, but somehow I wasn't afraid of him. His weird mannerisms just took away from his villain persona. He clearly loves to say the word fuck and he just sounds idiotic while doing it. His weird obsession with blue velvet reminded me of Crispin Glover's character in Charlie's Angels and his weird obsession with female hair. And then the whole lipstick scene just didn't make sense. It was just weird thing after weird thing. And the fact that his weird oxygen breathing wasn't explained either just frustrated me. This film left me with not knowing enough about the characters I was watching.
Crispin Glover from Charlie's Angels
Overall, Blue Velvet follows David Lynch's auteur style. If we watched this film and I didn't know who the director was, I would guess Lynch because I would immediately recognize his auteur from Mulholland Drive. Lynch creates something on screen that makes people talk and enjoy his films, but I am just not a fan of his style.
I really enjoyed the characters because I didn't know anything about them. I find it very interesting in film when you don't know things because it gets your imagination flowing. Not to mention the double archtypes for each character really drew me to these people on the screen. You didn't know who was good/bad, trustworthy/untrustworthy.
ReplyDeleteI miss Crispin Glover! Definitely a singular character actor, like Dennis Hopper. Since you're talking about Lynch as an auteur though (and he's a good example of one. He definitely has a signature style), and since you've seen Mulholland Drive, what do you notice about that style? How does it come into play in Blue Velvet? Trying to figure out what motivates the characters will probably lead to indifference and frustration--backstory and motivation really isn't the point. It's more like what he does with texture visually, and cliches thematically.
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