★★★★★

“I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert.”

Every now and then in cinema an unrestrained creative force finds a loose shackle that works for them. Such is the case with surrealist maestro David Lynch’s lean and mean 1986 masterpiece.

Starting as a vibe and a title and slowly percolating into form and plot over the next 11 years, Blue Velvet gave the iconic director something personal to fall back on after hired gun success with The Elephant Man and hired gun failure with Dune. As dark and strange as it is for its time, it also presents us with a relatively palatable view of Lynch’s most definitive symbols and themes. Velvet boils down the essence of his work to two mesmerizing hours that you walk away from supremely fucked with — but with perfect logical and emotional understanding.

Can’t start any other place but that phenomenal opening.

From the decadent credits over breathing, womblike blue velvet curtains to its first images of a hazy, idealized America with crisp red roses against picket fences and tranquil skies, we immediately sense something is off. Lynch’s deliciously demented sense of humor soon kicks in, followed by a descent from the placid existence above to the insect world of cannibalistic struggle hiding below. Alan Splet’s sound design is so good here. I can still feel those bugs long after the final frame. If you’re watching on a computer, can’t recommend good headphones enough. Almost like reverse ASMR.

A dad in the hospital and a human ear in a field later, we’re quickly set off on our sleuthing journey with babe Agent Coop in the woods Jeffrey — played with a walk on the dark side naivety that only the amazing Kyle MacLachlan could’ve brought to the role. Loved the Chahs and poofy hair of Dune, but this is where he really hits his stride; bringing in a nice balance of humor and loss of innocence horror. And Laura Dern backs him wonderfully, playing partner in junior badge club crime Sandy with simpatico 50s-aura greenness and utter charm.

The seedy underbelly they uncover in their small North Carolina town, true to Velvet’s noir roots, gives us a rabbit hole fatale and a criminal brute. But both transcend their genre roles into something far more allegorical and disturbing, and provide the film’s two best performances.

Isabella Rossellini is stunning as nightclub singer and tortured mother Dorothy Vallens. How she plays Dorothy’s fractured mindset alongside her seduction of Jeffrey to the id dimension of sex, violence and exploitation is a bitter treat. Dreamlike, layered in complexity and uncomfortably alluring, Dorothy is both pitiful and dangerous — a heart beaten into acceptance and even comfort in brutality.

And as the son and husband-kidnapping, gas-huffing, mommy issues PBR and Roy Orbison enthusiast gangster behind her pain, Dennis Hopper commands a whirlwind of demonic presence. In his portrayal of Frank Booth there’s a compelling intersection between his recent sobriety/need to exorcise some shit and Lynch’s first personification of evil energy — revisited countless times later with characters like Bobby Peru, Killer BOB and The Mystery Man. Unlike them, Frank is bizarrely vulnerable and funny: making scenes like Dorothy’s rape and whatever’s going on with him, Jeffrey and the candy-colored clown dig deep under your skin. He feels both supernatural and sickeningly human.

Big shout-out to the brief but memorable character actor ensemble in Frank’s gang as well. Just seeing Dean Stockwell, Brad Dourif and Jack Nance in the same room makes me happy.

Lynch’s script is arguably the best in his oeuvre. Capturing his signature voice, psychology and spirituality more concisely than any other work, Velvet gives us a taste of the unique characterization to come in Peaks — only lacking its expansive time for depth and playful comedy. As much as I am an absolute Lynchie and dig the tangents he goes on in later projects (especially The Return), there’s really something to be said about when he colors inside the perverted lines so to speak. Just as distinctive and idiosyncratic, but razored down to a cinematic language that’s both powerful and cohesive.

And wowza, is this film unified. From the threaded symbols of good and evil in the writing to the unforgettable imagery of Lynch’s mind and DP Frederick Elmes’s craft, Velvet operates like a nightmare you remember the rest of your life not because it was so weird or frightening, but because everything clicked in an uncanny logic.

Just like the blues/reds of Dorothy’s eyes and lips bleeding into the spotlight and curtains around her, tenderness and degradation, hell and redemption, beauty and ugliness all play off one another in Lynch’s dual view of human nature. Here the better angels emerge victorious in a finale that would probably be laughable in any other director’s hands. In Lynch’s we’re oddly (and undeniably) moved by a still phantasmagoric vision: a bird eating an insect to the beat of Julee Cruise’s ethereal vocals on “Mysteries of Love” all but a religious experience.

It sounds funny to say as a #1 Eraserhead fan, but this is a flick that was a bit too much for me at first. On each rewatch I love Velvet more and more though, and now count it as my third favorite of his filmography. This movie still hooks into you in a way only that Boy Scout + Francis Bacon jamboree brain of his could.

Where to watch Blue Velvet.
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