David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” opens with a dreamlike collage of suburban idyll and wholesome Americana. Then, a man collapses doing yard work behind his picket fence and the camera leads us underground, where writing black beetles churn beneath the manicured lawn. It’s a masterful and unsettling introduction to a film about the dark side of American life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The collapsing man is the father of Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), a young college student who returns home to Lumberton, North Carolina, to look after his mother and mind his dad’s shop while he recovers from the incident (implied to be a stroke). Walking home from the hospital, Jeffrey finds a severed human ear in a field \u2014 a discovery that will lead him down a path to sexual sadomasochism, drugs, and violence. But also a straightforward, if somewhat unconventional, courtship with the girl next door (Laura Dern). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A lot gets said about how “Blue Velvet” depicts, as I mentioned, the seedy underbelly of suburban American idyll. And it does do that! Dennis Hopper’s Frank is a singularly terrifying presence, and Isabella Rossellini’s Dorothy offers a heartbreaking embodiment of how culture simultaneously exalts and degrades women. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But while the horrors of “Blue Velvet” certainly complicate the Normal Rockwell ideal of whole Americana, it doesn’t completely shatter it. On this viewing I was struck by how fundamentally hopeful it is. Despite all he sees, Jeffrey settles with the girl next door in the end. Dorothy has a happy ending. In the film’s final scene, one of the introduction’s writing black beetles is shown in the beak of a robin \u2014 a symbol of peace and love established earlier in the movie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The darkness beneath the surface doesn’t undermine or destabilize, it sustains. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” opens with a dreamlike collage of suburban idyll and wholesome Americana. Then, a man collapses doing yard work behind his picket fence and the camera leads us underground, where writing black beetles churn beneath the manicured lawn. It’s a masterful and unsettling introduction to a film about the dark side of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":374,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[32,11],"yoast_head":"\n