"Blue Velvet" - 01/26/03 - 02/01/03

[Morticia]

This is a thread to discuss the technical and/or thematic merits of "Blue Velvet".

The purpose being to foster intelligent discussion of films without resorting to "It's a piece of crap." or "It's the greatest film ever." (And so that we all can gain a bit of a film education from everyone.)

We'll discuss a new film each week. Either slade or I will post the film in this forum in advance, and lock the topic until the first day of discussion.

Thanks everyone. We are open to any ideas about running this forum.

****SPOILER WARNING**** of course this entire thread is going to be full of spoilers.

[jlproffitt]

It's been a couple of days since the end of this discussion period and no comments on Blue Velvet yet. And I just "discovered" Film Class! So I thought I'd lend my comments on Blue Velvet so it doesn't slip away without comment.

I was in college when this film first came out. I remember being taken in by the hyper-stylized filmmaking and, at that age, not really understanding the thematic elements much. I thought it was an interesting story but that was about it.

Now, after the recent SE edition was released on DVD, I revisited the film. With the passage of time, it was no less shocking, but I think that I was able to grasp more of the message, if there is one.

In Blue Velvet, I saw an examination of aspects of our personalities that we don't always acknowlege clearly. David Lynch has taken our perception of "normal" life and stretched it at both ends. The corniness of stereotypical middle American life is brightened and glows with color. The seediness of our more private urges, whether overtly practiced o.r covertely hidden, is darkened and tweaked to display it in a way that we often don't, or aren't willing to, confront.

Jeffrey Beaumont serves as the viewer. It would be likely that the viewer has a lot in common with him, or can relate to him in some way. We follow him as he is drawn further and further away from the comfortable colorful world in which he acknowleges he lives to a dark depraved world in which he has not yet acknowleged he lives.

Dorothy Vallens preceded him in this journey and she has come to accept the darker world and to gain comfort from it rather than the "normal" world.

To me, Frank Booth represents all of the qualities that our politically correct world would say are wrong or don't even exist; however, I think Blue Velvet shows how those urges do exist and we aren't better off by denying them. If fact, to deny they exist, we deny ourselves.

It's an uncomfortable journey to be sure. I was more uncomfortable watching Frank's "blue velvet" scene now than I was when I was younger. It's obviously meant to shock, but I think its purpose is to show its part in humanity. Frank is fixated on the womb as an adult and I think that's meant to show the connection of his depraved adult existence to his birth as a human being.

In the end, Jeffrey Beaumont resists the acceptance of the dark side that Dorothy Vallens did not. He ends the story by finding solace in the "normal" world with Laura Dern. But even still, they've both experienced a part of humanity that they had previously not acknowleged.

Blue Velvet is one of those movies that just doesn't have an ending. For Jeffrey, and us as viewers, the experience of the darker side is something that changes all that would come thereafter.