Blue Velvet - Film review essays

Blue Velvet - Film review essays I have to admit that Blue Velvet was my first Lynch film. Having watched his Twin Peaks television series however, I was vaguely familiar with his style and penchant for weirdness. The film did indeed live up to the wierd stereotype. What starts of as a typical story of tragedy in a small town family sinks, first slowly, then quickly into a web of corruption, sexual deceit and murder. In the end the only conclusion that I could draw was that Lynch is trying to show that even the picture perfect idealism of small town America has a hidden air of depravity and malevolence to it. I thought the mis-en-scene was very purposeful. Lynch uses various background colors to enhance the displayed mood or demeanor of a particular character (for example -the stark blues and purples in Dorothy Vallens room). I also liked the eccentric way in which Lynch zooms in on a colony of seemingly voracious insects to create a symbolic parallel to the twisted reality he creates in the rustic community of Lumberton. Where I feel the movie succeeds is in its usage of random quirkiness that sends the viewers on hopelessly unexpected, and confounding tangents. I found this very refreshing, for it reminded of how blinkered I have become in terms of the expectations I have and the assumptions I make about a particular story. The entire series of interactions between Jeffrey and Sandy are irrelevant, yet delightfully compelling to the viewer. The actors emotions ran the gamut from the tacit, to the cliched, to the deranged. Dennis Hopper is the dramatic standout; he casts a scary image even while kissing another man. . Kyle Maclachlan goes overboard in his attempt to appear spaced out and quirky. On the whole, i admire "Blue Velvet" for its originality and aesthetic originality. But, it also has the tendency to push its creative boundaries to ludicrous extremes on occasion. ...