“Well, film is really voyeurism. You sit there in the safety of the theatre, and seeing is such a powerful thing. And we want to see secret things, we really want to see them. New things. It drives you nuts, you know! And the more new and secret they are, the more you want to see them.” — David Lynch

As the blue sky descends to the white picket fence behind red roses and yellow poppies in Blue Velvet (1986), I remembered a similar opening shot in Guru Dutt’s Pyasa (1951), and then the fact that this is David Lynch. In Blue Velvet too, the slow and happy world comes to an abrupt end in a frightening stroke. Strangely, each stroke evokes an emotion that is complete in itself. I don’t remember a film that felt so complete. Here each subplot seems a whole. This is David Lynch, I can tell, the voyeur. His films open door to the strange land of mystery and he is the man with the courage to cross the existing limits imposed on the medium in the eighties.

This is rightly called Lynch’s Psycho (1960). Both films feature psychotic villains. Blue Velvet is Hitchcockian in the beginning until the Lynchian tone, a suspense mystery, becomes more apparent. This is a filmic novel, if there is one. A neo-noir. A cult classic. This is short of pornography but I’m sure the original rough cut would have been. After all, a film which has its origin in this desire to ‘sneak into a girl’s room to see her into the night’ can be ‘blue’ with or without the velvet. The film progresses as a curious agonist Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) tries to unravel the mystery of a severed ear. Who would dare to sneak into the severed human ear? David Lynch, of course. The good news is Lynch also comes out of it and returns to the happy first.

“Blue Velvet is a love story.” “I started with the idea of front yards at night and Bobby Vinton’s song playing from a distance. Then I always had this fantasy of sneaking into a girl’s room and hiding through the night. It was a strange angle to come at a murder mystery.” “And then, I’d always had a desire to sneak into a girl’s apartment and watch her through the night. I had the idea that while I was doing this I’d see something which I’d later realize was the clue to a mystery. I think people are fascinated by that, by being able to see into a world they couldn’t visit. That’s the fantastic thing about cinema, everybody can be a voyeur. Voyeurism is a bit like watching television – go one step further and you want to start looking in on things that are really happening.” — David Lynch

After the bizarre debut Eraserhead (1977), Lynch’s attempt to develop a personal story paid off in Blue Velvet which is at its best an unusual masterpiece with characters that are hard to erase from the brain even after lobotomy by an inexperienced dentist with a pair of septic scissors. His characters face all sorts of extremities until facing possible death. Sexual peculiarities and horrendous barbarity mark them. But then, this is Lynch Land, true to the essence of all objects, but also eluding all sense of moral inhibition. His Freudian characters are out of place and his works borrow heavily from his life the most perturbing moments with an exaggerated distortion. Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) is an excess of cruelty and madness. But Lynch’s Frank, just like the alien baby in Eraserhead, is both teasing and ‘monstrously funny.’ Jeffrey is determined to save Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) from Frank but can’t resist her sexual appeal or endure her masochism. Here is a bloke who can just fondle his girl and becomes frustrated to find this femme fatale who pleads for fists and fury alone.

In one memorable scene of this film, a helpless, an almost teary Jeffrey asks his girlfriend Sandy (Laura Dern), “Why are there people like Frank? Why is there so much trouble in this world?” After an attentive pause, Sandy answers, “I don’t know.” Perhaps, there can’t be a better answer. Then she narrates him a dream as the brilliant soundtrack sets the right mood:

“I had a dream… In the dream, there was our world, and the world was dark because there weren’t any robins and the robins represented love. And for the longest time, there was this darkness. And all of a sudden, thousands of robins were set free and they flew down and brought this blinding light of love. And it seemed that love would make any difference, and it did… So, I guess it means that there is trouble until the robins come.”

And robins come before the film reaches its climax and the film returns to the opening shot of the poppies and the roses and the picket fence and dissolves in the blue sky with scattered cotton clouds until dark blue velvet flashes back on the screen and the credits start rolling. Not a bad way to end a year and start a new one, isn’t it? Good luck till the robins come. And robins that sing!

— Jan 1, ’09