Oprah Movie Club Pick for June: Blue Velvet

1986 neo-noir thriller

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Jeffrey, home from college because his father is hospitalized after a stroke, finds a severed ear while throwing rocks at a trash can. He takes it to a detective, but he and the detective's daughter decide to do a little sleuthing on their own. They uncover a sinister world of kidnapping, sexual depravity, and Roy Orbison lip-synching routines. Soon, Jeffrey is up to his nipples in shadows.

It's been suggested that Jeffrey's story is a neo-noir exploration of the Oedipus Complex, that Dennis Hopper's Frank is an abusive father figure, and Rossellini's Dorothy represents the mother. (See Fetishism and Curiosity by Laura Mulvey--Chapter Nine is all about this and can be found [mostly] online.) It's an interesting idea, but I couldn't get through the entire chapter either because I'm too lazy or not smart enough or some combination of the two. For me, Blue Velvet is really straightforward, perhaps Lynch's easiest movie to digest. It's still Lynchian--sprinkled with his trademark dark quirkiness and horrifying outlook on sexuality and violence. Of course, according to imdb.com, there are also allusions to Lincoln's assassination, so maybe I'm not digging into this nearly enough. I don't buy the Lincoln stuff, however. A Lincoln Street? Frank's last name being Booth? Victim's shot through the head? Seems like a reach or two to me. Something else learned from the imdb.com trivia page: Lynch (during the filming) and later Rossellini both find the rape scene that Jeffrey watches from the closet funny. I find that extremely odd. I don't see any humor in that scene at all; in fact, I think it's one of the more horrifying moments in film. I've always thought Lynch and I had similar senses of humor.

Anyway, this is a movie about things that are submerged, things that either people don't know about because they're actually hidden or people just want to pretend to not know about. Or it's about mysteries and what happens when you're curious enough to start uncovering those mysteries--sociological mysteries as well as personal ones. "It's a strange world." Those words are said during several conversations between Kyle MacLachlan and the lovely Laura Dern's characters. Lynch never hides the strangeness in our world. In fact, he brings it to the focus in his movies, and that's one of the things that can make watching his movies a sometimes-uneasy experience. That submerged strangeness is shown metaphorically right at the beginning of Blue Velvet. There are shots of white picket fences, flowers, a guy watering his grass, and waving firemen to the saccharine crooning of "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton. Suddenly--a gun on the television and a hose caught in a bush, the latter which I just typed and wondered if it was meant to be as dirty as it looks in words. And then insects snarling subterraneanly. Above, things are just peachy, but just below the surface, there's all sorts of nastiness. Look at MacLachlan's goofy character. He's nothing but innocent at the beginning of this thing. Hell, he tries to impress a high school senior with a story about the kid with "the biggest tongue in the world" and something called "the chicken walk." We don't see any evidence that there's anything darker going on with his character until he is in the nightclub watching Rossellini's character for the first time. Then, you see the lust on his face in a brilliantly acted scene. Just eyes, and you see everything start to unravel. Or maybe you don't if you're watching this for the first time. I don't know. Of course, earlier in the story, Jeffrey is plotting to break into a women's house, but there's still a kind of childish naiveté with that whole scheme. No, the sinister nature--submerged evil goop--in Jeffrey will be uncovered a bit later in the proceedings. Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth is the personification of that evil in society and maybe in all of us. And what a performance that is! There's a physicality to his character even when he's not moving, and each curse word he utters--and those are numerous--seems to pack more meaning than when I curse at people when I'm driving. And "I'll fuck anything that moves!" is one of my favorite lines/deliveries of all time. Hopper's at the height of his unhinged powers here. The great Jack Nance is in there, too, introducing himself as Paul multiple times and asking Jeffrey, "Have you ever been to pussy heaven?" Oh, and Brad Dourif. I like all the performances in this movie. They're the typical performances David Lynch usually gets in his movies, performances always threatening to completely cross the line into soap opera performances. They're performances that--almost thankfully--remind you that you're just watching a movie.

Other stuff:

Knife seduction--Lynch would have had to call in a double or stunt man for me, first because my naked rump is disturbing and covered with a layer of hair and second because I would have gotten to excited, lunged at Rossellini, and been stabbed. It would have been a Brandon Lee end to my career.

Oil drill shadows spotlighted on a brick wall. This doesn't have much unusual imagery. There's a guy with a gas mask, a few random shots of candles, and, of course, the severed ear with ants crawling all over it. But Lynch deliberately uses a spotlight to throw the shadow of an oil drill on the wall. I guess it must be important. Digging? Sexual symbolism (i.e. being drilled)? Something else?

There are references to logs or logging, and the town's called Lumberton. It really made me miss the presence of the Log Lady.

Heineken product placement--the first time MacLachlan is drinking it, you could almost mistake the scene for a commercial. It's awkward.

A blind guy working in a hardware store--seems like throwaway stuff. Is there anything deeper with this character?

"I have your disease in me now." I'm not sure if that's hot or creepy.

"Yes, that's a human ear all right." For whatever reason, that makes me laugh. Either the detective doubted that Jeffrey knew what a human ear looked like or he didn't believe him.

There's a song that plays when MacLachlan and Dern's characters tell each other they love each other--"Mysteries of Love" apparently, lyrics about how "Sometimes the wind blows"--and it might be the worst thing I've ever heard in my life. And I can't figure out why anybody would play that at a party unless they were trying to clear the room. It's Julee Cruise singing to Angelo Badalamenti's music. Badalamenti's the piano player in this, by the way. I like a lot of what Badalamenti did here, especially during the title credits where the work could almost be mistake for something Bernard Herrmann did. But this "Mysteries of Love" song is the worst thing ever.

I could have done without Mike, Sandy's boyfriend. I guess something needed to happen so that Rossellini's can wander into the background completely naked, but that pretty great scene could have been completely terrific without that distracting little subplot that didn't need to be there.

Dern discusses her dreams, talking about how it was dark because there weren't any robins. Of course, Hopper refers to it being "dark" a couple different times, too. MacLachlan's response is a beautiful "You're a neat girl" to which she responds, "So are you." Just beautiful. Those crazy kids living in this messed-up world. I sure hope they make it.

Rubin and Ed

1991 comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Titular Ed befriends the reclusive and bizarre Rubin in order to try to sell him something. Rubin's trying to get over the death of his cat, and Ed agrees to help him find a place to bury the pet. They wind up in the desert.

Ed Tuttle: "It's going to get weird now, isn't it?"

No, Ed. It starts weird. This comes off like a low-brow Waiting for Godot with absurdist arguments about whether there's hair on a head or if a cat is really dead. Or if Andy Warhol is really a great artist or if he "sucks a big one." Crispin Glover is deliriously odd in this movie that is quirky anyway. He's got a pair of striped pants, perhaps the same pair of pants that Richard Harris was singing about in "MacArthur Park," and these platform shoes that I'd imagine are hard to walk around the desert in. In fact, there were moments that I gasped audibly and feared for Crispin Glover's life a few times as he walked around in those things. It's the same garb he wore for his infamous Letterman appearance when he came on the show as his character but neglected to tell anybody associated with the show and just freaked everybody out. This is the perfect kind of role for Glover. He gets some outbursts, gets a chance to dance rhythmically with a squeaky mouse, and has a dream sequence that will be the best thing I see in a movie in my entire lifetime. That, my friends, is no hyperbole. It's got this in it:

I should have spoiler-alerted that, but you can still know about that one and be surprised by it, so it probably doesn't matter. That cat, by the way, can eat a whole watermelon. One of my old favorites, Howard Hesseman, does an admirable job of keeping up with Crispin. He gets a few angry outbursts himself. And they bounce lines off each other like this:

Rubin: "Why don't you keep your hands off other people's refrigerators?"
Ed: "Look, you don't eat those things, do you? A guy could get sick eating cats."
Rubin: "It's a pet!"

The whole thing cracked me up even though I could understand the argument that it runs out of gas about halfway through and has a few tangents--barking people, dancing bullies--that make it a little too goofy. Still, this is one of those undiscovered gems of a movie, and I'm throwing it in my list of favorite Crispin Glover films.

Le Havre

2011 Aki Kaurismaki movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A poor shoeshiner with a sick wife helps an African immigrant.

Aki Kaurismaki makes movies about human beings for other human beings. When I watch these things, there are emotions that he deals with in ways that I can't quite pinpoint, but I don't think there's another director alive who handles his characters this delicately and gives his audience the chance to appreciate the insignificant gaps in their stories. Kaurismaki's movies have space, and I think that's why I like them so much. This one's no different. His camera moves, but you'd still describe this as minimalistic. Andre Wilms is so good as the husband, and I really liked the character's dry wit. Yep, liked him a bunch. In fact, I can't remember a character I've rooted for this much. Kati Outinen, another Kaurismaki regular, is just as good in the smaller role of the wife. Their relationship is beautiful, somehow complex and simple at the same time. There's a wonderful scene where Wilms and Outinen give each other a glance at the mention of a memory, and we realize that there's all kinds of depth and history with these characters that we'll never be able to understand. It's those simple moments that make this so great--Minie and Little Bob illuminated during their reunion, the looks on the frozen faces of the refugees when their crate is open, the black kid jiving to a blues record, a look given in a taxi, Little Bob's Michael Jackson jacket. The kid's really good, too, probably because he's quiet. I believe this is the first Kaurismaki release that got any recognition in America, and since I'd call him one of my favorite directors, I was really looking forward to seeing it. Like his other movies, it really makes me want to just sit around and watch nothing but his movies.

Damnation

1988 Bela Tarr existential feel-good movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A somber guy in a gray world wanders around in slow motion. His reason for living is a lounge singer he occasionally sleeps with who, unfortunately, is married. He comes up an ingenious scheme to get rid of the husband for a while so that he can have sex with his mistress in slow motion while it rains outside and dogs scavenge in the streets.

I decided some time last year that I was going to limit myself to one movie directed by Bela Tarr, the likely chipper fellow who directed the best new-to-me movie that I saw in 2011, per year, one that I would watch without my pants on a sunny summer day. They're not exactly uplifting, and as much as I enjoyed Werckmeister Harmonies, more than one movie a year like that would more than likely lead to me taking my own life. This one is just as dismal with its grayness, its long shots, its nasty weather, and its sad characters. Perhaps my expectations were just a little too high, but I was disappointed in this one. The biggest issue for me was that it was too talky. And I'm not sure if it was weirdly translated or just weirdly written, but the philosophical mumbo-jumbo the characters uttered in this was really hard for me to keep track of. I found myself losing interest and then losing track of what the main character was talking about in the middle of his sentences. His story was deceptively simple, so simple that stretching it into a little over two hours might seem excruciatingly boring for a lot of people. This wasn't quite the visual thrill of Werckmeister, and I can't believe I just used the word thrill and the title of that movie in the same sentence. The slowly panning camera, the drab settings, the lingering on objects or characters long after the typical viewer would be done with them, and the choreographed glacial sludge won't fool anybody into thinking this is a different director though. It's all so quietly, often motionless enough to make a viewer uncomfortable, the most exciting movements often being the perpetual drizzle. In fact, when there is activity in some scenes, it's almost shocking. I felt my heart rate go up during a shot when a guy danced on a slab of concrete in the middle of a downpour following a slow pan over all these dismal faces. And there are a couple scenes I guess I would call party scenes--flutes/accordion/piano/drum quartets, holding hands and walking in slow circles, a guy being swung in a chair held by two other guys--that show that Hungarians really know how to throw down. There's another weird scene where the music being played doesn't come close to matching what the musicians are doing which was weird. The mood is also strengthened with sound effects--a reverberating hum throughout the first ten minutes, inexplicable creaks and clicks and drips. In fact, following the alien ambiance of the first couple scenes of this movie, when some somber accordion music begins, it almost sounded like LMFAO to me. It builds to a depressing (of course) climax with a thrilling (oh, there's that word again) fight scene between a man and a dog.

I believe the Hungarian Will Ferrell is in this.

Bela Tarr, by the way, was apparently booted from a philosophy program for being too extreme. He's also announced that he's retired from film making to concentrate on his film school.

The Man Who Wasn't There

2001 existential neo-noir

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 18/20)

Plot: Ed cuts hair in his brother-in-law's barber shop. One day, he decides he's not content with his life after listening to a customer go on and on about plans to start a dry cleaning business. Ed decides to invest. The problem is that he doesn't have any money to invest. He comes up with a dumb plan, probably because he's a dumb guy, to blackmail his wife's boss. Things don't go as planned.

This is one of the best-looking black 'n' white movies I've ever seen. The Coen brothers sure know how to use blacks and whites, and their homage to noir is complete with twirling smoke from omnipresent cigarettes, dark shadows, gratuitous fedoras, and sharp contrasts. The Coens throw in all the elements of classic noir and just to keep things interesting, add UFO's into the mix. That genre's existential themes, here more obvious with repeated lines of dialogue and the sort-of narrated epilogue Billy Bob has, are also present here. With Ed, we've got a character who can't find his niche in the world, a character trying to mold some sort of existence for himself, a character who's lost and transient and directionless. And perhaps better than any other filmmakers, the Coens are able to incorporate imagery and symbolism to help nail down that theme, from the beginning shot of a rotating barbershop pole (of course, spiralling down and without the striking red and white) to the chair and razor at the end of the movie (a parallel image to the chairs and razors associated with Ed's profession) and all the numerous circles, hubcaps, lights and shadows, hair references, sonatas, and UFO 's in between. Thornton's deadpan performance is disarming. He's a man suffocated by his own existence, yet he seems oddly unaffected by the mess he's gotten himself in. Lots of faces familiar in the Coen universe, those typical oddball characters that inhabit their stories. I thought Frances McDormand was especially good, and Tony Shalhoub (not to be confused with Shooby Leboof) seemed like he was born to play the hotshot lawyer Freddy Riedenschneider. The story's got some left turns and it's not always clear exactly what's going on, but it's all told with such a remarkable visual flair and an abundance of style, that it doesn't really matter. It's not all noir moodiness and fatalistic despair either. I thought a lot of the movie was pretty funny, but there were times when I laughed or almost laughed and thought, perhaps because of the somber tone of the movie, that it was inappropriate, like (SPOILER ALERT!) in a car crash scene where a car flies absurdly across the screen. Like a lot of Coen bro movies, I can't quite put all the pieces to this haunted stroll through a barber's nightmare together, but it's definitely fun to meditate upon. I saw this way back when it came out and didn't remember it so well. I don't know why I'm surprised that I liked it as much as I do.

A Serious Man

2009 riddle

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 17/20)

Plot: Larry's a midwestern physics professor with a wife and two children. One day, his life gets much more complicated. His wife tells him that she is leaving him for their friend Sy. His son is addicted to the marijuana. His daughter steals from him to save up for a nose job. One of his failing students is trying to first bribe him and later sue him. Suddenly, not much makes sense about Larry's life. He seeks the counsel of a triad of rabbis.

I expected more straight comedy here, but this is more Fink than Lebowski or Burn After Reading. It's pretty clear early on that watching this movie will be like wading neck deep through an existential funk. Like Old Testament Job, albeit more comically, poor Larry is tested, dragged through shit, and spun in dizzying circles. It's hard to not feel for the guy. Accuse the Coens of being unnecessarily difficult, convoluted, and obscenely quirky if you must, but they have a way of making films that closer than any other filmmakers' works to matching the confusion of human existence. A Serious Man is a film that questions rather than answers, and it does it in a way that is typically Coen while being something completely new. This is the type of movie I'll likely never feel that I've completely grasped, possibly because of what I miss by not being Jewish or by not being smart enough to understand simple philosophical concepts. But I'm fascinated by what seems to be a lack of answers from the three rabbis (faith, mystery, and abandonment?), by the connections with Biblical Job, by the recontextualizing of that Jefferson Airplane song, and by the unlikely marriage of spirituality and science to fool us into thinking the world is a logical place. I need to watch this again and will have no problem doing just that.

The Devil, Probably

The feel-good film of 1977

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Details the final three months of existential angst as fatally disillusioned Charles tries his best to feel something in a world he despises. His pals try to show him pictures of baby seals being clubbed to death to make him feel better about the world he's not sure he wants to be a part of, but he decides to kill himself anyway. The end.

Geez. This wasn't just depressing; it was profoundly depressing. Being thematically depressing is usually enough, but this is stylistically depressing as well. As I've learned to expect with Bresson, I didn't quite grasp everything after one viewing. This is thickly symbolic. Like with Pickpocket, we've got lots of open and closed doors, and I think there's something going on with transportation. The way the characters are displayed on screen is very odd, lots of characters shown walking slowly from the neck or even waist down for extended periods of time. The camera sometimes lingers on, well, seemingly nothing at all a lot of times. At first I thought it was the product of a director who's apparently lost his mind, but I think there was something deeper going on there, too. The narrative feels incomplete, drained of anything that feels vital, and the emotionally detached acting makes it difficult to connect to the characters. The actors seem completely bored with their roles. But am I allowed to say "in a good way" following that? I really think Bresson's refusal to allow the audience to emotionally invest in anything actually helps what's going on in the protagonist's head to go on in the viewer's head. By the time one of the final scenes (involving classical music and a television) comes along, you're about ready to lose faith yourself and off yourself right along with Charles. That's a great scene. So is the final scene, a scene on a bus when the title is spoken by a guy who barely gets his name in the credits, and a conversation with a psychologist. This isn't the most fun movie I'll watch this year, and there's absolutely nothing that will dazzle you about Le Diable Probablement. It's difficult and heavy stuff, but I'm really glad I saw it.

A Winter Rates recommendation.