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.

Lost Highway

1997 psychological nightmare

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A jealous guy meets a creepy pale guy at a party and then either murders his wife or doesn't murder his wife. He probably does. While in jail for the crime, he transforms into a mechanic and makes a series of decisions that are probably going to get him into some trouble. There's the creepy pale guy again. Cue backward explosion! Marilyn Manson! And cut.

I think David Lynch's last three movies were made as some sort of test. This, Inland Empire, Mulholland Drive. I've not really had the urge to see any of them again unlike Eraserhead which I could watch once a week. These three are a test on the senses, perplexing and frustrating riddles, clumsy nightmares. Thinking about any of those three movies--a trilogy? They are linked thematically, right?--kind of gives me a headache actually. They're so dark, so dismal and hopeless. The non-linear approach is fine, but Lost Highway seems to almost break its own rules, and Lynch creates this world that very few people will want to enter and fewer will want to stick around in. Neo-psycho-noir, blacker than black. It's not always entertaining even though there are some things you kind of want to laugh at and other things that you'll never forget (that conversation with the creepy pale guy at the party is as terrifying as dialogue gets). This starts with Scott Walker, by the way, so that's cool. And Richard Pryor's in it, only he doesn't look so good. His best moment: "There are nine people down here. I'll let you ask seven of them, and if you can get that price from one of them, I'll let you ask the other two." My very favorite moment though is probably getting to watch Mr. Eddy's road rage. Ultimately, I think this a movie about movies, but I'm not completely sure, and I wouldn't feel comfortable talking about this movie in a bar. It's as fascinating a two-plus hours as you'll get with a feature film, but I can't say it's entirely pleasurable. Either something is wrong with David Lynch or something is wrong with the human mind in general. I'm guessing it's the latter.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

2009 black comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: This is the story, loosely based on a true story, of Brad, a guy who loses his mind after his mother serves him Jello one too many times and ends up killing her with a sword. He barricades himself in their house with a pair of hostages while a pair of detectives work on piecing together possible motives and look for a way to get to him.

This isn't a true collaboration exactly, but it certainly feels like one. And for this viewer, it's a David Lynch/Werner Herzog collaboration is a collaboration made in heaven. Or in the subconscious of a schizophrenic maybe. Lynch apparently had very little to do with this, but Herzog pays homage to the producer with a few scenes--a random gas mask, a couple really strange scenes where the actors freeze and break the fourth wall by staring into the camera for a long enough time to make me kind of uncomfortable, conversations about coffee, and a little fellow in a tuxedo. Oh, wait. Herzog uses little people, too. The acting reminded me more of Lynch's characters than Herzog's, speaking in those slightly-off cadences, stilted almost, and somewhat unnatural. I'm not sure if this works as a drama, and anybody watching this as a Law and Order type thing might be disappointed. I caught on quickly enough that this is more dark comedy than crime thriller/drama, more a glimpse at the world as seen through the eyes of somebody with a damaged mind than anything realistic. And who better to show us that world than Werner Herzog? Flashbacks, especially anything having to do with Brad Dourif's Uncle Ted, seem so insubstantial and too dopey to be real, but they work to add up to what gets to the heart of the crime--that Brad is one cuckoo mo-fo. Could that have been explained more naturally? Of course, but it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun. At times, I'll admit, this almost seems like a parody of both Herzog and Lynch's work. Those Uncle Ted scenes, the use of animals, the aforementioned unnatural acting, a character losing his mind in South America, chickens doing something crazy, God as a canister of oatmeal, all those conversations that seem so detached from anything that matters, and so on. I suppose folks who enjoy a chunk of either directors' filmographies will find something to dig in this one. It's probably not essential, more like a limerick or some other nonsense verse written about insanity rather than the poetic look at insanity that Aguirre is. But it is very entertaining. The title, a full sentence by the way, still makes me laugh. I don't see how a person can read that title and think that this is a serious attempt to make a crime drama.

The Elephant Man

1980 movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Victorian doctor Frederick Treves stumbles across the titular attraction while strolling through a freak show. He makes an arrangement with the elephant man's slimy owner to borrow him for science. He shows off his find in front of a bunch of other scientists, but as he spends more and more time with the freak, he realizes that there's a John Merrick inside, a intelligent and sophisticated man who desires, feels, and deserves dignity.

The memory of watching this, for whatever reason, with my father when I was a kid has always stuck with me. When Merrick was finally unveiled, the image was shocking. It still is. I couldn't believe what my young eyes were seeing on the screen. As an adult, I think this movie is extraordinarily depressing, almost too depressing. As a visual essay on the true nature of man, it's just so pessimistic. A lot of that is probably the result of Lynch's typically cold style. It's actually his second warmest movie and his first "straight" story, but the camera is so often detached from these characters, the audience often being forced to look at Merrick from a distance. Maybe that's the point. I do wonder (now, not while watching) how much of that detachment is intentional, an attempt by the filmmaker put the audience into a situation where we're in the exact same position as the people who used or leered at the real Merrick. There are a lot of uncomfortable scenes in this story, times when you almost want to leave the room so that the elephant man can have some privacy. A lot of this movie is very cold, clinical. An exception is the scene where the doctor first sees Merrick, and the camera slowly zooms to the point where just Anthony Hopkins' face fills the screen just at the time a single tear moves down his cheek. Of course, the next part of the story is Treves moving Merrick from the side show to the laboratory stage, really just another side show, so it's not easy to pin down the doctor at all. This movie came right after Eraserhead, and although The Elephant Man seems like Sleepless in Seattle compared to Lynch's first work, you still have some pretty strange moments. It's difficult to figure out what's going down in the first scene, but it certainly seems like it's showing an elephant raping a woman, and the harsh textures, fuzzy and wobbly camera work, and grating music wouldn't exactly make the typical moviegoer feel like reaching into the popcorn bucket. The opening scene was definitely creepy enough to turn Jen off the film. As with Eraserhead, Lynch shows off an ability to create these amazing textures and moods with nothing more than images. I've never been to Victorian London (yet!), but I like the murky, sickly, melancholy one that Lynch creates for these characters to inhabit. What atmosphere! And the first shot of Merrick's distorted image is striking enough, but the shots of him covered (like in the above poster) stuck with me just as much. Gorgeous black and white cinematography here. Anthony Hopkins is quietly good as the torn Treves, and John Hurt's performance, although hidden beneath tons of make-up, is exceptionally touching. They'll get the most credit, of course, but Anne Bancroft and especially John Gielgud are also great. This is one of those movies that holds a mirror up to society. Unfortunately, humans kind of suck.

Special Note: R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) is in this which reminds me that David Lynch, according to David Lynch, turned down the chance to direct Return of the Jedi. That would have made the second time Lynch worked with Kenny Baker. And looking up Kenny Baker, I see that he played a character named Bruce Foreskin in something called Boobs in the Woods. So it's good to see that his career is going well.

Eraserhead

1977 family drama

Rating: 20/20 (Dylan: 2/20)

Plot: Surviving in the murkiness of a post-apocalyptic nightmare, Henry spends his days watching radiators and the plump-cheeked women within them and hanging out with his girlfriend Mary. After a visit to Mary's home, he finds out that he's apparently impregnated his girlfriend. They marry, and a mutant worm baby is born. Mary, possibly suffering from post-partum depression, eventually leaves, and Henry begins life as a single father. An obvious influence on Knocked Up.

Dylan's thoughts: Eraserhead was a terrible movie. The amount of time between different characters' dialogue seemed to increase later in the movie. This was annoying and probably used to make the movie seem longer. The movie was supposedly set in a post-apocalyptic world. Most of the weird events, however, seemed to be dreams. It was hard to discern what did actually happen and what wasn't real. The big reason for this was that the "real" parts were just as strange as the dream parts. The plot of the film was very faint. The basics can be slightly understood, but many elements (mostly the dream parts) had little to do with this plot. There were also many parts that seemed repetitive. These were usually in the night scenes and seemed to be a time filler just like the dialogue. The intended humor in the movie was not actually funny. It was a bit random but did not provoke a response. I found it more weird than funny. The acting was also really terrible. This is one of the worst movies my dad has ever forced me to watch.

My thoughts: This, like Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and the book Trout Fishing in America, is one of the greatest artistic achievements of the 20th Century. And it doesn't even have the word "trout" in the title! This is obviously the type of movie you have to watch with your groin. Your subconscious will get it. That'll explain the internal vibration.

The Straight Story

1999 David Lynch joint

Rating: 17/20

Plot: True story of Alvin Straight, an Iowan with bad hips who travels to Wisconsin via John Deere riding lawnmower to visit his sick brother he hasn't spoken to in nine years. Leaving his daughter behind, he makes the 266 mile trip in six weeks on the 60's John Deere while facing storms, giant hills, and menacing 16-wheelers. He also interacts with a variety of folks along the way.

I thought I had a label for movies that make me cry. I'm not sure why this one grabs me so hard because it's quite possible that I'm being manipulated. I can forgive though when a movie is this beautiful. I've seen this twice previously and only checked it out this time because my brother saw it recently and didn't like it. I can only conclude that he is a heartless bastard. Lynch's direction is excellent here, such a delicate directorial hand. It might be my favorite Lynch movie actually. The movie is both touching and funny with several quirky locals, almost like Disney-fied versions of the typical members of the lunatic fringe who inhabit Lynch's films. No backmasking midgets though. The dialogue is unrealistic, but in such a homey way that it can also be forgiven. My favorite bit of dialogue involves Straight trying to buy a grabber from his local hardware store. It's such a wonderful mix of character acting and well-written dialogue and makes me smile just thinking about it. Now, my brother didn't think either Richard Farnsworth or Sissy Spacek acted well in this. He's wrong. Spacek, playing the mentally challenged daughter of Straight, isn't easy to watch, but she's very good. And the old man is perfect, one of those roles you can't imagine could be played by anybody else. Watch the scene where Straight shares war stories and tell me the acting is bad. Both roles are also so physical, and I think my brother probably missed that because he was too busy being wrong. Disney and David Lynch--a match made in heaven!

I have to come clean though. I might have given this movie a bonus point just to annoy my brother.

Lynch (one)

2007 documentary

Rating: 11/20

Plot: A portrait of the artist as a strange man. Footage of Lynch making Inland Empire and interviews with the director as he expounds on subjects like film, transcendental meditation, art, and hitting bloated animals with pick axes.

I guess I knew I was in trouble when the director's name popped up on the screen and it was blackANDwhite. What a self-indulgent mess this turned out to be. I truly enjoyed listening to a lot of what Lynch had to say and watching him work with his actors or on his set design. Whether you like his movies or not, he's an interesting and funny guy, and as a glimpse into the creative process, this should have worked. But the direction of this thing was such a distraction. Do I really need to see Lynch from the perspective of the floor? Do I really need to see Lynch through a layer of gauze? This became less about David Lynch and more about how clever blackANDwhite could be. Shame on blackANDwhite.

Wild at Heart

1990 romantic comedy

Rating: [I have rewatched this. See the new review here.]

Plot: Sailor Ripley, released from prison following a killing in self defense, flees with his girlfriend Lula against the will of the Wicked Witch of the West. They encounter some weird people, grotesque automobile accidents, and the horrors of the crazy world while a pair of bounty hunters are sort of hot on their trail. They also smoke a lot of cigarettes and have sex. A lot.

[See new review here. I rewatched this.]

I still contend that every single movie should have Crispin Hellion Glover in it. Not a lot of Crispin Hellion Glover, but enough.

Crumb

1994 documentary


Rating: 17/20


Plot: A brutal look at the life of 60's counterculture comic artist icon Robert Crumb and his dysfunctional (word is too mild here) family. Bizarre sexual proclivities (piggyback rides and thick legs), mental disorders, and misanthropy abound.


"When I was young, I was sexually attracted to Bugs Bunny."



Possibly the most honest documentary look at an individual ever made with subtexts about sexuality, family, genius, the worlds of art and pornography, individual expectations. Crumb's an interesting and quirky enigma, a guy who is almost unbelievably portrayed as the most normal of the three brothers in his family with the older an Autistic recluse who rarely leaves his room and spends all of his time writing illegibly in notebooks or reading and the younger a pseudo-monastic painter who rarely paints and spends the majority of his time sitting on nails or begging on the streets with a wooden bowl. Director Zwigoff, who apparently spent over ten suicidal years creating this labor of love, lets the audience just watch the subject without embellishment, and it's fascinating to see an artistic genius surviving in a world he hates by retreating into his sketchbooks. Uncomfortably entertaining and sometimes difficult to watch and sad. Pretty brilliant work.



I just might be better looking than Robert Crumb:

Zigeunerweisen

1980 avant-garde B-movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: An intellectual befriends a nomad who may have murdered a woman. They meet and, I believe, fall in love with the same woman. As the years pass, they may or may not get involved with each other's wives. They may even be the same person. If you've ever seen a Seijun Suzuki film, you'll know why I'm having trouble with this one. It's either difficult or I'm a complete idiot. Or both.

As expected, a stylized effort from Suzuki although it isn't the same stylization that made those oddball 60's films (Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter) so brilliant. This is so slow moving and so completely Japanese, and it sort of sucks you in, forces you to look around its meticulously-constructed strange new world, and almost hypnotizes you, setting you up for a knockout ending. It's chaos unfolding in slow motion. There are surreal touches (crabs emerging from the private parts of a woman washed up on a beach, all of the characters in the film watching a fireworks show that doesn't seem to exist, rocks falling onto the roofs of houses), but for the most part, everything seems realistic on the surface. Beneath that surface, however, is an entirely different matter. This sort of hit me like a Japanese David Lynch movie. As a matter of fact, the opening scene is a close-up of a record playing (the song is the title of the movie) during a creepy conversation between unseen characters (a conversation that is perfectly duplicated later on) which reminded me of Inland Empire. I believe Suzuki's modus operandi is to keep things open to interpretation; in fact, I think I remember reading something about how he doesn't even want to understand his own movies. In this one, he seems to be toying with the characters a little. It seems to me that the two main male characters might be two sides of the same protagonist, and I'm not sure how many actual female characters exist either, especially since one woman plays at least two different characters. The whole movie could be an allegory that has to do with a clash between East and West cultures. The intellectual and his wife seem more American/European; the wanderer and his wives and lady friends seem more Asian. And then they die or don't die. I'm sure it means something. And that's the beauty of this lovely, sometimes chilling, movie--it's the kind of movie that you can't stop running through your mind. It'll even force you to turn off the cd player in the car on the way to playing disc golf.

Note: This is considered the first of a trilogy (thematic or style rather than characters/plot) filmed after Suzuki was fired from his studio for not making movies correctly. I can't wait to see the others.

Me, directly after my cerebellum was extracted:

The Short Films of David Lynch

1967-1995

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Ranging from the 55 second 'Premonitions Following an Evil Deed' to the 30-odd minute 'The Grandmother,' these six short films show the development of Lynch's techniques and vision.

'6 Men Getting Sick (Six Times)' is wholly animated. In the interview segment prior to the minute short (the interview segments are great, by the way...I could listen to David Lynch talk for hours probably), Lynch says that he wanted "to see a painting move and have sound." That's pretty much what is going on with the abstract, surrealistic '6 Men'. It's crudely animated and has sirens and is meant to be looped.

'The Alphabet' from 1968 is nightmarish and a little silly. Dark stuff though.

'The Grandmother' from 1970 predates Eraserhead and contains similar imagery and ideas, especially in the really strange way the people interact with each other. There's no dialogue--only grunts and whine and barks. I thought this was pretty difficult to watch. Very bleak mix of dark live action and child-like animation and including some stop-motion animation with actual people. Creepy kid brother to Eraserhead.

'The Amputee' was made while on hiatus from Eraserhead because he had run out of money. This wasn't worth watching.

'The Cowboy and the Frenchman' from '88 was the oddball of the bunch, and if it weren't for the wackiness of Wild at Heart and that failed television shows he did in the early nineties ("On the Air"...I looked it up), you might not even think it's Lynch at all. He toys with cliches and stereotypes affectively and the "western" turns out to be pretty hilarious. I love when Lynch's sense of humor pops out from the darkness of his films.

The best of the bunch is the 55-second short he did for the one hundredth anniversary of the Lumiere brothers' camera along with 39 other directors. I'd seen that, and 'Premonitions Following an Evil Deed' is one of the few that were memorable. What he does with this rudimentary camera in his 55 seconds is absolutely stunning. It might be my favorite 55 seconds of Lynch's career actually.

Here I am watching these short films (not pictured: me):

Inland Empire

2006 David Lynch joint


Rating: 16/20

Plot: A complex glimpse at what might be the inward journey of a woman who may or may not be an actress and who may or may not be guilty and/or delusional. She may or may not be co-starring in a remake of a cursed Polish movie, and she might be obsessed (or she might not be) with her co-star, a cool guy who may or may not exist. Things get menacing, seemingly, and a murder or two probably take place. But I'm not real sure about that.

Difficult, sometimes frustrating, and very long, this is the typical David Lynch movie. He doesn't create narratives, at least conventionally, and instead of concrete characters developing conflicts and simple cause-and-effect relationships creating a plot, he lets the moods he creates tell the story. In fact, I'm pretty sure there is one concrete character in this, but all of the other characters (a phantom, actors, a director, a bunch of Polish people, street people, whores) might just be extensions of the protagonist's warping psyche. This is definitely a movie that you don't really watch; you sort of have to feel your way through the three hours, and for most of the time, I felt like a blind man groping my way through a maze of pudding. I would really need to watch about fifteen more times (that would be forty-five hours of movie watchin') to get a firmer grasp of what's going on and what rating this actually deserves. It could be a 10; it could be a 19. It was self-referential and the use of color, references to both light and time/watches, and music and sound effects all seemed like they could be important clues to what the heck is going on here. Those are things I could pick out a little more easily with subsequent viewings. Maybe. I doubt it.

I've got no clue what's going on with these rabbits, but they made me giggle uncontrollably every time they were on the screen.

Note: Laura Dern was fantastic in this.

Another note: Lynch has this way of making the most ordinary objects seem really menacing. Lamps, doors, an empty street, silk, a screwdriver, an elderly neighbor's face. It's a gift.

A final note: "Locomotion" was part of the soundtrack for thematic purposes (probably), but that Beck song in the middle of this seemed completely out of place.

Here's a picture of Lucyfer the dog and me the human waiting for hot, lesbian action that, disappointingly, never happened: