"Blue Velvet" is a story about the demons hidden in everyone's soul

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The crime thriller "Blue Velvet" won 17 awards at various international film festivals, but even today it evokes indignation and righteous rage in the souls of sanctimonious Puritan viewers.

The reasons for this perception of the film are plot twists and turns. And the narrative of the picture begins with the fact that the main character, a young man, Jeffrey Beaumont, returns to his native, at first glance, respectable and handsome town of Lamberton. The fact is that his father is hospitalized after an acute attack of an incomprehensible illness, and so far the doctors have not established a definite diagnosis. In the desire to unwind from gloomy thoughts, the main character goes for a walk along the desert outskirts and suddenly finds a real human ear. The young man hurries to report the gruesome find to local policeman Williams and meets his daughter, Sandy, whoshowed some curiosity about his accidental discovery.

During the conversation, young people find out that, perhaps, the local beauty, the cabaret singer Dorothy, whose signature number, the song "Blue Velvet", drives all the men in the neighborhood crazy, is related to this incident. Jeffrey, driven by youthful maximalism, could not resist the temptation to conduct an independent investigation and reveal the whole ins and outs of the life of the fatal temptress. So he will face the scumbag Frank Booth with sadomasochistic inclinations, experience the pernicious influence of a vicious passion for Dorothy, offend Sandy in love with him.

A nod to Maestro Alfred Hitchcock

David Lynch, the creator of the film, tried to strictly follow certain traditions of the "black film" genre, psychological thriller and suspense, while shooting the film "Blue Velvet", and the well-balanced development of the storyline involuntarily refers the viewer to the works of Alfred Hitchcock. At the same time, Lynch boldly introduces the features of a tough melodrama, forcing the main character to make an overwhelming, painful choice between an inexorable attraction to a sexy mystery woman and a relationship with a sweet but ordinary girl. To be honest, any person is unable to overcome the inexplicable craving for a sense of danger, everything mysterious, thrills, because this is what allows, albeit for a short time, to add variety to the gray tedious routine.

As a true master stylist, Lynch comes close to the vaunted aesthetics of postmodernism, as ifturning inside out specific genre canons, ironically over the feigned aesthetics of reality, and the blue velvet curtain helps him in this.

"Blue Velvet" - the progenitor of "Twin Peaks"

In my humble opinion, Blue Velvet is a film made with a certain manic inspiration, but, unfortunately, all its demonic-mystical halo dissipates like morning mist in the course of action. Although why be surprised, because faith in the mystical source of evil is not particularly needed, a person himself is quite capable of all kinds of evil. One has only to think: the 1986 film Blue Velvet, by the unanimous decision of eminent film critics, became the real progenitor of the cult mystical series Twin Peaks.