BLUE VELVET

BLUE VELVET

Clean-cut Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) returns to the quiet American town of Lumberton where he grew up. He’s there to pay his ailing father a hospital visit, but soon becomes distracted by other local matters.

The first is the small matter of a disembodied human ear which Jeffrey finds rotting in a nearby field. He takes it to the local police chief (George Dickerson) who promises to investigate further.

This leads Jeffrey to his second distraction, girl-next-door and chief’s daughter Sandy (Laura Dern), who remembers him as the dork from High School but soon warms to his nerdish charms – I think it’s his ‘chicken walk’ that does it for her.

Then there’s the comely nightclub singer Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini), who Jeffrey is drawn to when the chief’s investigations prove cumbersome to the point of Jeffrey turning detective for himself.

With Sandy’s help, Jeffrey learns that the ear belongs to Dorothy’s husband - and decides to break into her apartment one evening to search for further clues. Big mistake: not only is he caught by Dorothy (and subsequently cast under this femme fatale’s spell), but also gets his first glimpse of her amyl nitrate-sniffing boyfriend Frank (Dennis Hopper in a career-topping performance). Frank’s not the type of bloke you want to be fucking with...

Behind the sheen of perfectly white garden fences, colourful posies in immaculate front gardens and smiling locals, Lumberton hides a dark world of sin and vice – where Frank and his weird friends such as the gloriously scary Ben (Dean Stockwell) exist in the dark, primed to create Hell on Earth for the likes of Jeffrey...

Written and directed by David Lynch, BLUE VELVET is one of the great contemporary American films.

For the most part, it refuses to show the age of its 25 years. Lynch’s mix of American Pie parody and pop culture references (including an unforgettable translation of Roy Orbison’s 60s song "In Dreams" – eat your heart out, Tarantino, this is how popular tunes should be used in films) creates a surreal fusion of the outlandish and the nightmarish that is at once steeped in retro style and post-modernism.

The look of the film and its self-consciously odd atmosphere has influenced a great deal in American cinema since, as well as in US TV (see the likes of "Nip & Tuck", "Desperate Housewives" and Lynch’s own "Twin Peaks"). But none have felt quite so authentic, so unsettling, as it all does here.

Part of this is due to the sterling work of Lynch’s disparate cast. MacLachlan’s nerdish investigator takes some warming to but ultimately comes across as the bumbling everyman required to raise audience empathy. Rossellini is sultry, perverted and sexy even when naked and covered in blood. Pitching the pair as lovers shouldn’t work but the frissons they share are genuinely erotic.

Stockwell and Hope Lange (as Sandy’s domineering mother) are both superbly creepy in against-type roles.

And then, of course, there is Hopper. Frank Booth is the character he was born to play. I once saw a documentary on the late great actor where he explained how, unable to get work at the time due to his reputation as a Hellraiser, he read the script for BLUE VELVET and promptly rang Lynch begging for the role of Frank. When Lynch asked why he should cast him, Hopper replied "because Frank IS me!". Indeed, his performance is not so much an act as an exorcism – he was never quite so dangerous again as a result.

A superlative supporting cast also includes the likes of Brad Dourif and Lynch favourite Jack Nance.

Only Dern grates. Her prissy character gets on my nerves, but it’s perhaps not all her fault: Lynch enjoys ladling quirks on his characters to the point of caricature. And Sandy is the goody-two-shoes of this fairy tale, contrasting almost comically against Rossellini’s alluring vamp and Hopper’s psycho.

For BLUE VELVET is indeed a fairy tale. It echoes other Lynch works in this respect, taking in the allusions to THE WIZARD OF OZ that peppered WILD AT HEART, tackling themes of duality – in this instance, Jeffrey’s conflicted love interests and the different worlds they inhabit – similar to those in LOST HIGHWAY, and tearing away the respectable veneer of Americana to expose the violent underbelly beneath, a’la MULHOLLAND DRIVE.

As with all fairy tales, BLUE VELVET then becomes part moral fable, part broad storytelling and part horror film. Again, all of this conspires to help the film attain a timeless quality.

It’s debatable whether Lynch has made a film so complete since. Certainly, his work has become less accessible and more ambitious – THE STRAIGHT STORY, excellent as it is, excepted – but nothing he’s done in the last 25 years has satisfied on this level.

MGM’s blu-ray release purports to be region A encoded on the cover, but is in actual fact playable worldwide.

Picture quality is magnificent in this 1080p presentation, served up as a sizeable MPEG-4 AVC file on a dual-layered 50GB disc.

Presented in its original 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio and, naturally, enhanced for 16x9 televisions, BLUE VELVET has never looked more vibrant. Colours pop off the screen with organic flavour while blacks hold up meticulously to ensure the many night scenes can be savoured without the distraction of compression noise.

Detail is fine and any digital enhancement must have been employed very discreetly, as this is an extremely natural and filmic playback – there’s nothing to complain about whatsoever.

The great thing about watching this film in High Definition, aside from the increased detail, is how it enables the viewer to finally appreciate the wonderful colours present in almost every scene. The nightclub sequences are now beautiful; the opening pastiche on the American Dream is twice as stunning as it was previously; those nightmarish moments with Hopper and Stockwell take on a garish quality that approaches a theatre of the most surreal kind. It’s marvellous.

English audio comes in 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. Again, it’s superb. Clean, clear, evenly balanced and boasting remarkable loss of background noise even at pumped up volumes: this is great. We also get the options of audio tracks in Spanish mono, Portugese 2.0, Italian 5.1 DTS, German 5.1 DTS, and French 5.1 DTS.

Optional subtitles are provided in English, Spanish and French. Billy-Half-A-Job here only checked out the English ones, but I’m happy to report that they were very good: word-accurate to the onscreen dialogue, free from glaring errors and easy to read at most junctures.

There doesn’t appear to be a main menu page. When the disc loads up it goes straight into playing the film. From there, there are pop-up menus allowing access to set-up, extras etc. Amongst these is a scene-selection menu offering 28 chapters to the main feature.

Extras begin with a spiffing 71-minute documentary entitled "Mysteries of Love". It’s been made available previously but it’s still essential, as it’s likely to stand the test of time as the best account of this film’s making that there ever will be. This is partially due to the involvement of enigmatic key player, the late great Hopper.

Lynch, MacLachlan, Rossellini ... they’re all here, as are crew members and behind-the-scenes segments galore as this feature-about-a-feature explores every aspect of the production in a fascinatingly tabloid manner.

"Newly discovered lost footage" offers 51 minutes of priceless deleted scenes in High Definition. It’s all stylish, plus it’s nice to see more nudity and violence included, but it’s debatable what any of this would’ve added to the completed film. Still, if you’ve always wished – as I have – that Hopper could have been Frank for several more scenes, then your prayers are finally answered. This footage is therefore cool beyond belief.

"A few outtakes" may sound like an ironic title for an extra, understating its content. Sadly, this is not the case as all we get are 93 seconds of enjoyable but redundant filler. Even so, it’s good that this High Definition material is, like everything else, 16x9 enhanced.

If you care about what Siskel and Ebert had to say about the film upon its 1986 US release, then you’re in luck: we get a windowboxed, standard definition 90-second segment of them voicing their disapproval over how Rossellini’s character was portrayed.

A sub-menu within the "Extras" pop-up menu promises ‘Vignettes’. Hmm. These are brief windowboxed reflections from the director and cast on coffee shops (Lynch, 22 seconds), the film’s chicken walk (MacLachlan, 55 seconds), the robin in the movie (93 seconds), and Sita (Rossellini, 45 seconds).

The film’s 91-second theatrical trailer (in HD) looks great and is a brilliant addition to an already impressive disc.

We also get a video trailer and TV spot, rounding off this superb selection of bonus features.

All in all, BLUE VELVET stands the test of time incredibly well. It looks superb in this new HD transfer and the film itself has lost none of its power to tantalise, entrance and shock. Backed up with over 2 hours of credible bonus content, MGM have served fans one of the best blu-ray discs of 2011.

Review by Stuart Willis


 
Released by MGM (Video & DVD)
Region All
Not Rated
Extras :
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