Blue Velvet

The great thing about the Bluray medium, apart from the often stunning picture resolution and sound, is how catalog releases are beginning to take on the aura of transcendent rediscovery. Certainly we all love Taxi Driver, but seeing it in 1080p with that Bernard Hermann score swelling and enveloping in lossless 5.1 is akin to seeing it for the first time. A cinematic reawakening of sorts. The same goes for a bevy of classic films that instantly spring to mind (Metropolis, West Side Story, The Exorcist, Night of the Hunter, Se7en etc...) with untold more crying out to be spoiled with such loving treatment and sterling presentation.

Apart from the (again, often) uptick in the audio-visual department, these re-releases afford the compulsive cinephile an opportunity for reappraisal with a set of new, more mature eyes. Eyes that have witnessed adulthood and parenthood first hand. Eyes that have grown weary with the surfeit of evil, compromise and disenchantment spilling forth from the nightly news. Eyes that are ceaselessly shocked by the stomach turning depths of sick, publicly trumpeted self obsession spat out of the maw of the social networking revolution. Eyes that have read more and studied more films, whose interest and patience with the subjective nature of art has only grown with the passing years. It is with these eyes that I sat down last night to contemplate the MGM release of David Lynch's 1986 masterpiece, Blue Velvet.

I found the film to be terrifying frankly. It's a fairy tale nightmare world for adults where the psychologically damaged and the pathologically dangerous drown naive innocence in their putrid, prodigious wake. Compound soul sickness and salacious mental illness born of necessity, born of boredom, born of flat out meanness. Corrupted, barbarous lust poisoning and taking and retching boundless hatred upon weak willed misery receptacles. It's not a pleasant film, but Lynch's gauzy mise en scene makes the pill palatable, even soothing to swallow.

Billowing blue velvet curtains open up on a Norman Rockwell small town with worms burrowing just beneath the surface. Seedy, late night transactions set to the rhythm of a fey Dean Stockwell performing dreamy, trouble light karaoke. Trapped in the back seat of an out of control joyride that couldn't be any more joyless. Sandwiched between two leering, giggling goons, waiting for the beating you know is coming and are powerless to stop. Illicit debasement and an omnipresent threat to life, limb and reputation. Dark, disgusting secrets bubbling and boiling over, compulsively drawn back to the scalding, sickening pot of festering unease.

It's easily Lynch's most straightforward film and without having seen Inland Empire, I would say his best. There is a purity of purpose and intent at play here, a directness that empowers the film where his convoluted asides and baffling digressions weaken his later work. The art house auteur approach works best when the man behind the wheel remembers to keep it simple stupid. Trust us, the audience, to fill in the shadowy margins with our own sickly preoccupations. When a tone is this vividly established, it's awfully hard to not ruminate and mentally wander. Blanks tend to get filled in and uncomfortable connections are made. Blue Velvet is the cinematic equivalent and perfected personification of a Lynch motif. It is slowly walking down an ominous, ever darkening hallway, yet still opening the door at the end, regardless of the unfathomable blackness waiting on the other side.