Post by klep on Feb 3, 2020 7:47:11 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 2/3: Blue Velvet
AMATEUR SPY WEEK!
CW: Rape
Few people portray evil quite like David Lynch. Most storytellers, regardless of medium, demonstrate evil through their characters' actions. Individuals or groups perform acts which are so indisputably bad that it turns us against them and makes us despise and/or fear them. In these stories, evil is the people and the things they do. And Lynch does that too - in this film with the way Frank (Dennis Hopper) rapes Dolores (Isabella Rossellini).
But Lynch does something else too. Something undefinable. There's an intensity and otherworldliness to the performances of his villains (aided by Lynch's camera and Badalamenti's scoring) that turns them into something more. Rather than just being bad actors they also become conduits - vessels for something primal and elemental. Evil in David Lynch's works is not just something people do or are; it is also a force. Something independent, with an agenda of its own. Its targets can suffer arbitrarily and capriciously. The result is something mysterious and terrifying, deeply unsettling down in your soul.
In Blue Velvet, Lynch explores how this evil can be found hiding underneath the pleasant exterior of a nice suburban town. The film opens with the perfect shot: a perfect red rose against a backdrop of a perfect white picket fence and a perfect blue sky, then lazily moving onto scenes of suburban tranquility before a man has a stroke. Lynch then takes us into the ground with the unsettling sight and sound of beetles moving about. It's a sequence that portends darkness under the too-perfect exterior of Lumberton, NC, and so when young Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) finds an ear in a field behind his neighborhood we're not terribly surprised.
Like other Lynch protagonists (sometimes also played by Kyle MacLachlan), Jeffrey is a good-to-average person who ends up coming into contact with Lynch's elemental evil. He is seduced by the mystery and horror of the ear and cannot resist trying to solve the case himself. Staring into the abyss, he cannot look away and it nearly gets him and others he cares about killed.
Because like The Third Man's Holly Martins, Jeffrey is not a cop. He's just some guy who thinks too highly of himself. He makes discoveries as much by chance as by any skill, and is lucky to survive at all - particularly that harrowing joyride with Frank. At one point he tells Sandy (Laura Dern) that he thinks he's in the middle of a mystery, but he's not really. He's just poking one with a stick daring it to notice him. And when it does, it's an encounter he regrets.
Fortunately for Jeffrey, Lynch can also be sentimental. In the end Jeffrey gets out ok and saves the girl, and we're given one last scene of suburban bliss - a robin has even captured one of the beetles to feed its young. But after all we've seen, we know on some level it's a lie or, at best, temporary. There's always more beetles, and evil will always try to creep its way in.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 2/10: To Sleep With Anger
BLACK FILM WEEK!
For Black Film Week we're taking another look at the work of Charles Burnett with his 1990 feature To Sleep With Anger. Come join us next week for one of Danny Glover's finest performances. To Sleep With Anger is available for rent in the usual places.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 2/4: 1917
Sam Mendes' faux-one-take film taking us into World War I following a pair of men on a mission concludes the podcast's current pairing. Join us Wednesday for our discussion of 1917, still in theaters.
AMATEUR SPY WEEK!
CW: Rape
Few people portray evil quite like David Lynch. Most storytellers, regardless of medium, demonstrate evil through their characters' actions. Individuals or groups perform acts which are so indisputably bad that it turns us against them and makes us despise and/or fear them. In these stories, evil is the people and the things they do. And Lynch does that too - in this film with the way Frank (Dennis Hopper) rapes Dolores (Isabella Rossellini).
But Lynch does something else too. Something undefinable. There's an intensity and otherworldliness to the performances of his villains (aided by Lynch's camera and Badalamenti's scoring) that turns them into something more. Rather than just being bad actors they also become conduits - vessels for something primal and elemental. Evil in David Lynch's works is not just something people do or are; it is also a force. Something independent, with an agenda of its own. Its targets can suffer arbitrarily and capriciously. The result is something mysterious and terrifying, deeply unsettling down in your soul.
In Blue Velvet, Lynch explores how this evil can be found hiding underneath the pleasant exterior of a nice suburban town. The film opens with the perfect shot: a perfect red rose against a backdrop of a perfect white picket fence and a perfect blue sky, then lazily moving onto scenes of suburban tranquility before a man has a stroke. Lynch then takes us into the ground with the unsettling sight and sound of beetles moving about. It's a sequence that portends darkness under the too-perfect exterior of Lumberton, NC, and so when young Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) finds an ear in a field behind his neighborhood we're not terribly surprised.
Like other Lynch protagonists (sometimes also played by Kyle MacLachlan), Jeffrey is a good-to-average person who ends up coming into contact with Lynch's elemental evil. He is seduced by the mystery and horror of the ear and cannot resist trying to solve the case himself. Staring into the abyss, he cannot look away and it nearly gets him and others he cares about killed.
Because like The Third Man's Holly Martins, Jeffrey is not a cop. He's just some guy who thinks too highly of himself. He makes discoveries as much by chance as by any skill, and is lucky to survive at all - particularly that harrowing joyride with Frank. At one point he tells Sandy (Laura Dern) that he thinks he's in the middle of a mystery, but he's not really. He's just poking one with a stick daring it to notice him. And when it does, it's an encounter he regrets.
Fortunately for Jeffrey, Lynch can also be sentimental. In the end Jeffrey gets out ok and saves the girl, and we're given one last scene of suburban bliss - a robin has even captured one of the beetles to feed its young. But after all we've seen, we know on some level it's a lie or, at best, temporary. There's always more beetles, and evil will always try to creep its way in.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 2/10: To Sleep With Anger
BLACK FILM WEEK!
For Black Film Week we're taking another look at the work of Charles Burnett with his 1990 feature To Sleep With Anger. Come join us next week for one of Danny Glover's finest performances. To Sleep With Anger is available for rent in the usual places.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 2/4: 1917
Sam Mendes' faux-one-take film taking us into World War I following a pair of men on a mission concludes the podcast's current pairing. Join us Wednesday for our discussion of 1917, still in theaters.