Watched BLUE VELVET again last night and it holds up well, being itself out-of-time and timeless. The whole question I was left with is: How did David Lynch get his actors to trust him that much? They sure let go, the main ones.
Supporting players include a wasted-but-welcome Hope Lange, too. One forgets that.
Hopper, Rosselini, and MacLachlan are all fearless, though, and their performances are all wildly trusting of such a weird director.
Laura Dern is note perfect as the naive cop’s daughter who gets a fairly quick dip into disillusion. “Where is my dream?”
The stately pace and beautifully-framed scenes become iconic and the weirdness still raises hackles. Wow that’s intense stuff some of it. Amazing, gritty, and ethereal all at once, a surreal masterpiece. Dreams within dreams, set to Roy Orbison and Bobby Vinton. Yeow.
Definitely a classic. “The Hardy Boys Go to Hell,” Lynch famously described it once in an interview. Even when you’ve seen it and know it, you remain terrified for the main characters. You can also spot many a source for Tarrantino’s PULP PLAGIARISM in it but that’s a fillip. Watch it for the deconstruction of wholesomeness and for its wholeness as a work of art.
/ geste
