The Elephant Man endears as one of my favourite films of all time because it exemplifies what makes a great film – taking traditional stories, themes and genres told in unconventional ways. Here David Lynch’s marriage of his avant garde peculiarness with the weepy triumph of the human spirit story of John Merrick, the physically deformed circus performer who went from circus freak to Victorian celebrity, is as an inspired cinematic concoction as there ever has been.
Showing posts with label David Lynch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Lynch. Show all posts
Friday, 19 July 2013
Wednesday, 29 February 2012
Lost Highway
Lost Highway (1997) dir. David Lynch
Starring: Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Robert Blake
***½
By Alan Bacchus
At any given time David Lynch has the ability to make the scariest movie of all time. He hasn’t because he’s purposely avoided making mainstream movies for virtually his entire career. Lost Highway displays the best of Lynch’s supreme talent in creeping us out with seemingly minimal effort. It’s one of his most beguiling films even by Lynch's standards – a twisting nightmare about the dual identities and dimensions of a man who’s framed for murdering his wife – I think.
Bill Pullman plays Fred Madison, a guy who lives in L.A. with his ravenous wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette). It appears to be a relationship that is cold as ice, as the two rarely share more than a few even-tempered words with each other. A series of anonymous packages start appearing at their door containing video cassettes that have been mysteriously taped from within their house. When one of the videotapes shows Fred killing his wife he’s suddenly found to be a murderer and is sent to prison. While in jail Fred morphs into a younger man with a different identity – Pete Dayton (Balthasar Getty).
After Pete is released from prison the film switches gears to observe his doppleganger life. He encounters some of the same seedy L.A. underworld creepsters involved in setting Fred up for murder. Pete is seduced by a blonde version of Renee – Alice Wakefield – who is married to the mob boss heavy, Mr. Eddy (Robert Loggia), who also goes by the name Dick Laurent in the Fred Madison dimension. When the time is right Pete morphs back into Fred just in time and enlists the help of a creepy, eyebrowless mystery man (Robert Blake) to exact revenge on his enemies.
Out of all of Lynch's films, Lost Highway features some of his best cinematography. Peter Deming (Scream) is at the helm on this film, and the darkness and shadows play a large role in creating the suspense of the unknown. The audience is continually trying to figure out what is going on, and Deming enhances this feeling by limiting what’s visible on screen and purposely framing in the shadows. The film is so delicately underlit that it’s difficult for ordinary standard definition DVDs/televisions to hold the heavy contrast of black and white. It’s a shame that a Blu-ray version is not yet available.
Patricia Arquette deserves some kind of award for her performance as Renee/Alice. She undresses for Mr. Lynch in no less than five scenes, not including the black and white porno film her character appears in late in the film. Though she’s always ravishing and incredibly sexy, I couldn’t help but feel a little dirty for watching and enjoying Arquette get naked so many times. If the film wasn't directed by Lynch and was perceived as experimental art cinema, would we call it exploitation?
Of course you can argue that the film is about exploitation. But who exactly is being exploited? Fred appears to have been set up for the murder of his wife, but by whom? Is it Alice, Renee’s doppleganger sister? Or is it Mr. Eddy/Dick Laurent? Or is it Renee/Alice who is exploited by Laurent into being his porn-star sex slave. I’d argue it was manipulation as opposed to exploitation. Either way, does it justify Arquette’s depiction on film? Since the last DVD release from 2008 is devoid of all special features, we don’t get to know Ms. Arquette's reflections on the film. They will likely remain a mystery.
I’ve had many debates comparing this film to Mulholland Drive. The themes of dual identities and the subconscious ability to switch between them in times of trauma or need inevitably marry the two films together. I personally prefer Mulholland Drive, which moves the audience between extreme emotional highs and lows and makes a clear statement about the dreamworld vs. reality of Hollywood. If there’s a fault to Lost Highway it's that it never succeeds in making a clear point. But as an exercise in style, it’s a masterpiece of psychological horror and sustained suspense. Enjoy.
Sunday, 13 November 2011
Blue Velvet
Starring: Kyle McLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern
****
By Alan Bacchus
Early on in this film, after we see Kyle McLachlan’s character, Jeffrey Beaumont, find a human ear just sitting there in the pristine high-cut grass in his small Midwestern town, David Lynch’s roving camera magnificently pushes inside the ear. As we move in, Alan Splet’s delicious sound design drones louder and louder, morphing into the prickly sound of insects munching on grass, all of which is amplified and engrossed to creep us out. It’s perhaps the most signature image and sounds of David Lynch’s career, expressing his career-long fascination with finding nightmarish evil behind the fronts of purity and innocence.
After suffering the indignation of failing to deliver on the big budgeted sci-fi franchise in waiting, Dune, in 1986 Lynch seemed go back inward, summoning latent fears and closeted fetishes for inspiration. The result is one of his three or four masterpieces – and the film that first defined the term ‘Lynchian’.
Blue Velvet lays the stylistic and thematic groundwork, which he would expand upon in his later films. Of course, the Lumberton locale, which Lynch opens up and, like his rotten apple visual metaphor, becomes the environment for his seminal Twin Peaks TV series.
The actual plotting of the film, lead character Jeffrey Beaumont's investigation and the movements and motivations of the nefarious elements of the story, quickly fall to the background once Lynch starts the film’s headlong cinematic momentum. Starting with the third visit to the apartment, the film goes deeper into Lynch’s subconscious, and by the time Jeffrey’s fateful night is over we don’t care about who the ‘well-dressed’ man is or who the 'yellow' man is.
The wonder of Blue Velvet lays in Lynch's amazing control of tone. And it doesn’t take him long to hypnotize us. The opening credit sequence is masterful. An ominously dark and brooding music cue laid over his flowing curtain of blue velvet is enchanting. The film then segues into a dreamlike melancholy of the slow-moving rural life in Lumberton.
Throughout the picture Lynch moves us back and forth between these two extremes with supreme confidence and command of the medium.
The performances are typically subdued. Jeffrey isn’t so much a developed character as another pawn for Lynch to use to express his mood. His love story with Sandy allows Lynch to craft his grandiloquent melodramatic set pieces. The house party dance scene, for instance, set to Angelo Badlamenti and Julee Cruise’s swooning dream song, could melt butter. It’s a scene that takes us out of the accelerating criminal plotting for a brief pause of delicious melodrama. Why? Just because. And we love David Lynch because of it.
Sit this scene next to one of Dennis Hopper's maliciously over-the-top sadistic fuck-tirades and it's the cinematic equivalent of bipolar syndrome.
Before Quentin used pop music as a counterpoint to violence Lynch did it masterfully here. Who ever thought Roy Orbison or Ketty Lester could be made so frightening?
Looking back, the reuse of Lynch’s motives in his subsequent films arguably tempers the effect of this film. It’s debatable, but few would doubt the combination of all his motifs reached its zenith in Mulholland Drive – a film more powerful, cynical and therefore haunting than Blue Velvet. And so, watching Blue Velvet for the first time versus watching Blue Velvet after seeing Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire is not the same experience. Thankfully, I still have memories of that first viewing. To this day if I ever here Bobby Vinton crooning Blue Velvet again, it now brings a spine-tingling sense of danger, which, in combination with the sound of nitrous oxide hissing from a gas tank, will likely have me running out the door.
Blue Velvet is available on Blu-ray from MGM/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Thursday, 10 September 2009
TIFF 2009: My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?
Starring: Michael Shannon, Chloë Sevigny, Willem Dafoe, Udo Kier
***1/2
Guest review by Reece Crothers
Many seasoned directors use the clout they accumulate over their careers to help emerging filmmakers realize their first films, or to make the jump from indies and foreign films to studio pictures, lending the "So-and-So Presents stamp" as a sort of formal endorsement. Spielberg, Coppola, Scorsese, they all do it. Most recently Peter Jackson produced Neill Blomkamp's "District 9", and before the trailer hit, when there was little more than the clever "Humans only" marketing campaign to arouse the audience's curiosity, Jackson's name served as assurance, a guarantee of quality. What is far less common is the joining of two, already established heavyweight directors. When Martin Scorsese produced Spike Lee's "Clockers" from a script by frequent Scorsese collaborator Richard Price ("The Color of Money", "New York Stories"), Lee was hardly a novice, with half a dozen studio pictures already under his belt, and the result was decidedly half-Lee, half-Scorsese. It's as if one artist were giving the other permission to borrow his language, his themes, even his actors.
Now David Lynch and Werner Herzog have joined forces, cinema's two foremost authorities on the absurd, each one a giant among his own fan base, both of whom have managed to cross over into mainstream cinema without surrendering their odd-ball visions (Lynch is only getting more cryptic with each film) and the result is as weird, hilarious, riveting, terrifying and frustrating as their combined filmographies would suggest. How much is Lynch and how much is Herzog is hard to say, but the cocktail is intoxicating. The music, the experimental use of tableau vivant, which Herzog gleefully violates by allowing the actors to blink while holding their poses, staring straight into the camera, the harsh sunlight bleaching the San Diego landscape, all contribute to a dreamy, altered state of consciousness that makes ‘Twin Peaks’ seem a little more ordinary.
After a beautiful static shot of a train passing under a bold blue sky, the story begins with a humorous back and forth exchange between Willem Dafoe and Michael Pena as detectives on their way to a brutal crime scene. The actors contribute worthy additions to the rich collection of memorable movie cop duos from recent years such as Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards in David Fincher's "Zodiac" (animal crackers anyone?) or Denzel Washington and Chiwetel Ejiofor in Lee's "Inside Man" (also featuring Dafoe as a cop). Like those other pictures, the cops here are decent, hard-working, compassionate civil servants, not super-cops, and while providing comic relief they also serve as the humane counterpoint to brutal violence and senseless tragedy. We empathize with them and we distance ourselves from the violence. Dafoe and Pena's characters keep the film grounded in reality. Pena is especially funny as an overzealous but not entirely talented young officer, eager to participate, while his partner handles the emerging chaos surrounding the pink flamigo house in suburban San Diego where Michael Shannon, playing the mentally unstable Brad, has taken hostages and apparently murdered his mother with a sword.
The details of the murder are recounted in grisly detail by the detectives and the witnesses but Herzog has wisely kept the violence off-screen, a welcome choice after the scalping in "Inglourious Basterds", the cheek-biting in "Watchmen: The Directors Cut" or nearly everything in "Crank 2". The truth is censorship is dead, the ratings system an anachronistic joke, and until they find a way to regulate the internet, images of any and every act of depravity imaginable are only a few mouse clicks away and restraint is in short supply. Herzog is weird, but he has class.
Michael Shannon it has to be said, is the most interesting American character actor to emerge in many years. He has that quality of making weird compulsively watchable, like Crispin Glover ("Back to the Future", "River's Edge") in his youth, or the late, great, 70's icon John Cazale ("Dog Day Afternoon", "The Godfather Saga") before them. In 2007's "Shotgun Stories" (a near-masterpiece overlooked in a year unusually crowded with great films), Shannon proved he could be menacing while still playing the hero. As much as I love Lynch and Herzog, Shannon is the reason I came to "My Son, My Son..." and I was a little disappointed. I have a feeling this has to do with how he was directed, but I wasn't on set so it's only a theory, but instead of using his inherent weirdness, as was on display in his work on William Friedkin's "Bug", "Shotgun Stories", and his Oscar-nominated performance in "Revolutionary Road", Herzog also has him playing weird and it takes a while to acclimatize to the performance. Around the half-way point I was so drawn in to the story that I accepted it, only pausing when Chloe Sevigny, as Brad's fiancee, shows up. She is so sweet and normal, that I couldn't understand why she was with him. This is "inspired by a true story", we are told in the opening credits, and it's hard to believe Brad wouldn't have gotten himself locked up with his psycho behavior long before he was ever able to draw the sword.
There is of course no such thing as a true story. What does "Inspired by" really mean? This is an old argument, but an important one. Whether or not a "true story" is even possible is an argument for another time, but in an era when writers are threatened to annotate their imaginations and inspirations to death by Errors & Omissions insurance nonsense, we have to wonder what those promises of "true", "inspired by", or "based on" really give us. Are we supposed to care more because it supposedly really happened? Would "Casablanca" be any better if there was a real Rick & Ilsa? Would you rather read a biography of Hamlet than Shakespeare's play? Would that somehow improve the drama of it? In the end it doesn't matter how much Shannon's Brad resembles the real-life Brad or if there even was a real-life Brad. He doesn't get locked up before the murder, and the character haunts and lingers long after both the deed and the picture are over.
True or not, the story is fascinating. Why did Brad have the sword in the first place? Because he needed it for a play. What was his role in the play? A man who kills his mother. And the director of the play? Udo Kier!! (Remember his scenes in "My Own Private Idaho"?) The parallels between the play and the murder are chilling, as is the revelation of just how long Brad might have been planning the murder, alluding to it cryptically in rehearsals. This is the most effective section of the film, where Brad totally descends into his own schizophrenic nightmare (the word "schizophrenia" is never heard at any time in the film). As harrowing as Brad's journey is, it's often also very funny. The trip to get the sword introduces us to a wonderful supporting bit from Brad Dourif as an insane, Ostrich-farming bigot. Dourif is incredible. Check him out in the recently issued Criterion DVD of John Huston's "Wise Blood", or in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" and you can forgive all the "Child's Play" sequels.
It's fun to see Herzog venture into genre storytelling when you consider his earlier, idiosyncratic "art films' and documentaries, and unlike his recent "Rescue Dawn", his strange sensibilities are fully intact. Perhaps protected and encouraged by another artist, especially on of David Lynch's stature, he is free to be himself. I can't wait to see how he fares with producer Edward R. Pressman ("Badlands", "Wall Street", "The Crow") for the "Bad Lieutenant" revamp, also playing TIFF this year. More on that to come.
Sunday, 19 July 2009
Blue Velvet
Blue Velvet (1986) dir. David Lynch
Starring: Kyle Maclachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern
****
A mixture of heart-on-one’s sleeve sentimentality and hardcore terrorizing brutality anchor David Lynch’s classic nightmarish love poem. After suffering the indignation of failing to deliver on the big budgeted sci-fi franchise in waiting, Dune, in 1986 Lynch seemed go back inward summoning latent fears and closeted fetishes for inspiration. The result is one of his three or four masterpieces - and the film that first defined the term ‘Lynchian’.
“Blue Velvet” lays the stylistic and thematic groundwork which he would expand upon in his later films. Of course the Lumberton locale, which Lynch’s opens up and like his rotten apple visual metaphor, becomes the environment for his seminal Twin Peaks TV series.
The actual plotting of the film, lead character Jeffrey Beaumont's investigation and the movements and motivations of the nefarious elements of the story, quickly fall to the background once Lynch starts the film’s headlong cinematic momentum. Starting with the third visit to the apartment, the film goes deeper into Lynch’s subconscious and by the time Jeffrey’s fateful night is over, we don’t care about who the ‘well-dressed’ man is, or who the 'yellow man' is.
The wonder of “Blue Velvet” lay in Lynch's amazing control of tone. And it doesn’t take him long to hypnotize us. The opening credit sequence is masterful. An ominiously dark and brooding music cue laid over his flowing curtain of blue velvet is enchanting. The film then segues into a dreamlike melancholy of the slow-moving rural life of Lumberton.
Throughout the picture Lynch moves us back and forth between these two extremes with supreme confidence and command of the medium.
The performances are typically subdued. Jeffrey, as played by Kyle Maclachlan, isn’t so much a developed character as another pawn for Lynch to use to express his mood. His love story with Sandy serves to allow Lynch to craft his grandiloquent melodramatic set pieces. The house party dance scene for instance, set to Angelo Badlamenti & Julee Cruise’s swooning dreamsong could melt butter. It takes us completely out of the film, at a point, when, in traditional screenwriting 101, the film should be maintaining it's A-Plot momentum, but for Lynch (and us) its more important than any of the action.
Sit this this scene next to one of Dennis Hopper's maliciously over-the-top sadistic fuck-tirades and it's the cinematic equivalent of bipolar syndrome.
Before Quentin used pop music as a counterpoint to violence Lynch did it masterfully here. Who ever thought Roy Orbison or Ketty Lester could be made so frightening? If I ever here Bobby Vinton crooning Blue Velvet again, it now brings a spine-tingling sense of danger, that in combination with the sound of nitrous oxide hissing from a gas tank will likely have me running out the door.
Tuesday, 30 October 2007
TWIN PEAKS PILOT
Twin Peaks Pilot (1990) dir. David Lynch
Starring: Kyle Maclachlan, Michael Ontkean, Ray Wise, Richard Beymer, Lara Flynn Boyle, Sherilyn Fenn
***1/2
“Diane... another ‘Twin Peaks’ box set arrives in stores. I thought all episodes were available already. Wasn’t the second season just released earlier this year? Oh, I just noticed this Gold Box includes the previously unreleased pilots. I must check it out.“
Ten years before the birth of edgy serialized watercooler television like “the Sopranos” there was “Twin Peaks” - a trailblazing short-lived event TV series from surreal experimentalist David Lynch. Family-friendly network television and David Lynch seemed an unlikely match, but for half a season they were the real ‘must-see TV’. The pilot which aired April 8, 1990, is still one of the finest television moments in my 32 years of boob-tubing.
The series opens with a credit sequence not unlike his 1986 film “Blue Velvet” – serene nature shots of an idyllic northwestern lumber town named “Twin Peaks”. Angelo Badalamenti’s swooning score washing over you like a gentle stream. The opening moments catch Pete Martell (Lynch regular Jack Nance) finding a dead body wrapped in plastic at the side of a river. The girl is revealed to be local beauty queen Laura Palmer. The awkshucks group of inexperienced authorities led by Sheriff Harry S. Truman call in the FBI to help with the investigation. Arriving in town praising the local coffee and cherry pie is the goofy Dale Cooper (Kyle Maclachlan). Goofy as he is, Special Agent Cooper is as thorough as he is peculiar and his attention to detail becomes apparent once he begins the investigation.
The townsfolk are either innocent benevolent naves or scheming and conniving backstabbers. The numerous subplots are as steamy and potboiled as any soap opera. There’s Benjamin Horne (Richard Beymer) the local landowner looking to takeover the local saw mill. There’s Ray Wise and his wife Sarah who are grief-striken beyond belief over Laura’s death. There’s the high school cliques, all of whom are cheating on their girlfriends or boyfriends with someone else in the town. Teasing forensic clues are dropped on us, such as a half a heart necklace, a hidden diary, a video tape of Laura recorded by an unknown lover, a small letter R torn from a newspaper and placed under Laura’s finger nail. Since it’s a pilot not much is resolved except to throw the puzzle pieces on the table for us to piece together over the course of the show.
Lynch is a master of counterpoint and mixing tones. And like “Blue Velvet” he and co-creator Mark Frost move effortlessly between absurd humour to potent melodrama to uncompromising horror. In the pilot humour and horror are mixed in with a traditional procedural set up giving us the evidence, witnesses, and list of suspects. Lynch also shows us how the news of Laura’s death travels through the community. Two scenes stand out –Leland on the phone with his wife when Sheriff Truman gives him the bad news; and Donna Hayward and James Hurley’s fearful glances with each other in class.
The characters make the show a standout. Some are caricatures such as bad-girl-in-a-school-uniform Audrey Horne, some are extreme wackos such as Ed Hurley’s drapes-obsessed wife, but only a few are actually grounded in reality. And in many ways Sheriff Truman is the anchor. His character is our point of view in this world – he remains calm and straight throughout the entire series. Dale Cooper, though an outsider of the town is as idiosyncratic as the log lady.
As the series moves on, weaknesses become evident after the first 7 episodes, which is where the open-ended American television format fails. Lynch is best at creating moments or individual scenes, and so the series amplifies glaringly Lynch’s limitations with closure. The series should have been completed after 6 or 8 episodes, instead its popularity likely delayed the reveal of Laura’s killer till the second season.
No pun intended, the series peaks somewhere in the first few episodes of Season 2. After Laura Palmer’s murderer is discovered, all parties involved including Lynch himself admits the series went downhill and rightfully got cancelled. But within the sloppy second season there are moments of brilliance. And, really, has there ever been a scarier bad guy in television (or even the movies) than “Bob”?
The influence of Lynch and Frost’s skewed world of absurd characters is seen in many of today’s shows such as “Desperate Housewives”, “Weeds”, and “Ugly Betty”. But this is 2007 and it took over 15 years for television to catch up to this giant leap forward. Enjoy.
Buy it here: Twin Peaks - The Definitive Gold Box Edition (The Complete Series)
Wednesday, 9 May 2007
INLAND EMPIRE
Inland Empire (2007) dir. David Lynch
Starring: Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Justin Theroux
***1/2
Seeing “Inland Empire” at Toronto’s Royal Cinema was a Grindhouse-like experience. A 3-hour independently produced and distributed experimental epic film from David Lynch – shot on crappy prosumer DV camera no less. And it’s a marvel and a showcase of what a talented artist can do with the simplest of tools accessible to any independent filmmaker.
David Lynch is the purveyor of some the most surreal, experimental and terrifying films ever to make it to multiplex cinemas. His films are visually arresting and use the palette of cinema to greater advantage than any other filmmaker. And so, when word got out David Lynch was going digital and making a film, shot off and on over the course a year many, including myself, were intrigued what he was up to. And the overwhelming consensus is that Lynch has succeeded in adding another artistic masterpiece to his already impressive oeuvre of great films.
Explaining the plot is a challenge, but I’ll try. The first third of the film is relatively straight-forward. Laura Dern (Nikki), a struggling actress, gets her big break with a feature film directed by Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons). Her leading man is Bill Side (Justin Theroux) who has a reputation for hooking up with her female co-stars. Susan is married to a gangster heavy and so Bill's friends are worried he might succumb to his desires and court Susan. Then it’s revealed the film has a curse on it. In one of many creepy scenes, Jeremy Irons’ character describes to Nikki and Bill the first attempt to make the film in Poland. Before the film was finished the main actors were brutally murdered. When production starts Nikki and her character Susan seem to split into two separate people, reality morphs into dreams and so begins the roundabout journey of each of them to find their way out of the rabbit hole. The final 2 thirds of the film is one surreal scene after another, with the occasional breath of air of reality before plunging back in for more Lynch-craziness.
The film is needlessly three hours, but rarely was I bored. Admittedly I was tired and I actually did take a nap for 15 mins or so. But when I woke up it was as if I didn’t miss a beat. Most people will be turned off by the complete disregard of plot in the final 2 hours, but as with “Mulholland Drive” and “Lost Highway,” not matter how fucked up things get Lynch manages to provide closure to his audience. The ending of the film book-ends a scene in the beginning, and so, we are saved the sudden cut to black. Perhaps its contradictory, but in the end, the film doesn’t make any sense, but I was certainly more than satisfied.
Laura Dern exposes herself in ways reminiscent of Emily Watson in “Breaking the Waves.” Lynch frames her closeups with harsh macro lenses of his DV camera inches away from her face. Dern’s disregard for her “Hollywood” image is admirable, and the range of emotion she sustains for the three hours is also remarkable. Compare this performance to Helen Mirren’s and… well… its no contest. As a side note, David Lynch, himself, sat on a folding chair accompanied by a cow for 2 weeks at a busy Hollywood intersection, holding a “For Your Consideration” banner for Laura Dern.
Lynch uses his customary arsenal of scare tactics to creep us out. The camera creeps and crawls to examine the depths of the darkest corners of our imaginations. Ample amounts of doppelgangers, flickering light bulbs, monotonous music, dancing goddesses, and dead-pan absurdist humour are present. His sound design is top notch as usual, recycling the fear of dread from echoy and rumbling ambient soundscapes. His soundtrack choices include an eclectic mix of Beck, Etta James and Nina Simone. At one point, after a discussion about “tits” a group of large-breasted women perform a musical dance sequence to the song ‘Locomotion’. It had me in trance, that I was singing it in my head all the way home.
Do the results of his new-found technical freedom manifest itself on the audience? I don’t think so. The film certainly looks different that “Lost Highway” or “Mullholland Drive”, but it feels exactly the same. The fact is, after 20 minutes the digitalness disappears and soon you’re just watching a movie. All three films are of the same Lynchian universe and it’s evident that no matter what medium Lynch chooses, he will make it his own. Enjoy.
PS. As I said seeing the film in a theatre is a must-see experience. The final credits provide perhaps the most enjoyment of all. Not a single person left during the final credits. And it’s an experience unto itself.
Saturday, 5 May 2007
BLUE VELVET
Blue Velvet (1986) dir. David Lynch
Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper
****
With the Toronto release of “Inland Empire” it seems opportune to review another classic Lynchian nightmare. Three years after the disaster that was “Dune” arose the film that laid the foundation from which all his other films would be influenced - “Blue Velvet”.
The film opens with the opening credits superimposed over, appropriately, a beautiful piece of blue velvet hanging and swaying with the breeze. The Angelo Badlamenti’s music sting is melodramatic and ominous. Then a series of impossibly beautiful shots of the small town of lumbertown.
The town of Lumbertown is a make-believe fantasy world likely fashioned after Lynch’s hometown of Missoula Montana. It’s a template for the “Twin Peaks” world, a glossy middle-America world of good coffee and apple pie but with a dark underbelly seething underneath. This is a common subject for Lynch. Similarly his Hollywood of “Mullholland Drive” was ripped apart in the third act to reveal a murderous world of jealousy and greed.
Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachan) is our guide into this world, a young college grad who one day stumbles upon a human ear lying in the grass. Jeffrey Beaumont does the right thing and informs the police. But Jeffrey is still curious about the mystery, and so begins his own Hardy Boys-type exploration into the crime. After following a few clues he finds himself hiding in the closet of the sultry Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) a lounge singer and sexual slave for the vile gangster Frank Booth (a villainous Dennis Hopper). Jeffrey is found out, but instead develops a relationship with Vallens. When Booth finds Jeffrey out, all hell breaks loose.
Jeffrey’s night out with Booth and his cronies is a trip into the surreal world of David Lynch. Jeffrey is beat up as a warning to stay away. But it only fuels his anger and desire to right what is wrong. Complicating Jeffrey’s life is his real world girlfriend Sandy (Laura Dern) who will eventually learn of Jeffrey’s secret life.
The star of the show is Lynch’s nightmares put to screen. Hopper’s Booth is perhaps the scariest villain in the history of cinema. His violent rage brought on by his personal flask of compressed helium hidden in his pocket will give you goose bumps. And I don’t think anybody has ever used the word ‘fuck’ with greater intensity. Lynch mixes his violence and horror with sincere melodrama and soap opera dramatics. Sandy and Jeffrey’s slow dance at the house party could be out of a John Hughes movie or an episode of Degrassi, and Angelo Badlamenti’s swooning score lulls you into a dreamlike state.
I’ve always said, at will David Lynch could make the scariest film of all time. He uses all elements at his disposal, sound, music, lighting, camera angles, and movement first to create a foundation of utter creepiness, then he can make you jump with slightest of changes. For example, Laura Dern’s luminous introduction at night on the sidewalk outside her house. From the darkness she slowly emerges from under a streetlamp to introduce herself to Jeffrey. It’s a subtle but brilliant cinematic moment. And only Lynch could make Roy Orbison or Bobby Vinton scary. That’s talent.
The dichotomy of the mid-western saccharine life with the heinous villainy of the seedy underbelly is what Lynch has recycled ever since this film. The best metaphor for this is the shot of the camera slowly moves into the human ear, the closer it gets we hear the sounds of the bugs eating away at the flesh. It’s a typical Lynchian image and the hallmark of his body of work. Enjoy.
Buy it here: Blue Velvet (Special Edition)
Monday, 12 February 2007
THE ELEPHANT MAN
The Elephant Man (1980) dir. David Lynch
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt
****
“The Elephant Man” is one of the all time tragic stories. Despite his other, more famous, Lynchian-typical works as “Blue Velvet” or “Mullholland Drive,” “The Elephant Man,” is one of David Lynch’s more straight-ahead films, and is arguably his greatest. It’s a perfect film.
It tells the real life story of John Merrick, a young man with severe facial and bodily malformities, who is rescued from the circus and brought into upper class society. The time is 19th century London at the peak of the Industrial revolution. David Lynch recreates the period to perfection. The dirty streets, smog, and the constant of noise of machinery are everywhere. It’s so authentic you can practically smell the garbage on the streets. We meet Anthony Hopkins who plays Frederick Treves, a doctor who has ventured into London’s lower class east side to find the Elephant Man, a big attraction circus ‘freak.’ Treves is brought behind the scenes by the Elephant Man’s “proprietor”, Bytes, (an intense and scary Freddie Jones) for a private viewing. Hopkins’ reaction to the ‘grotesque’ man is one of cinema’s great moments.
Merrick is brought to live in Treves’ hospital, where he undergoes a rigorous examination. We discover Merrick, has been abused all his life, and was beaten near death by Bytes just prior to his arrival. Treves shows off Merrick to his colleagues, which is another more acceptable way is being exploited once again. Merrick befriends the doctors and nurses and becomes a sensation within the upper class society. Just when life is good for Merrick, Bytes returns to reclaim his “property”. He takes Merrick away to France and puts him back in the circus. Merrick escapes from the circus with help from the other circus players. The scene is one of the many emotional scenes that brings tears to your eyes. The ending of the film is even more emotionally charged and unbearably heartbreaking.
Despite the tragedy of Merrick’s life, the story is uplifting, as it shows how nobility and dignity can rise among the bleakest of environments. Merrick accepts everything in life as a gift, no matter how revolting or depressing. Charles Dickens would have been proud.
Though its one of Lynch’s more audience-friendly films, it contains many of his most famous devices – the constant acoustic drone, dreamlike fantasy sequences, ominous camera movements into dark places. The film was nominated for 8 Academy Awards including all the major awards - Best Picture, Director, Actor, Writing etc. It’s a forgotten masterpiece that needs to be rediscovered. Enjoy.
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt
****
“The Elephant Man” is one of the all time tragic stories. Despite his other, more famous, Lynchian-typical works as “Blue Velvet” or “Mullholland Drive,” “The Elephant Man,” is one of David Lynch’s more straight-ahead films, and is arguably his greatest. It’s a perfect film.
It tells the real life story of John Merrick, a young man with severe facial and bodily malformities, who is rescued from the circus and brought into upper class society. The time is 19th century London at the peak of the Industrial revolution. David Lynch recreates the period to perfection. The dirty streets, smog, and the constant of noise of machinery are everywhere. It’s so authentic you can practically smell the garbage on the streets. We meet Anthony Hopkins who plays Frederick Treves, a doctor who has ventured into London’s lower class east side to find the Elephant Man, a big attraction circus ‘freak.’ Treves is brought behind the scenes by the Elephant Man’s “proprietor”, Bytes, (an intense and scary Freddie Jones) for a private viewing. Hopkins’ reaction to the ‘grotesque’ man is one of cinema’s great moments.
Merrick is brought to live in Treves’ hospital, where he undergoes a rigorous examination. We discover Merrick, has been abused all his life, and was beaten near death by Bytes just prior to his arrival. Treves shows off Merrick to his colleagues, which is another more acceptable way is being exploited once again. Merrick befriends the doctors and nurses and becomes a sensation within the upper class society. Just when life is good for Merrick, Bytes returns to reclaim his “property”. He takes Merrick away to France and puts him back in the circus. Merrick escapes from the circus with help from the other circus players. The scene is one of the many emotional scenes that brings tears to your eyes. The ending of the film is even more emotionally charged and unbearably heartbreaking.
Despite the tragedy of Merrick’s life, the story is uplifting, as it shows how nobility and dignity can rise among the bleakest of environments. Merrick accepts everything in life as a gift, no matter how revolting or depressing. Charles Dickens would have been proud.
Though its one of Lynch’s more audience-friendly films, it contains many of his most famous devices – the constant acoustic drone, dreamlike fantasy sequences, ominous camera movements into dark places. The film was nominated for 8 Academy Awards including all the major awards - Best Picture, Director, Actor, Writing etc. It’s a forgotten masterpiece that needs to be rediscovered. Enjoy.
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