I watched eXistenZ recently, which led to me renting several other David Cronenberg films from the library, and in my mind David Cronenberg always links up to David Lynch. It's "the two David's" who are both doing something awesome and unique in film, and I love both of them in different but also similar ways.
First of all, 1986? Nineteen EIGHTY six?!!! This movie feels so much more 90's, so SO much ahead of it's time. The controversial plot stuff, the characters, the darkness, the weirdness, this feels so much later on in time as a film. The style and the characters all feel more 90's, the bleakness and the storyline feels like that return to nihilism present especially in the early 90's. I thought it was 91, 93. I forgot this came before Twin Peaks, and that was also part of it.
David Lynch exploded onto the scene with Eraserhead, wowwed critics with his seriousness and pathos in Elephant Man, proved he could do sci fi even if the studio interfered with Dune, and then made this movie, Blue Velvet. Blue Velvet is one of this more linear films. I just counted right now, and according to "what I think" exactly half of David Lynch's films are in the "fucking weird" category and the other half are a lot more linear than I ever remember. Brief breakdown.
Eraserhead: weird as fuck, likely the weirdest thing he's made, though Mulholland Drive is close.
Elephant Man: linear, character based, performance based, feels like a return to 60's noir and mystery influence
Dune: Linear. There is no weirdness in this, at all, except the druggie extras with the blue eyes. Lynch decides not to do main stream.
Blue Velvet: Linear. I remember this one as weird, but it's not. Not really. It has strange elements and creepiness, but not weird.
Wild At Heart: linear. His idea of lovers and oddballs is the only weirdness here. Love the snakeskin jacket.
Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me: I'm not really counting this one, but it is a more linear version of the TV show, which had only a bit of weird.
Lost Highway: Weird. Very weird. Third most weird for me, and very layered.
The Straight Story: obviously linear, feels like the weakest of any movie he ever made.
Mulholland Drive: It's close up there in weirdness level to Eraserhead. I love this movie. Love, love love. Might be my favorite.
Inland Empire: The least weird, but that might just be because of the sheer length and the chore this was to watch.
So actually less than half of his movies are weird. And as I said, I remembered Blue Velvet being one of the weird ones. And let's be honest here, it has been many years. I think the three things anyone remembers about this movie are super weird: Dennis Hopper using helium to get high, Dennis Hopper yelling lines such as "Heineken?! Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!" and Dennis Hopper having strange mommy fantasies when he's high, fucking Issabella Rossellini. I mean really, this is a character which defines and makes this movie, and it's pretty much the only part one is going to remember many years after last watching it.
In the beginning of Blue Velvet, Kyle MacLachlan as Jeffrey finds a ear laying in a field by his house. The plot, the idea behind it is similar. What if you found something like this, and spurned on by curiousity, you investigated it? And I think it's extremely realistic in that it shows you'd discover something truly awful, truly horrible to be the cause. In this case, Dennis Hopper has kidnapped a woman's child, and is using that as leverage to rape and abuse her. The cops are involved as eventually shown, and only because Jeffrey is a innocent man who gets in too deep and is too good of a person to back the fuck off, do we as the audience get brought into this dark, twisted storyline.
There's quite literally endless things to talk about here. Whether it's David Lynch's style of taking us exactly where we don't want to go, or his horrible, hateful, but somehow extremely realistic characters, or his amazing acting and cinematography, or the music or the colors or the sets or the minimalism striking up perfectly against extremity... It is ALL here.
This is the type of film where it is needless, absolutely OBVIOUS that it is a masterwork. Every single thing is here, and there's also a sweet love story which doesn't feel rushed. This is the type of film to make you realize what high barometer a 5 star film really sets. This is up there with the other films I've rated which make me wish I didn't hand out 5 stars to ANYTHING else. Cause this is really and truly next level directing and writing. All of the stars. All of them.
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