Blue Velvet
dir: David Lynch

I wasn't going to write a review of this movie, since it is pretty old and it's not like there's some re-release we're toting, as is the case with Ghostbusters and Dr Strangelove. But I saw it for the second time a few weeks ago and something was just made clear to me today.

One of the things that never really made total sense to me was Kyle MacLachlan's rather easy descent into his near-obsession with the ear, and consequently Isabella Rosselini's character. But now I get it.

It was a totally unexpected and new thing, not to mention scary, for MacLachlan (sorry I don't remember the character's name) to find the ear. He would logically be very interested in where the ear came from. The fascination ANY person would feel in this situation is greatly magnified by the fact that the character was leading a totally mundane and uninteresting life, two things he had come to accept although not necessarily like, and this was especially out-of-place in his small logging town. That coupled with his personality makes his trip into the underbelly undserstandable.

It's not like I didn't understand the movie before, it's just that I thought his obessesion with the singer and her world came far too quickly. I decided that it was just a dramatic time concession.

But new understanding came.

A few weeks ago, as the story goes, three of my friends were walking around Albany into the wee hours of the morning. They found a bookbag filled with journals. They walked past the bag, and then returned to it an hour later. They figured the bookbag abandoned and decided to take it back to one of their nearby homes. They read the journals and became very interested in this person's life. Especially towards the end, where he started becoming desperate and distraught over a recent break-up and his writing became erratic. The final page was torn out, and the last entry was about him going over to his girlfriend's house to beg for forgiveness. Now my friends have made it their mission to find this person.

Not that finding a knapsack full of seemingly-discarded journals is the same as finding an ear in a field, but I now see how an off-hand encounter can set events into motion. I'm not really if this review makes any sense, or if it's really a review. Here's my final paragraph, and I'll try to make it more concise and about the movie itself.

"Blue Velvet" is a wonderful movie with all around great performances and a killer visual draw. Dennis Hopper's profanity-intensive performance is an absolute classic. I think he's Jay (from the film's of Kevin Smith)'s evil, dirty uncle. David Lynch is a very talented man.

Concise and ass-kissing enough?

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Michael Keegan
8.5.1999