Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet starts off focusing on beautiful red roses set against a perfect white picket fence. The neighborhood, houses and yards are all perfect. But this is not the perfect small town. Maybe right from the start the filmmakers are trying to tell us this – they focus on the roses set against the picket fence; roses have thorns. You can have the pretense of perfection, but watch out for the thorns along the way. They are always eager to tear apart our lives, as Jeffrey Beaumont soon discovers.

Jeffrey’s curiosity gets the best of him after he finds a human ear in a field. He is unable to sit back and wait for the police to solve the crime. The detective’s daughter gives Jeffrey some information that leads him right into the depraved lives of people he probably had no idea really existed. He gets tangled up in the life of an emotionally unbalanced night club singer, Dorothy Vallens which then gets him involved with Frank Booth. Frank isn’t just a drug addict, Frank is deeply disturbed. Frank surrounds himself with weak-minded people he can intimidate. Jeffrey is not one of those people. He takes a beating, then inadvertently puts himself in the right place at the right time and kills Frank.

The movie is a bit slow paced, but keeps you interested. Evil is all around us and unfortunate for Jeffrey he invited it right into his life. But in doing so brought about the event, Frank’s death, that sets Dorothy and her son free. Not everyone is lucky enough to escape from the grip evil binds one with. Look at Frank; he was a drug addicted, evil pervert. Only death could end his deep-seated degenerate ways. Dorothy may never fully recover from Frank’s influence and whatever else she could have gone through before him, not every can after going through all she did. The evil is out there and always willing to corrupt and overwhelm our lives. This film shows that no matter how safe you think you are, it’s out there and sometimes a lot closer than we think.

The move ends on a happy note, but all I could think of as the credits began to roll is a verse from a song I haven't heard in a very long time - "Mama we're all crazy now." I thought it was really funny when I saw on imdb.com the tagline for this move is "It's a strange world."