david lynch's " blue velvet " begins and ends with colorful , bright shots of flowers and happy americans mowing their lawns in a seemingly perfect american town . however , what lies inside this nominally safe atmosphere is a " strange world " of drug dealers , sadists , and murderers . the opening and closing shots are a wonderful contrast to the rest of the gloomy , disturbing film . they show not to make assumptions from first glance and that oddness is common in all places under all circumstances . odd would be a perfect adjective to describe this film , its characters , its direction , and its story . thankfully , the obscurity that " blue velvet " relies on is enough to make this film enjoyable . since its elements are so originally weird , you never know what will happen next . this is the main goal of a movie ; to be spontaneous and surprising . " blue velvet " miracuously succeeds at this even though it contains mediocre acting . lynch creates such a hypnotic world that it is hard to resist his style of story telling . the film starts off with the discovery of a severed ear by a college boy ( kyle maclachlan ) . from this point maclachlan finds himself involved with a lounge singer ( isabella rossellinia ) who has lost her son and husband to a kidnapping . the plot is much more detailed than the aforementioned and this is what makes david lynch's story telling so amazing . maclachlan becomes involved in a forbidden relationship , in another relationship that could have been taken straight out of a high school flick , and he is put into the shoes of a drug dealer who has some wild adventures with some wild friends . through these multiple stories , maclachlan lives multiple lives and as we follow maclachlan , we are introduced to a variety of interesting subplots . lynch masterfully builds these subplots but he does not piece them all together in the very end and make a convenient crowd pleasing conclusion . instead he leaves some ambiguity and forces those curious enough to get the real meaning to watch the film several several times . lynch has been known to do this with a number of his films meaning he may be too esoteric for some hoping to get a hollywood ending where the good guy gets the girl and everything turns out fine . however , for fans of odd difficult indies , " blue velvet " could be just what they are looking for . it is very hard to discuss " blue velvet " without discussing the performance of dennis hopper's sadistic frank . most of the other actors in the film were not very memorable . kyle maclachlan lacked one important aspect for his role , a personality . laura dern was consistently annoying . but dennis hopper stole every scene he was in . his evil character was just plain old frightening in his mannerisms from his obsession to velvet to his incessant breathing from a gas mask . frank is a character that comes along once in a blue moon . many producers know this and have inevitably begun to typecast hopper as the bad guy . just like his villain in " speed " , hopper is over the edge with cursing and screaming every chance he has to speak . this harshness is exactly what frank is , so weird and twisted that it is hard not to look at him , even if he theatens you to look away . " blue velvet " has characters and stories you will never see in a movie again . for this sole reason it is recommended . but also see it to admire lynch's obsession to avoid the norm . even if this film is a little too weird for you , it's hard not to congratulate a guy for trying something new and sticking to it .
