The miracle here is that after Lynch’s singular debut, Eraserhead, he gets pulled into the Hollywood system. He’s hired by Mel Brooks to make The Elephant Man, he gets brought on to helm Dune. But then after those two experiences he manages to pull himself out of the machinery somehow and make this perfect film. And it’s that left turn back to his original voice that makes all the difference.
Blue Velvet is all coiled tension. The violence that lives…
Sometimes a film comes together in an unrepeatable alchemy of performance, direction, tone that just makes all the bad films you've ever seen in your life worth it to get to this one. This film is incredible, a simple masterpiece of unbelievable horrors and madness. My life is simply two distinct eras, before I saw POSSESSION and after.
Dryer is often appreciated as a transcendent filmmaker, by this I mean that the films use the ordinary everyday and earthly materials and THROUGH those we experience the divine, the holy and the supernatural. This particular film is so remarkable for possibly containing the single best ever performance recorded on film. As Maria Falconetti has her head shaved, the horrific despair on her face in undeniable. And in the end as she burns, we in the audience mourn.
