Blue Velvet

Predicting Oscar nominations or winners is a more or less sadomasochistic exercise in futility. Blue Velvet has garnered critic's awards on both coasts, but only scored one Oscar nomination: a Best Director nod to David Lynch. In all fairness, the most striking aspect of Blue Velvet, a twisted story of sex, drugs, and murder in smalltown, USA, is Lynch's masterful visual control. In typical Lynch style (Lynch also directed Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, and Dune), the film opens with a young man (Kyle MacLachlan) finding a severed human ear in the grass. When the police appear to be moving to slow, MacLachlan takes matters into his own hands, and winds up becoming deeply involved with a young woman who's being sexually blackmailed while her husband and son are held captive. As MacLachlan's unquenchable curiosity draws him further into this bizarre situation--which mushrooms out into a drug ring involving local politicos--distinctions between good and evil begin to blur, as he moves from voyeurism (in the name of uncovering a crime) to violence (uncovering himself). Much more than a detective story, Blue Velvet is a chilling psychological thriller that, because of its distasteful subject matter, sparked the full spectrum of critical remarks, from "sick" to "brilliant". Dennis Hopper is excellent in a truly repulsive role. Recommended.