David Lynch's Blue Velvet Analysis

David Lynch’s Blue Velvet Analysis

Blue velvet was directed by David Lynch, an extremely talented director who is known for his surreal outlook to films and dark comedy behind certain scenes. This opening extract to his Blue Velvet is no different.  It begins with surreal fantasy-esque music in the back ground to bright white picket fences and white lilies. The mise-en-scene in this and the couple scenes that follow are all setting the scene to show a calm suburban place. For example the bright blue skies, the firemen driving by in slow motion and smiling. All of this tries to show how the neighborhood we’re looking at is a perfectly normal suburban neighborhood. However being a David Lynch film the audience can expect that this is not all it seems.

However it turns quite sinister as an elderly man watering his flowers soon struggles and dies from what looks like a stroke. Despite this the happy fairy tale-esque music continues to play, creating a contrapuntal effect to throw off the audience. This is the hook of the opening, showing that this town isn’t all as what it seems.  While the elderly man lies dead his dog is drinking the water from his hose enjoying himself as if nothing else happened. This is in slow motion to give the eerie effect that something is wrong, it creates tension eve n in the strangest of conditions. All of it links back to something being wrong. For example when a director wants to show something is off or different from normal life then they may do an astute angle, as seen in The Hobbit poster:

David Lynch does the same thing only with contrapuntal music, slow motion and a dog, instead of an astute angle.

After a long shot of a baby in the background, the dog drinking from the hose and the man’s corpse a tunneling almost POV shot follows under the ground into the darkness until the audience hears the diegetic sound of scurrying. Until soon you see the catacombs of beetles scurrying around. This represents the dark underbelly  of the suburban life, linking back to what was said earlier about nothing being what it seems.