Blue Velvet (1986)

Is there anyone more adept at deconstructing suburbia than David Lynch? Lynch exults in painting a picture perfect surface and then delving beneath that surface to reveal the ugly underbelly of supposed normalcy. While Eraserhead, Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet are probably the best examples of this proclivity, really there are elements of it in everything from Wild at Heart to Mulholland Drive to Lost Highway to Inland Empire to, yes, even arguably (arguably) Dune and The Elephant Man. All of these films revolve at least in part around the dialectic of what is perceived to be a rational, "decent" existence and the more animalistic raging Id which underlies restrained personas. Even Lynch's most atypical film, The Straight Story, looks at the disparity between what is thought of as being normal and how some people actually behave. Audiences weren't yet used to this Lynchian technique when Blue Velvet premiered in 1986 and the film was looked at askance by large swaths of people, even as others, perhaps more cynical and antiestablishment by nature, started proclaiming the film a classic. Over the years, the film has attained a rather iconic status, perhaps seen through the filter of all the Lynch films and television offerings which followed in its wake. Blue Velvet is still an incredibly bracing, unabashedly innovative and original take on the mystery and noir genres, with an eye candy façade masking one of the more unseemly subtexts in modern film. In what almost might be seen as a dry run for Lynch's Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet posits Kyle MacLachlan as a straight arrow investigator looking into a mystery and uncovering all sorts of secrets in a supposedly idyllic little town. There may be no Laura Palmer or dancing dwarves in Blue Velvet, but that odd mix of the sinister and the surreal is front and center in Blue Velvet and makes it a one of a kind viewing experience.