Hmmn.
Well.
Uhmmmm… some thoughts, here.
Well The Island is obvious. But I’m sure we all knew that.
I mean, let’s just do the usual thing here.
I’m talking here about the Michael Bay flick, which is liberally peppered with references to my relationship with Scarlett Johanssen (at the time, I think my favorite girl). The hero’s name is Tom Lincoln, with the Lincoln part I think a reference to The Land of Lincoln (i.e. Illinois, the only place I’ve ever lived).
Note that The Island is a film that concerns itself greatly with the places that people live, like the eponymous “Island” itself that takes center stage for most of the film.
It fits, and it’s obvious. I mean, all those references to my relationship with Scarlett, and everything else. It’s a good package and a fine extra example of what I’m talking about, here.
Note the “bacon” scene with Tom and Scarlett, and her sly innuendo, etc. etc. and the other stuff, etc. etc. Well, I’m not going to lay all of that out since I have more important things to think about, here. I mean, this blog is for me, mostly, and since I understand it, well, that’s good enough.
Okay, on to the main course of this post.
I finally did skim through / watch Blue Velvet. Unfortunately since I had ulterior motives with the film I felt I couldn’t watch it as normal, but I think I got out of my viewing perhaps more than most would regardless of how they viewed it.
I loved, loved, loved the setting, and the sets, and the visuals. They reminded me so strongly of the world I left behind when I grew up that I couldn’t stop watching the background of the film in spite of whatever was going on with the characters and plot. Lynch has an almost uncanny ability to create a feeling of a specific place in his films- see The Straight Story, again, for this, and his shockingly spot-on evocation of small town Iowa.
As far as the “content” of the film (plot and dialogue, as opposed to environment and ambiance), I lean towards Ebert’s negative appraisal. I’ll quote him, here.
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If “Blue Velvet” had continued to develop its story in a straight line, if it had followed more deeply into the implications of the first shocking encounter between Rossellini and MacLachlan, it might have made some real emotional discoveries.
Instead, director David Lynch chose to interrupt the almost hypnotic pull of that relationship in order to pull back to his jokey, small-town satire. Is he afraid that movie audiences might not be ready for stark S & M unless they’re assured it’s all really a joke? I was absorbed and convinced by the relationship between Rossellini and MacLachlan, and annoyed because the director kept placing himself between me and the material. After five or 10 minutes in which the screen reality was overwhelming, I didn’t need the director prancing on with a top hat and cane, whistling that it was all in fun.
Indeed, the movie is pulled so violently in opposite directions that it pulls itself apart. If the sexual scenes are real, then why do we need the sendup of the “Donna Reed Show”? What are we being told? That beneath the surface of Small Town, U.S.A., passions run dark and dangerous? Don’t stop the presses.
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Yeah I get what Ebert was saying, here, and I think I know why he thought this way. IMO he had his finger on the pulse of small town America a bit more than other critics, especially those that were employed by the coastal elite owned papers of NY and LA, I think.
Ebert never strayed too far from his Midwestern roots when it came to interpreting and reviewing film. Like me, he was born in Illinois and stayed there.
So he was I think somewhat more personally familiar with the “dark side” of small town USA than, say, a Rex Reed or Pauline Kael type. And I think that his opinion here reflects this- no matter how impressively made the shocking scenes were, merely being shocking in and of themselves is not enough, since, after all, weird or disturbing stuff happens all the time in rural USA.
In a sense, I think that this film was almost not made for a rural USA demographic but for an urban one, to scandalize their own assumptions of what they think small town life is like out here.
But… it is well made, in general. And I found Ebert’s follow up to his review interesting as well, since he included a snippet of an interview he had with Lynch. It seems that Lynch based much of the movie’s setting on his own childhood experiences in small town USA.
Hmmn. Interesting.
But yeah, this post is supposed to be about me, so here goes.
I’m not seeing myself in much if any of Blue Velvet, thank God. I was 6 years old when the film came out, which would have made me four or five during it’s filming.
Which of course wouldn’t place me anywhere inside the main plot of the movie.
What it would do, though, is place me around it, potentially. And here’s where it gets weird, again.
The film ends not like you would expect it to, given it’s plot and reputation. It ends rather oddly, with the closing shot being of a little boy- around 4 or 5 years of age, running over to his mom. Hmmn. Weird.
I mean, I get the context within the film. The kid was kidnapped and then freed, etc. But still, it’s worth investigating.
So yeah, the kid in and of himself certainly doesn’t point directly at me, even though the kid is wearing a wizard’s hat (with a beanie propeller, lol), and is named “Little Donny” according to IMDB. Here we get a similar name- I was of course called “Tommy” when I was that age. But yeah… weird. I don’t know.
I do know that Lynch took shedloads of stuff from me for his later films, but all of that is extremely obvious. This? Not so much, but it is… interesting.
The film ends with “Little Donny” turning his ear to the camera, which seems almost a callback to the ear that the protagonist found in the field. Yeah, I don’t know, but…
There is some kind of card being played here, I think, that is very, very hard to pick up and understand. Little Donny’s wizard propeller hat is found a few times throughout the rest of the earlier film. So he’s there, narratively, just not present. And it’s just… I don’t know. I cannot unpack this one, given the tools that I have with me. I mean, perhaps that’s because there is actually nothing to unpack. But… I don’t know.
I mean, it’s just so weird. What is Lynch saying, here, with the little wizard boy in the film’s ending, and what I think is it’s callback to the beginning? Does anyone know, or know where I can find out?
It’s just… what the fuck is going on, here, really? I’m sorry but this is extremely baffling.
Well… maybe I know the answer to this one, maybe I don’t. But either way I’m going to end this post here, because I need to do some more thinking, guessing and figuring.
K then.