"Blue Velvet" and Faith

April 11, 2018 6:29 PM

How "Blue Velvet" is a better expression of faith and grace than most Christian movies.
posted by MovableBookLady (10 comments total)

I am a devout Christian, a clergy-person, and nothing gets me running at top speed from a cinema faster than the prospect of watching a Christian movie marketed to Christians. I’ll have to give Blue Velvet a try.
posted by 4ster at 6:37 PM on April 11, 2018 [16 favorites]

At the end of the film, a reunited Jeffrey and Sandy find a robin in their kitchen window. In its beak is a cockroach, a reference to the bugs we saw earlier swarming over the severed ear. The robin is awkwardly animatronic, artificial-looking. But that artificiality only heightens the ending’s strength.

Not quite sold on this bit. I think there's something really upsetting about that scene, where Sandy is all, look, a bird! Everything's great! and then you look at it... and it's not quite right.

The real-ness of darkness in Lynch's films does lend them a unique spirituality. It raises the stakes and makes them feel... anti-commercial, I guess. Personal. But I think the happy ending of Blue Velvet feels about as shaky as that bird.
posted by Rinku at 6:44 PM on April 11, 2018 [8 favorites]

I have a fraught relationship to this movie. Went with my boyfriend, expecting a shocking and maybe soft porn-type movie. Opening scene opens up through the ground and then across the river to a town. Damn, I whispered, that's the building my mother worked in! It's Wilmington NC!" And then there's my high school. And the apartment building where Isabella Rossellini lived was where my great-grandparents lived. This may have been the first movie set in Wilmington and so it was a shock to me, and the familiar places where I grew up overshadowed the actual movie. But the capper was when they called it "Lumberton"! which is a small town about 75 miles from Wilmington. I can understand not calling it Wilmington but why not make something up; calling the name of a fairly nearby town was disconcerting. So my memories of the movie are interwoven with personal memories. I think I liked BV overall but am not really sure. Maybe I should watch it again.
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:16 PM on April 11, 2018 [12 favorites]

Frank: [wailing] Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.
Pastor: Jesus loves you.
Frank: Baby wants to pray!
posted by Sangermaine at 7:24 PM on April 11, 2018 [6 favorites]

I'll accept this reading of the film, right up to the robin - as Rinku says. If the characters find grace at the end, why the herky-jerky bird?

I think The mechanical robin was a hedge. "C'mon guys, I didn't really mean all that redemption stuff. It was meant to be 'ironic'" (makes invisible quote marks with his fingers).
posted by Modest House at 7:28 PM on April 11, 2018

I have a fraught relationship to this movie. Went with my boyfriend, expecting a shocking and maybe soft porn-type movie. Opening scene opens up through the ground and then across the river to a town. Damn, I whispered, that's the building my mother worked in!

Do... Do you need a hug? Because I think I would need frickin' therapy if this happened to me! That's a hell of a movie to have that issue with.

Did you find any ears?
posted by loquacious at 8:03 PM on April 11, 2018 [5 favorites]

To be fair - I don't know if any major or main line christian sect in America has a real working concept of sin and grace that its members have internalized.
posted by wotsac at 8:34 PM on April 11, 2018 [4 favorites]

Thanks to this movie, no one has ever been able to order a Heineken around me in peace. Not once. It doesn’t help that my default cheap beer is Pabst.
posted by greermahoney at 11:13 PM on April 11, 2018 [12 favorites]

My mom collects little outhouses to decorate one of the bathrooms. One of them has a sign on the door that says "This Is It". Pretty sure my parents have never seen Blue Velvet.
posted by lagomorphius at 5:24 AM on April 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

Thanks to this movie, no one has ever been able to order a Heineken around me in peace.

My husband and I were visiting Amsterdam when we rounded a corner, and lo and behold, there sat the big Heineken brewery.

Him: "No. Don't."

Me: "HEINEKEN?"

Him: "Stop."

Also, people who know me well know better than to ask if I'd like to "go for a ride."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:38 AM on April 12, 2018 [4 favorites]