Blue Velvet Special Edition inc Lost Footage [DVD]

Having just viewed this latest version of Blue Velvet I come away with mixed feelings. Sure the film is still an iconoclastic original that still has a potent shock value that hasn't lost it's sting nearly thirty years (can't believe it's that long ago) on now. Seeing it in blu-ray is as stunning an experience as my initial viewing back in '86. I must confress that I did not love it and it took a few more screenings to appreciate the layered strangeness of the story. By the 80's I had had my fill of typical Hollywood product and was hungry for something radically different. I had seen David Lynch's previous films The Elephant Man and Dune in theaters and had rented Eraserhead on VHS by this time---as well as seeing El Topo, Liquid Sky, and Repo Man. Hollywood movies had absolutely no appeal after this. When I heard that lost footage had been found I was very eager to buy this version and was the first thing I watched when it was delievered (a whole day before the estimated date given--very nice) and settled in for-----a dog eating from a bowl at the Slow Club, the worst stand up comedian imaginable, Jeffery watching a frat boy nearly rape a female student, a very very long dinner at Sandy's house as Jeffery, Sandy, and her boyfiend watch a show with girls in bridal gowns running while tethered to chairs. The few scenes of Frank Booth are really worth sitting through this junk. I am kind of glad that David Lynch was contractually obligated to deliver a film that was two hours long. The inclusion of ninety percent of this "lost" footage would have certainly diminished the power of the film. Do we really need any backstory for Jeffery or scenes of him at school? Not really. With a little creative mental editing one can reconstruct the film and insert these scenes where they might have happened in the film and judge for one's self if they play any vital part in the overall story. It is wonderful that these were discovered and can be seen (I'm still dying to see the twenty minutes Kubrick cut from 2001 or Brando barking like a dog to scare off a salesman in Last Tango In Paris) and judged for their true worth. There is really only one scene which should have been reinstated. It is a very brief scene in which Jeffery calls Dorothy Valen's apartment. Someone picks up the phone but does not answer. It cuts between Jeffery on one end and Frank on the other until Frank barks: "Talk to me f---ker!!!" and Jeffery quickly slams down the phone. It would have been an even scarier moment if we do not see who is on the other end until that jump scare moment of Frank's. Overall I am glad I now have this to my collection although I doubt very much that I'll watch the lost scenes with any great frequency. It is still (in my own opinion) David Lynch's last true masterpiece before his descent into what I like to call "pop surrealsim". In Blue Velvet he created a cinematic universe where all these strange occurances feel plausible. There are also a few outakes and the very interesting documentary Mysteries of Love which has been included in previous DVD releases. I enthusiastically recommend this film to anyone I meet who has not seen it yet.

Lynch fills out the world of Blue Velvet so lovingly, and with such care and imagination, and attention to detail (and to the odd, essential quirks of life), that, surreal as it is, this world seems wholly authentic to us. Because Lynch is not afraid to "dream' his movies, he fills his world with the kind of "abritrary' touches that make up real life. And his mise en scene here, far from being merely the backdrop to his "plot," is actually central to it (and even takes precedence over it). The one grows organically out of the other, in fact, for, as in all true myths (and in dreams also), the two are inseparable. Because in life, there is no plot, obviously (save that written by God, or Chance), only an endless, infinite and unimaginably intricate unfolding of scenes, acts, events, encounters, gestures, words, sounds, smells. In a word--phenomena, endlessly spilling out and colliding and spinning off and resounding with all the crazy random beauty of pollen in the wind. There may be patterns in such chaos, but if so, they are infinite, varied, and eternally overlapping, interacting. And so the patterns we choose to isolate are simply that: their meanings is merely the meaning we have chosen to impose upon the chaos. For Lynch, the mystery of the world is inseparable from the mystery of us--the mystery of perceiving, which is the greatest mystery of them all. Something is out there, Lynch seems to be saying, because something is making us perceive. It's up to us, then, to seek it out, and even if we know we can never hope to understand it, we can at least try. What else are we here for? The alternative is simply too dull, too dispiriting, to entertain--that's there's nothing out there, nothing hidden or inexplicable, and that what we think is all there is. (The insanity of solipcism is the only thing that's unthinkable in Lynch's world.) To Lynch, the options are plain--either we know it all, and the answers are just what we choose to invent, in which case there's no sense in asking questions at all. Or--we know nothing, and no answers are possible, so all there is for us to do is ask the most exciting, enchanting, impossibly impertinent questions we can dream up. To Lynch, the world is a strange world, not because we do not understand it, but because that's the way it is--it's nothing but strangeness, that's what makes it the world (such stuff as dreams are made of). Since, for Lynch, there is nothing stranger than "normality," so, by the same token, the strange is the only "normal" thing there is. And seeing as we have made the world thus, by perceiving it, interpreting and assembling it, piece by piece, with our own thoughts and senses, then we must be mysteries, too.With Blue Velvet, Lynch succeeds in perhaps the highest single accomplishment art can aspire to (at a human level, anyway): he shows us that, if reality is a dream and dream reality, then we, as both the dreamers and the dream, are the ultimate unfathomables: we are strangers to ourselves.see [....]

Don't be manipulated by the arthouse drones, this is an excellent transfer, and reasonably priced.

bought this for a friend seems to play ok no problems.

Otroligt bra skick och en magisk film

Bluray has amazing extras, the deleted scenes are a treat!

„I'm seeing something that was always hidden. I'm in the middle of a mystery and it's all secret.“It's a strange world, isn't it? Der Misserfolg von Dune (1984) klang noch nach, da warf sich David Lynch mit Blue Velvet in sein nächstes Projekt und nahm sich hierfür einem seiner Lieblingsthemen an: die brodelnden Abgründe hinter der kleinbürgerlichen Fassade aus akkurat gepflegten Rasenflächen, Rosenbüschen und weißen Gartenzäunen. Blue Velvet nimmt bereits viel von dem vorweg, was Lynchs spätere Arbeiten ausmachen sollte, gibt sich in seiner ganzen Inszenierung jedoch noch deutlich zugänglicher und weit weniger sperrig als beispielsweise Lost Highway (1997) oder Mulholland Drive (2001). Das Surreale wird zwar zweifellos angedeutet und findet auch hier seinen Platz, bleibt aber eher losgelöst von der geradlinigen und in sich schlüssigen Detektiv-Geschichte innerhalb des Plots. Lynch zeichnet hier einen düsteren und geradezu verstörenden Albtraum, bevölkert von zahlreichen Archetypen des klassischen Film Noir, und spielt immerzu mit dem Verhältnis zwischen Beobachter und Objekt der Beobachtung, verschiebt permanent Perspektiven, und lotet mit scharfem wie klugen Blick vor allem Machtverhältnisse aus.Blue Velvet ist ein Film über das Sehen, der den Zuschauer zu seinem Komplizen macht. Obsession, Lust, Begierde, Schmerz, Sex, Gewalt und Kontrolle oder deren Verlust werden hier verhandelt, wenn aus der Konfrontation zwischen Kleinstadt-Idylle und pervertierter Unterwelt eine enorme innere Spannung entsteht. Es ist der Reiz des Verbotenem, der Jeffrey antreibt und immer tiefer in diesen mörderischen Strudel reißt, das Gefühl, einen Blick auf eine Welt zu erhaschen, welche so niemals seine wird sein können, auch nie für seine Augen bestimmt war und ihn dennoch so ungemein fasziniert. Eine Welt hinter der Welt. Nach und nach zerstört Lynch die trügerische Idylle, nach und nach bröckelt die Fassade und offenbart immer größere Abgründe. Dabei sind Jeffrey und Sandy naiv, beinahe schon kindlich in ihrem Detektiv-Spiel, und vollkommen ahnungslos, wem oder was sie da auf der Spur sind. Die Ereignisse sind in eine ganz wunderbare erzählerische Klammer eingebettet, wenn alles mehr oder weniger endet wie es begonnen hat, doch etwas ist anders. Jeffrey bekam Einblick in eine verstörende Welt und weiß nun um die Ambivalenz der Dinge und Menschen um ihn herum. Lynch wäre nicht Lynch, wenn er nicht doch noch einen Widerhaken einbauen würde und entlarvt so die Falschheit dieser vermeintlichen Idylle am Ende gnadenlos.Grundsätzlich ist Blue Velvet voller hochgradig ambivalenter wie vielschichtiger Figuren, die zwar wenig über sich persönlich preisgeben und doch allein über ihre Handlungen tiefe Einblicke in ihr Innenleben gewähren. Der Cast ist herausragend gut besetzt bis in die kleinste Nebenrolle: Dennis Hopper, Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern, Dean Stockwell, Brad Dourif und Jack Nance spielen zum Teil geradezu beängstigend gut. Vor allem Hopper als Frank Booth liefert eine absolute Meisterleistung,welche man so schnell nicht wird vergessen können, aber auch Rossellini als Dorothy Vallens stellt sich mit einer hinreißenden Komplexität Gefühlen, an die sich sonst wohl kaum jemand heranwagen würde. Seiner Zeit war Blue Velvet mehr als nur umstritten, wurde abgestraft und von den Kritikern gnadenlos verrissen, doch heute ist er einer der vielleicht wichtigsten amerikanischen Filme der 80er Jahre. Eine unbequeme Herausforderung, die vordergründig wenig bis keine Freude beim Zuschauer auszulösen vermag, eine schäbige Welt ohne Reiz oder gar Schönheit, und doch kann man sich nur sehr schwer von ihr lösen. Weder die Figuren in ihr, noch der Zuschauer selbst. Lynch hält uns allen den Spiegel vor. Now it's dark.