White Lightning

Now THAT is a movie poster!  It's got it all: guns, fire, a car chase, a woman, jugs of green liquid the size of a man, flying through the air.  I also love the inset picture of Burt Reynolds; it's like the producers saw the movie poster and asked, "But which one is Burt Reynolds?" and they picked out a picture from Tiger Beat.  I am confused by the tag line "White Lightning: Take a Bite and Feel All Right!"  Take a bite of what?  White lightning?  Burt Reynolds?  The green jug?  That just sounds like a rap lyric (judging from the skill of the rhyme, I would have to guess Young MC --- he has more rhymes than the whole damn zoo) more than a line that would actually fit this poster.  However, the other tag line, at the top of the poster, is awesome.  "White lightning never strikes twice --- 'cause once is enough!"  That makes it sound like Burt Reynolds plays White Lightning, a race car driver or something.  Or, it may be a subtle racist jab.  Sure, white lightning can do the job, done in one, but what about black, brown or yellow lightning?  Is this poster implying some sort of superiority based on the color of lightning?  Or maybe "White Lightning" is the title song in this, an Aryan Nation update of Grease!  Ah, the joys of accusing something of unintentional racism...good times.  Side note: kids, racism is bad and stupid. 

Actually, White Lightning refers to moonshine, the illegal homemade liquor that can be delicious and/or used to thin paint.  Our boy Gator (Burt Reynolds) is in the Arkansas (I knew this movie was racist!) pokey, doing time for running moonshine.  He gets word that his brother just died; the police say he drowned (which he did), but everybody knows that Sheriff Connors (Ned Beatty) was responsible for it (which he was).  Gator makes two decisions that day.  The first is to escape prison to take down that dirty, crooked Sheriff; he starts out okay, but the warden unhurriedly brings him back in after only a few minutes.  It was quite the jail break, and I'm very glad that it was captured on film.  The warden was fairly indifferent and the prisoner gave up immediately.  In Spanish, they call that muy divertido.  Wait...does divertido mean "boring as hell"?  I know muy means "Shoot me in the face to stop this from being."  The second decision is to work for the Feds, going undercover to bring Sheriff Connors to justice and take down any dirty backwoods moonshiners that are fueling Connors' crime empire.  What is the best way to do that?  Car chases.  Lots and lots of car chases.  Along the way, Gator comes to understand the value of moonshinin' to the semi-honest backwoods folks of Arkansas and he manages to find love by stealing away his partner's woman (Diane Ladd).

This is a movie that is definitely a product of its times.  I'm not just saying that because Burt Reynolds is in it (with no mustache, but he does chew gum throughout).  You don't often see forty minutes of car chases in movies nowadays.  That is mostly because that was the limit for special effects in the 60s and 70s, but car chase movies, when done right, can be a lot of fun.  This movie has cars jumping off dirt ramps, a car with a Confederate flag on the hood, and a car jumping onto a barge, all in the first chase.  I did appreciate that the filmmakers went out of their way to explain the need for car chases in the movie, but it isn't terribly necessary; Gator is transporting moonshine, so he has to avoid local cops.

The acting is about what you would expect from a Burt Reynolds vehicle.  Basically, Burt gets to be cool and irresistible to women, and everyone else is a chump.  And it's true; Ned Beatty, Bo Hopkins, Diane Ladd all look pretty stupid in this movie.  That's not a terrible thing, unless you're trying to argue that too much money is spent on education in Arkansas, but this is a pretty one-sided affair.  It is worth noting that this is the uncredited film debut of Laura Dern; she has a bit part, but you can spot her.  The direction isn't all that bad.  Joseph Sargent knows that the car chases and Reynold's smirk are what people want to see in this movie, and he certainly delivers.  Honestly, as far as car chase/Burt Reynolds movies go, this is probably the best.

But for those of us that look for more in their movies than cars on dirt roads and Burt Reynolds chewing gum, there are a couple of head-scratching moments.  When Gator makes his first daring car escape by driving his car off a pier and onto a barge, shouldn't the police following him know where the barge is heading?  I would think that it would be a regular trip, or at least one that someone on the docks could help them figure out.  Even if the next bridge was too far away to beat the barge, I bet the police on the other side of the river would be more than happy to pick up Gator as he tries to haul his now undoubtedly damaged car off the boat.  Ned Beatty's character is kind of silly, too.  Sure, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief enough to say that, maybe, a corrupt Sheriff could be "running the entire county," both the law and the crime.  But he makes a speech during the film where he argues that police don't make enough money with their day jobs, so it's only right for them to supplement their money with moonshine; the police make their money and the people get their cheap booze.  Beatty estimates that the average, legally taxed, fifth of liquor costs $7 (well, it is the 70s), but moonshine only costs six bits a gallon!  First off, what the hell is a bit?  Oh, it's twelve and a half cents.  That seems like a fairly arbitrary amount, but whatever, Mirriam-Webster.  More importantly, though, Beatty's argument ignores the car races, public danger, exploding stills, toxic unregulated booze, and murders that are a side effect of this business.  I have no problem with the Sheriff being a corrupted jerk, but that speech was a really inept attempt to give him depth.  Perhaps the biggest middle finger this movie gives to logical thought is the ending.  SPOILER ALERT: So Gator manages to trick the Sheriff into driving his car into a lake, which apparently immediately kills him.  Suspicious, but fine.  Whatever.  Why doesn't Gator get thrown back into jail at the end?  He caused a lot of damage, led to the death of the suspect, and he burned his list of moonshiners because they're good people.  So...the FBI lets him out of prison to build a case and he fails in every way possible, and their response is "enjoy your freedom"?  Really?

Still, you don't turn on a movie like this because you enjoy thinking.  This movie definitely succeeds in its mission to be a car chase movie starring Burt Reynolds.

Blue Velvet

David Lynch is a difficult director to watch.  His movies are intentionally obtuse and his use of imagery and symbols over plot and characters is alienating for many viewers and attractive for many critics.  Blue Velvet is one of Lynch's more linear stories, which makes this one of his more accessible films for the general public.  Of course, that's just by comparison.  This is still a weird ass film.  If I had to sum up the story in one sentence, I would say that Blue Velvet is like a Leave It to Beaver episode that woke up from a nightmare, only to find itself being raped.

The story begins with Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) coming home from college to help with his family's business, while his father recovers from a stroke.  While wandering around the idyllic Lumberton townscape, Jeffrey finds a severed human ear.  He takes the ear to Detective Williams (George Dickerson), who assures Jeffrey that he'll handle the case.  Jeffrey is an annoying little busybody that clearly doesn't have enough to do like, oh I don't know, running his father's business, so he stops by Detective Williams' home to ask about the ear.  In the process, he is reintroduced to Williams' daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern).  Sandy and Jeffrey step out for a malted milkshake (or something equally wholesome) and swap information on the ear.  Sandy is a dirty eavesdropper and her father discusses a surprising amount of his work at home, so she dishes that there is a nightclub singer that is a person of interest.  The singer is Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) and Jeffrey decides to sneak into her apartment and investigate her.  While he is searching her apartment for some clue that may connect to the ear, she comes home; Jeffrey narrowly avoids detection by hiding in a closet.  It doesn't work for long, though; Dorothy discovers him, keeps him at knife point and... performs fellatio?  Well, that's an unexpected reaction.  The couple are interrupted by a knock at the door.  Dorothy hides Jeffrey in the closet once more and lets Frank (Dennis Hopper) in.  Frank is rude, vulgar and abusive, both physically and verbally.  He huffs some unnamed drug (identified as amyl nitrate by Hopper in later interviews), smacks Dorothy around a little, and dry humps her until he's finished.  As a side note, watching that scene allowed me to check two items off my bucket list.  I'm not saying what, though.  This scene causes Jeffrey to sympathize with Dorothy and he delves deeper into her nightmare of a life, filled with Frank and his associates, but still spending time in the TV Land-ish Lumberton proper enough to fall in love with Sandy.  It's dangerous to explore the seedy underbelly of any town, though, a lesson Frank will soon teach Jeffrey.

This film is sometimes described as a neo-noir, but I disagree.  While there are similarities to the noir genre (tough guys and dames without real emotions, a mystery to solve, etc.), they only really exist within the seedy underworld of Lumberton.  In many ways, this film is about duality and how deceiving appearances can be.  On the one hand, yes, this is a noir when Frank and Dorothy show up, but it is a surreal visit to the sunny neighborhoods of 1950s television when the story focuses on Jeffrey and Sandy.  Obviously, the differences between Jeffrey and Frank are shown in sharp contrast when Jeffrey and Dorothy become lovers as are the differences between Dorothy and Sandy.  Lynch does a good job showing the importance of digging beyond the surface in the opening scene, as the camera zooms past Jeffrey's father having a stroke in the middle of their perfect neighborhood and into the grass, until all we see are bugs busy in the dirt.

I don't like categorizing Blue Velvet as a noir because I feel it is better described as surreal.  The sunny Lumberton portion of the film is almost deliriously ideal, visually bright and clean.  The characters in these scenes speak and act as if they are in a classic TV sitcom, spouting trite garbage and throwing around cliches like it's their job.  The despair of the seedy Lumberton is just as bizarre.  While I'm sure that sadomasochism and unusual sexual practices happen everywhere, but Frank's experiences put even the nastiest celebutant to shame.  There is absolutely nothing in this movie that rings true.

Well, almost nothing.  Isabella Rossellini's performance is eye-opening, and not just because she gets nekked.  Her character is very complex and has the most easily understood motives out of anyone in the film.  Rossellini does a great job handling what would have been simply an erotic role for most actresses and transformed it into a study on power, pleasure, pain and fear.  It's shocking to me that she was not nominated for at least a supporting actress award at either the Oscars or the Golden Globes.

Dennis Hopper's performance is not nearly as honest as Rossellini's, but it's just as captivating.  As Frank, Hopper plays his most frightening role.  This is at least partially because he is inexplicable and unpredictable.  Is he going to cry while watching Dean Stockwell lip-sync to Roy Orbison, or is he going to start breaking furniture with the same stimulus?  At times, Hopper's acting is so beyond the realm of plausibility that it becomes funny, but he quickly snaps back into exuding danger the next moment.

Lynch's work is equally fluid.  The film's cinematography is wonderful.  Lynch has a gift for finding great visuals and exploiting them.  He is at the top of his game here.  His direction of actors, on the other hand, is typically alien.  I am familiar with many actors in this movie, as well as the casts in other Lynch films; in every movie, it feels like he is deliberately directing his cast to act poorly.  If there is an unnatural pause or a way to make a clever line not funny, that is the take that makes the film's final cut.  If this type of acting was limited to certain members of the cast, I could conclude that Lynch is making a point about those characters, or their place in society or whatever.  But he does it with everyone.  Lynch wrote this movie, as well, so his intentions can be found by watching the camera work, seeing the acting, and hearing the dialogue.  But it's all still very confusing.  This film doesn't work as a satire of the 1950s American ideal if the "real world" that Frank rules is equally surreal.  So...does that make this a movie about naivety?  About the need to hold on to the comforting while experiencing the discomforting?  If that's the case, then why all the surreality?  To be honest, I don't care because thinking about David Lynch's intentions is just frustrating for me.

That frustration happens whether or not I am focusing on what the director intended, though.  The acting is, for the most part, painful to watch.  When Hopper and Rossellini are on screen, that pain turns into discomfort.  That's not a huge upside.  The supporting characters have absolutely no depth or humanity to them at all, and simply exist to provide momentary distractions for the cast.  Perhaps if one side of the story was told differently, this movie would be more appealing to me.  If the mystery aspect held any suspense whatsoever or had any importance, for instance, I might have invested more of myself to this film.  Instead, I am left disliking the movie, but admiring two performances and the camera work.  I guess that kind of balances things out pretty evenly.