Blue Velvet (1986) - my review and colour analysis

Hello everyone and anyone who’s reading this! Currently it’s the 18 of January and I am currently writing about the first film I ever watch of David Lynch, Blue Velvet (1986) as you can tell from the title - I rated the film five out of five stars.

To start off, in this review I will be going over the technical and the artistic side of the film, so be prepared for spoilers.

To begin, the story was quite straightforward, a guy finding a severed ear and handing it to the authorities. Out of sheer curiosity, he decided to investigate the origins of the ear with the help of his female friend.

The technical side, cinematically, felt like a fresh breath of air. With a strong opening, the use of colours, red and blue, which I will dive into further analysis later on, the use of lens distortion, the stage play like lightning (the spotlights, I counted 6!) and the very immersive, evoking and emotionally responsive score that had me at the edge of my seat. All and all, this was a visual treat for me and whatever Lynch put onto the frame has it’s own purpose. Some parts were seen very voyeuristic to some parts looking like absolute pieces of artwork. It truly is amazing to see how Lynch sees.

Secondly, I’d like to talk about the constant ‘open window’ scenes in the film. I perceived this as an act of voyeurism and observation from Jeffery towards Dorothy and Dorothy's desire to escape as the only shots with the open window scenes in her apartment only. Interesting little detail!

Lastly, I’d like to talk about how they use colours in the film, prominently Red and Blue. Red in film generally represents love, passion, anger, danger and warning while Blue in film generally represents calmness, sadness, isolation and suspense. In this film, these colours are represented in two different ways which I will associate with the characters, Dorothy and Sandy.

In the film, we immediately associated blue with Dorothy, her whole character symbolizing isolation and sadness while being surrounded with red, danger and warning. From the get go, we understood what kind of complex character she is in the film before she even interacted with Jeffery, the main mc. And as the story progressed,she’d started wearing red, hinting at the love and passion she held for Jeffrey while also being a reminder of the danger she is in. We also could catch her wearing small hints of blue while wearing red, indicating under all the affection she had for Jeffrey, she still felt lonely.

While Sandy, our main female lead, was spotted wearing mostly pink, which is technically a light shade of red but I won’t consider it for the sake of this review. The pinks she wears represented romance, camp and the underlying horror beneath her exterior which we could see from her encouraging Jeffery to investigate about the severed ear he found. 

Another thing I noticed about Sandy is that she is surrounded by the colours of red, as we can see from her room and her car being red. I interpret this by her surrounding herself and the world she is in, is filled with love and passion

As we progressed into the film, we see her wearing more whites and blue. The blue symbolises the calmness she presented, the divinity (during her robin monologue), faith and loyalty towards Jefferry. The white could also represent protection, humility and precision in her character, which we could see and perceive before her action cues even begin. 

Now if we mixed the two colours, we get purple, symbolizing transformation, nobility, sensitivity and intimacy ie Jeffery. We were introduced to this character, deck up in black, which I interpreted as a blank state, someone who is easily molded/easily influenced. 

As we progressed, we could see the first colour from Jeffery, red. I see this as him literally wearing his emotions on his sleeves - anger, violence, desire, excitement, love and aggression. We could also see him wearing blue occasionally, expressing his loyalty, desire for just, being seen as a form of stability, security and confidence for Dorothy while with Sandy, trust and calmness, her being his sense of stability. 

And whenever he wore white, it represented as a form of protection and humility for Dorothy and love and peace for Sandy. That’s the type of character I understood from Jeffery from his colours. Another thing if any of you noticed, Jeffery has an earring on his right ear, in Hindu culture, piercing the right ear meant to improve focus and spiritual awakening i.e. him finding out about the right ear, leading him to Sandy then Dorothy than people like Frank. 

To conclude, this is all my personal opinion and research, if you guys feel differently about it, please, feel free to comment about it and talk about it in the comments section!