david lynch's " blue velvet " begins and ends with colorful , bright shots of flowers and happy americans mowing their lawns in a seemingly perfect american town . 
however , what lies inside this nominally safe atmosphere is a " strange world " of drug dealers , sadists , and murderers . 
the opening and closing shots are a wonderful contrast to the rest of the gloomy , disturbing film . 
they show not to make assumptions from first glance and that oddness is common in all places under all circumstances . 
odd would be a perfect adjective to describe this film , its characters , its direction , and its story . 
thankfully , the obscurity that " blue velvet " relies on is enough to make this film enjoyable . 
since its elements are so originally weird , you never know what will happen next . 
this is the main goal of a movie ; to be spontaneous and surprising . 
 " blue velvet " miracuously succeeds at this even though it contains mediocre acting . 
lynch creates such a hypnotic world that it is hard to resist his style of story telling . 
the film starts off with the discovery of a severed ear by a college boy ( kyle maclachlan ) . 
from this point maclachlan finds himself involved with a lounge singer ( isabella rossellinia ) who has lost her son and husband to a kidnapping . 
the plot is much more detailed than the aforementioned and this is what makes david lynch's story telling so amazing . 
maclachlan becomes involved in a forbidden relationship , in another relationship that could have been taken straight out of a high school flick , and he is put into the shoes of a drug dealer who has some wild adventures with some wild friends . 
through these multiple stories , maclachlan lives multiple lives and as we follow maclachlan , we are introduced to a variety of interesting subplots . 
lynch masterfully builds these subplots but he does not piece them all together in the very end and make a convenient crowd pleasing conclusion . 
instead he leaves some ambiguity and forces those curious enough to get the real meaning to watch the film several several times . 
lynch has been known to do this with a number of his films meaning he may be too esoteric for some hoping to get a hollywood ending where the good guy gets the girl and everything turns out fine . 
however , for fans of odd difficult indies , " blue velvet " could be just what they are looking for . 
it is very hard to discuss " blue velvet " without discussing the performance of dennis hopper's sadistic frank . 
most of the other actors in the film were not very memorable . 
kyle maclachlan lacked one important aspect for his role , a personality . 
laura dern was consistently annoying . 
but dennis hopper stole every scene he was in . 
his evil character was just plain old frightening in his mannerisms from his obsession to velvet to his incessant breathing from a gas mask . 
frank is a character that comes along once in a blue moon . 
many producers know this and have inevitably begun to typecast hopper as the bad guy . 
just like his villain in " speed " , hopper is over the edge with cursing and screaming every chance he has to speak . 
this harshness is exactly what frank is , so weird and twisted that it is hard not to look at him , even if he theatens you to look away . 
 " blue velvet " has characters and stories you will never see in a movie again . 
for this sole reason it is recommended . 
but also see it to admire lynch's obsession to avoid the norm . 
even if this film is a little too weird for you , it's hard not to congratulate a guy for trying something new and sticking to it .