Under the Spotlight: Dennis Hopper’s demented performance in ‘Blue Velvet’
David Lynch is a filmmaker obsessed with the dream world. From the magnetic power of one’s subconscious reveries to the very real-world constructs that promote fantastical visions, Lynch is obsessed with such concepts, exploring this in everything from his curious 1977 debut Eraserhead to his 1986 magnum opus Blue Velvet. In the latter, whilst Kyle MacLachlan’s Jeffrey is the innocent sympathetic protagonist, akin to Alice peeking through the looking glass, it is Dennis Hopper’s Frank Booth who best embodies Lynch’s nightmarish fantasy, playing the role of a psychopathic gangster with an unhinged glare that suggests he is not of this reality.
Awaiting Jeffrey’s arrival in the dark underbelly of suburban America, Booth doesn’t enter the film until the protagonist discovers a severed ear in a field nearby his home, metaphorically leaping down a winding rabbit hole as he pursues its origin. His journey takes him to a beautiful lounge performer, Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), and, after becoming totally infatuated with her, the clutches of Booth, who has kidnapped the woman’s husband and son.
An insane gangster and drug lord, Booth is a terrifying figure with a disturbed psyche that almost doesn’t seem of this world at all. As if from the eccentric imagination of Mad Max’s George Miller, Booth huffs on a nondescript gas through a transparent pipe as he goes through his dirty dealings, enacting sinister control over Vallens whilst seeming to operate on an entirely different plane of existence, living in an entirely different reality accessible only through the strange substance.
Rather disturbingly, Hopper seemed all too keen to jump at the opportunity to play the sinister character, recalling: “I called him on the phone and I said ‘I know we haven’t met, but don’t worry because I am Frank Booth,’ which he seemed to be very thrilled about”. Known for his aberrant, deranged performances, illustrated in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and his own 1969 film Easy Rider, Hopper could indeed see the potential in the role, knowing he could straddle the differing psyches of the complex character.
Living in reality whilst constantly slipping into another ethereal subconscious, Booth’s mannerisms are often situated somewhere between childish infatuation and carnal rage.
Such is aptly captured when Booth captures Jeffrey and, together with his equally peculiar gang of goons, takes the protagonist to a criminal associate who is insistent on performing a mimed rendition of Roy Orbison’s ‘In Dreams’. Booth stands close by to the performer, played by Dean Stockwell, transfixed by his mesmerising rendition as if he’s analysing a work of impossible beauty whilst coming to some sort of personal epiphany he’s not sure he wants to accept for himself. Angered, he cuts the dream short, pausing the music and removing the tape, apparently frustrated that he cannot live out Orbison’s fantasy of living “in beautiful dreams”.
Snarling through gritted teeth one moment and begging for sexual favours the next, Hopper perfectly embodies the carnal horror of Booth’s persona, fully committing himself to Lynch’s script and vision. As the demented gangster of Lynch’s assessment of the violence, smut and surrealism that exists beneath the sheen of contemporary America, Hopper is utterly hypnotizing.
