The Concept of Weird in Film

It's been what I'll describe as a, quote, "long ass time," end quote, since I've posted here, but there's a concept that's been brewing in my head for about a week now.

I was just introduced to David Lynch by my boss's insistance. He lent me the movie Blue Velvet saying, "You'll like this one. It's kind of twisted and a little weird." This is the first Lynch film I'd ever watched, but his weirdness was already known to me. Much like a sneeze is preceeded by a deep breath, so to must "David Lynch" be followed by "weird." I'll be honest: I was only watching it because I wanted to have an informed opinion for why I didn't like him instead of the stereotype I'd given him from hearing other people talk; his movies are nonsensical. Things just happen, gross inexplicable things, and we as the audience are supposed to digest this crap on the principle that it's supposed to be deep or philosophical? Pucky! Film is a story telling platform, ergo, you have to be telling me a story, and story's always have explanations (or at least enough clues to form an explanation) for the things you see on screen.

So, the movie starts, and the weird sort of starts right away. You see a picturesque town where the firemen wave at you when they drive by. In slow motion of course. You see a kindly grandfather figure watering his lawn, and then have a heart attack. His fist still tightly clenches around the hose, and we watch the man's dog nip at the water as it comes out in a stream over the old man's body. We see the old man's daffodils, and then the camera pans down along the stem into the grass. The camera then penetrates topsoil to see an underground subterranean insect nightmare, where we behold beetles crawling all over eachother in a maddened frenzy, some fighting others. Camera cuts to the protagonist walking along.

Since my objective is not film summary, but rather the presentation of a concept, I'll speed this bit along. My interest was waning pretty heavily as it seemed as if it was a movie with a random assortment of characters that went about their lives doing things for no true justification, at least from what I could derive. Things progress, we have a human ear in the grass, the protagonist sneaking into a woman's apartment who gives him oral services and threatens to stab him if he moves, then we have mob bosses beating on women who can't get hot and bothered without getting beaten, a bizarre efeminate pee wee herman duplicate drug boss whose house is populated by old, fat, disgusting hookers apparently for those with extreme alternative tastes.

The movie progresses like this for some time; inexplicable oddity after inexplicable oddity, then the protagonist sneaks into the woman's apartment, and that's where the story comes in. At this point we learn that she's a lounge singer (well, rather, we knew this before) whose son was kidnapped by some drug lord types to keep her quiet on these mysterious doings, and we discover the police department is populated by crooked cops. As soon as I learned all this, I started to become intrigued, and the movie's weirdness was automatically cut by half. It's not that the events were less weird, but I was able to accomodate them better. At the end, the protagonist kills the antagonist, shooting him in the head, and that's all the payoff I needed. I love watching the bad guy get it in the end.

So, when I relayed the fact that movie wasn't all that weird once the story kicked in, he tried to argue with me. "No no no, it's a weird movie. It's sick, it's twisted, it's messed up." No, not really. My boss is also a big horror buff. Love's horror and gore. Me, not so much. I am willing to go through the lowest parts of human depravity as long as there's payoff, redemption, and explanation somewhere. I don't even mind if there's no redemption (Requiem for a Dream), but there has to be a redemptive message, or something like that somewhere. I'm getting off track.

My boss argued with me trying to convince me that it was weird. Same with a girl that frequents where I work. "No," they say, "Blue Velvet is a weird movie." That got me thinking: I know that the movie contains bizarre scenes and occurrences of weird events, but overall, I didn't think the movie was all that weird. Why is that? I thought of movies that I think are weird (which also happen to be crappy in my humble opinion), and namely, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Magnolia are the ones that come to mind. When I pressed my mind for further information, this is the explanation it put forth:

Those movies are weird because they offer up causal events that contain no rhyme, no reason. The movies do an insufficient job in explaining, or providing clues to an explanation, what you're seeing on screen. When the events are put inside of a narrative frame work and given sufficient motivation, they cease to be weird because it's something your mind has grasped.

I like this explanation. In both 2001 and Magnolia, there were segments that I liked, and those were the segments that seemed to be the most story heavy. In Magnolia when the frogs fell from the sky with no explanation, and in 2001 when the big blue baby appeared in space with nary a hint or half assed "why," immediately both the movies were thrown into the realm of weird on the grounds that things just didn't make sense. I've had Magnolia explained to me, and it's pretty much a load of bull. The only way you can derive that information is if someone tells you. Likewise, the only way you understand that baby nonsense in 2001 is if you've read the book, where events are strongly justified.

Even in movies where the weird factor is considerably larger, The Fountain, Donnie Darko, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, they feel to me infinitely less weird and more understandable because they're framed within in a story that justifies what you see, even if the justification is "the guy's on drugs. Y'know, what them ms and all."

So, that's my take on Blue Velvet and the weird effect in movies. Thoughts?