Wild at Heart

Outrageous! This is another sick-but-fascinating David Lynch film, maybe his sickest, although I've never seen Eraserhead.

The most interesting feature of this strange movie, I think, was the weird characters, one after the other. Make that ultra-weird.....and the strangest of them all is "Bobby Peru," played by Willem Dafoe. In all my years of movie watching, I think "Bobby Peru" still has to rank in the top five of the creepiest characters. He is so outrageously disgusting and perverted you just have to laugh out loud at him.

In fact, "outrageous" might be the best word to describe this film, characters and all.

This wild and entertaining film sometimes makes me shake my head in disgust that I own it, and at other times makes me just laugh out loud at the absurdity of it. You really have to have a dark sense of humor to appreciate much of it. I do, to some degree....enough to keep viewing this.

Nicholas Cage is particularly fun to watch and provides most of the laughs. Laura Dern is also convincing as a trailer-trash-type. If you want a clue on why Dern would play such a sleazy role, check out her real-life mom in this film, Diane Ladd, who plays her mother in the movie. It looks like Mom passed on her wholesome values.

As with some other Lynch films, the music is outstanding: just a great soundtrack. I bought the CD to this a year after first seeing the movie, and I've always enjoyed it. And, another Lynch trait that certainly is here is the excellent visual style, which is enhanced by the widescreen DVD.

So, if you are looking for an outrageous two hours and you aren't easily shocked or offended, this would be a film to consider.

The opening scene to Wild At Heart features Nick Cage ferociously beating an assassin to death. Heads are rammed against walls, fists are lunged into guts and what results is a brutally bashed corpse with brains pouring out of it's head. This kind of high-octane violence which is fueled by maniacal characters and deranged intervals creates a fantastic effect. One which has so much impact and so much individuality to it's merit that it turns out to be one hell of a movie.

This is simultaneously a thrilling road movie and a revelation of small town, American country folk. The two protagonists, Sailor and Lula (Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern) are so in love with each other that they'd go to extreme lengths not to be separated. Their separation is exactly what Lula's crazed mother wants, as she believes that Sailor is a cold-blooded murderer who is putting her daughter in danger. Her anger is so fierce that the viewer becomes slightly scared by her: her manic fits of rage where she plasters herself in red lipstick; her bizarre paroxysms fueled by numerous cocktails. All of her slight idiosyncrasies and mannerisms well up to create a very intimidating mother. She sends out a hitman to dispose of Sailor and bring back her daughter, but the lovely couple are on the run from her and the law.

Sailor and Lula meet up with some very strange characters whilst travelling far away from Lula's mother. The eccentricities of 'Tuna Town' in Texas, the insane car accident victim and Lula's nutcase cousin who believes that "the man with the black glove is coming to get him". It's all rudimentary David Lynch fare. He has mastered the art of contemporary film making: a clever blend of black-comedy, violence and fantasy.

The viewer builds an empathy for the two main characters, as it would be a terrible thing to see their undying love for each other shattered. The other characters in the movie all seem to want to destroy that love. Sailor's character, although violent and hardbitten, seems the most normal of the lot. It takes a sane man to make sense of all the insane folk in America's underbelly. He puts up with a lot from everyone, but all he really wants to do is escape from it all with Lula.

After all, who can love in a world that's wild at heart?

Nine out of ten.

Wild at Heart is probably the most conventional David Lynch film I've seen. That being said, it still remains very far from mainstream. Wild at Heart revolved around a young couple, played to perfection by Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern. Fast paced, mostly ridiculous, and pretty unrealistic, Wild at Heart is far from perfect, but a very fun film to watch.

The premise is strange, but intriguing. A young couple is separated when the guy, an Elvis fanatic named Sailor (Nicolas Cage), goes to prison for manslaughter after defending himself against a man who threatened him. When he gets out, he is desperate to get Lula (Laura Dern), the girl he loves, back again. Lula is more than willing to pick up the relationship, but if her mother has anything to do with it, she won't have a chance. Being young and in love, the girl rebels. However, her mother's desperation leads her to contact a hit-man she is in knows and the young couple is forced to run away. The two lovebirds head to California and encounter all sorts of crazy situations along the way.

Arguably the best thing about Wild at Heart is its great cast. Nicolas Cage is in his prime here and the role is, somewhat, reminiscent of the "repeat offender" he played in Raising Arizona. Nicolas Cage was great in his pre-action-hero movies. Laura Dern is equally excellent. I'd never understood the reason for her popularity in sexy roles. It's effective here, though, and she embodies sweet yet trashy Lula wonderfully. Supporting performances by Willem Defoe, Harry Dean Stanton, and Diane Ladd also provide liveliness that enhances the film.

Although it deals with such serious subjects as murder, incest, and general family dysfunction, Wild at Heart is anything but serious. The film is chocked full of amusing moments and over the top clichés. The best example of this is the presence of a rich, older crime boss with a penchant for having young – preferably naked – young girls surrounding him at all times he's present. There are a few moments when the style gets repetitive and the characters do something worthy of much eye-rolling. Despite that, this movie is never boring and fairly unpredictable.

Wild at Heart is a fun adventure to hitch a ride on. It is full of energy and snappy dialogue. Unlike most Lynch films, it is very linear and straight forward. The acting is excellent and the characters are strangely likable. Wild at Heart feels a little long and drags in a few places toward the end, but this barely hinders the film in its entirety. This is an amusing film, one that would make a good introduction to Lynch for those unfamiliar. For the rest of us, it's simply an enjoyable piece of film-making.

8/10

I feel like "Wild at Heart" is one of Lynch's forgotten films, and I can sort of see why. Though I enjoyed my time with Sailor (Nicolas Cage, "Leaving Las Vegas"), Lula (Laura Dern, "Marriage Story"), and all the other various other bizarre characters that populate this weird romantic tale, I can honestly say that this is one of my least favorite Lynch movies. It's not bad, it just doesn't do a whole lot for me, especially when compared to Lynch's masterpieces (Twin Peaks TV show, "Eraserhead", "Mulholland Drive", "Inland Empire"). When Lynch is at the peak of his directing powers, his films can prompt me to question and meditate upon the very nature of our reality; "Wild at Heart" is just a decent road trip movie with a few really quirky moments and a whole lot of wackos.

As a side note: it blows my mind that this won the Palme d'Or in 1990. According to IMDb's trivia section on this film, Roger Ebert, who seemed to have a distaste for Lynch (check out his "Blue Velvet" review), booed so loudly that it almost drowned out the cheers when the award was announced. Though I honestly don't think this film deserves to stand beside the likes of other winners like "Parasite", "Shoplifters", "Blue is the Warmest Color", or "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days", I also can't ever imagine being so upset over a film award that I'd boo the recipient... but hey, that's just me.

Wild at Heart is not David Lynch at his best, personally much prefer Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man, Mulholland Drive and The Straight Story and is definitely not going to be everybody's cup of tea. But while it has its flaws Wild at Heart still impresses and fascinates in many ways, also don't think that it's his worst like some people I know in the past have said(that'd be Dune). The story does feel very randomly structured at times, especially true with Crispin Glover, and some of the pacing slackens; the film could have done with being shorter as some scenes did feel too padded and underdeveloped, and the script can be a confused jumble and not always easy to understand completely(though admittedly there are some quotable lines). There are many great things with Wild at Heart however because the cinematography is stunning, the scenery is bursting with vivid colour and there are plenty of bold colours and lighting with some of the visuals being wonderfully deranged. There is also a hypnotic soundtrack that adds so much to the feel of the film, the music choices being also quite interesting, while Lynch's direction while not the best he's ever done(tied between Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive) but it is very adept and has his unique style all over. The story is not the best but the atmosphere is just great, just loved the campiness, the eroticism and haunting weirdness, it's hardly uneventful and there are some memorable moments like the incredibly chilling robbery sequence and the ending. The Wizard of Oz references while a little over-used are fun. The characters are not likable at all, in fact in the cases of Marietta and Bobby a few of them could be seen as loathsome, but considering the atmosphere and viciously violent but also sexy content of the film it is clear that they weren't intended to be. The performances are fine, Nicholas Cage will induce polarising opinions but while he was wooden to start with he was charming and entertaining once he warmed up. Laura Dern is alluring with the two working comfortably together, while Diana Ladd manages to be both hilarious and scary and Willem Dafoe is unforgettably creepy. The cameos acquit themselves well too. All in all, incredibly strange and not without flaws but also fascinating. 7/10 Bethany Cox