and
So I just went with the one with Nic Cage in it.
Our story begins in Cape Fear, somewhere on the border between North and South Carolina. Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern) are just about the most prototypical of young lovers that you’re ever gonna see, a fact which infuriates Lula’s mother Marietta Fortune, so much so that she hires someone to try and kill him. It fails, although Sailor ends up in prison a few months for manslaughter, and when the release date finally rolls around he and Lula ditch Cape Fear and hit the road for sunny California, the land of hopes and dreams. Marietta Fortune takes that about as well as she did before, only this time she goes to a man named Marcellus Santos, a man intimately connected with both Lula and Sailor’s past and one with varied, dangerous connections. Will Sailor and Lula’s love managed to withstand the machinations of Lula’s mother and Marcellus Santos, or will the yellow brick road lead them down the path to ruin? And yes, that is a Wizard of Oz reference, one of approximately 5 hundred you’ll be hearing when you watch this movie.
With critical darling Blue Velvet still only a couple years old, and Twin Peaks taking the television world by storm, Lynch was arguably at the peak of his popularity in 1990, and it shows in Wild Heart’s production. Not only do we have Angelo Badalamenti working his magic on the score, but the movie feels absolutely stuffed with talent, both new and old additions to the world of Lynch. Nic Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Crispin Glover, Harry Dean Stanton, Isabella Rossellini, Grace Zabriskie, Jack Nance, and that’s just a portion of the folks in the opening credits. It’s like Lynch had suddenly received a big fat inheritance from a deceased relative and this was the result of the subsequent shopping spree.
Ironically though, aside from Dune, Wild at Heart might be the least Lynchian Lynch that I’ve covered so far. Sure, you’ve got the blending of the old and the modern, bizarre cast of characters that speaking nonsense, the veneer of placidity that masks the grimy, horrific truth that are staples of many Lynch works, but not presented quite the same way. In films such as Lost Highway, the main character’s dialogue could damn near fit on one sheet of paper; In Wild at Heart it feels as if there’s almost constant dialogue, Sailor and Lula can’t seem to exist in each other’s company without delving into each other’s most innermost thoughts. Rather than the long, pregnant pauses of Mulholland Dr., Wild at Heart is a wild (natch) beast; Scenes will suddenly explode with energy, music blaring, what have you, we constantly cut away from scenes for flashbacks and such, about every other one actually being relevant to the story. It’s a different kind of Lynch behind the camera here, or at least it feels like it, and this Lynch likes to play things fast and loose.
Angelo Badalamenti returns to music duty this time around as I said, and in many ways it’s just as eclectic as the film itself. From the smokey, smooth jazz straight out of Twin Peaks to death metal in the blink of an eye, with some stops at big band, blues, garage rock and folk along the way. All stuff that I enjoy by the way, so even if it does get a bit herky-jerky it’s probably one of my favorite soundtracks for a David Lynch film so far.
I’m not sure how I feel about Wild at Heart though, if I’m being honest. Sometimes it feels like a continuation of Blue Velvet, where the innocent ‘dream world’ our characters attempt to exist in is intruded upon by the ‘real world’, with Sailor and Lula’s constant references to the Wizard of Oz (a story which ultimately reveals itself to be a dream) being the obvious nod to that. Other times it feels like some kind of ketamine-laced fairy tale, complete with evil mother figure, as our protagonists take the archetypal journey, face the archetypal trials and learn the archetypal lessons in hallucinatory and dissociative ways. Which on paper sounds fine, but in execution it can come off as tone deaf in areas that he should and has treated seriously, and bizarrely gooy in others, not in the way we’ve come to expect.It’s almost as if Wild at Heart was an attempt by Lynch to create his own Raising Arizona and the styles just do not mesh well together.
Of course a lot of people were sold just on the fact that the words ‘Nic Cage’ and ‘David Lynch’ were in the same sentence, and yes, if you ever wanted to see the star of National Treasure belting out Elvis Presley songs then this is the movie of your dreams. Other than that it’s actually a rather mellow performance from him, perhaps because he’s working next to amazing actors like Laura Dern and Willem Dafoe that he doesn’t need to take things off the rails. Still, listening to the guy from Con Air talking in an exaggerated Elvis drawl for 2 hours is something you need to see to believe.
A magic realist road trip crime thriller romance movie. Even now I’m still not sure what to make of it, but I guess if it’s still got me thinking about it now then that’s a good sign. Wild at Heart gets the recommendation from me, for better or worse you can always count on David Lynch to provide a unique cinematic experience. Grab your favorite snakeskin jacket and a bowl of popcorn and treat yourself to a weird Halloween.
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