director/screenwriter
David Lynch
based on
the novel by
Barry Gifford
producers
Steve Golin
Monty Montgomery
Sigurjon Sighvatsson
cinematographer
Frederick Elmes
music
Angelo Badalamenti
editor
Duwayne Dunham
cast
Nicolas Cage (Sailor Ripley)
Laura Dern (Lula Fortune)
Willem Dafoe (Bobby Peru)
J.E. Freeman (Marselles Santos)
Crispin Glover (Cousin Dell)
Diane Ladd (Marietta)
Calvin Lockhart (Reggie)
Isabella Rossellini (Perdita Durango)
Harry Dean Stanton (Johnnie Farragut)
Grace Zabriskie (Juana)
Sherilyn Fenn (Girl in Accident)
W. Morgan Sheppard (Mr. Reindeer)
David Patrick Kelly (Dropshadow)
Freddie Jones (George Kovich)
John Lurie (Sparky)
Jack Nance (00 Spool)
Pruitt Taylor Vince (Buddy)
Sheryl Lee (Glinda, the Good Witch)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 124m
u.s.
release: August 17,
1990
video
availability: VHS
other david
lynch films
reviewed on this website:
- dune
- lost
highway
- mulholland
drive
- the
straight story
- twin
peaks: fire walk with me
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David Lynch's new movie Wild
at Heart isn't wild at heart -- it's wild everywhere else,
particularly the groin. "Heart" isn't a word you might
associate with Lynch, who has made two of the most heartless
films in recent memory -- Eraserhead and Blue Velvet,
which just about dare you to stay in the same room with them.
I don't, by the way, mean "heartless" as an insult.
Lynch does have a taste for melodrama -- romantic anguish and
bliss pushed far beyond what's ordinarily accepted as literal
-- but he seldom shows much affection for his characters, or,
if he does, it's aesthetic affection. Lynch puts his people in
weird or terrifying situations, and when they respond in a way
that satisfies him he leans back and says "Fantastic."
Wild at Heart is something of a break from Lynch's
usual experimental detachment. He's not studying them so much
as presenting them this time. Yet they're still inarguably Lynchian
people, who say oddball things and nurse cornball fantasies.
The movie is based on Barry Gifford's novel, which Lynch probably
selected because of its southern-fried road-gothic strangeness
(almost all of the film's dialogue comes straight from Gifford).
It's a gentle, rambling road novel, with two central characters
-- ex-con Sailor and his hot-to-trot sweetheart Lula -- that
perhaps Lynch is fond of, in his way. Gifford had the
lovers separate at the end, but in the movie they stay together;
Lynch has said he couldn't bear the thought of breaking them
up -- they're perfect for each other.
We've only just sat down when
Sailor (Nicolas Cage) is set upon by a knife-wielding assassin.
Sailor pounds on him for a while, then cracks the man's skull
open on the marble floor. That's Lynch's way of saying, "This
isn't the kind of dream that lulls you in, like Blue Velvet
or Twin Peaks." And it's not. If anything, it's a
return to the stink and paranoia of Eraserhead -- full
of vomit left to dry on motel rugs, splattering brains, body
parts suspended in air or carried off by dogs. It's not a pleasant
film by any definition, and it's not remotely for everyone, but
it's true to Lynch's vision. He's doing what he wants. It may
not be what most other people want, but that isn't Lynch's
concern; it never has been.
Lynch doesn't fiddle much with
the novel's basic plot. He uses it as a springboard for bizarre
attractions, as he did with Frank Herbert's Dune.
The whole movie is Sailor and Lula (Laura Dern) on the road,
running from the various burnouts and psychopaths that Lula's
gonzo mother Marietta (Diane Ladd) has sent after them. For this
reason, Lynch can't ground the movie; there's no innocent small
town for him to explore. The universe of Wild at Heart
is aggressively, unapologetically insane from frame one. But
that has its own allure. The movie skitters along, stopping for
a car accident here, a bank robbery there. Lynch also tosses
in lots of people who aren't in the book: a stone-faced hit man
who has been hired by Lula's mother to kill Sailor; a big-time
gangster named Mr. Reindeer who does business over the phone
while sitting on the john; a trio of wackos headed by David Patrick
Kelly and Grace Zabriskie (both of Twin Peaks); a befuddled
old space cadet (Lynch regular Jack Nance) who talks about his
imaginary dog. There's also a great deal of homage to The
Wizard of Oz -- Lynch apparently means this to be his R-rated
version of L. Frank Baum's over-the-rainbow world, with its menagerie
of creatures and misfits.
The director also gives the
Lynch touch to a few characters he imports from Gifford: Johnnie
Farragut (Harry Dean Stanton), Marietta's lover, who giggles
and plays a bit of peekaboo with her; Lula's cousin Dell (Crispin
Glover), seen in flashback, who enjoys putting cockroaches in
his underwear; and, worst of all, Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe),
an ugly sociopath who nearly rapes Lula in her motel room (the
movie comes to a dead stop so we can watch Dafoe, in fake-toothed
grotesque closeup, forcing Laura Dern to say "Fuck me"
over and over; the camera seems to be swimming in the delirium
of sexual violence threatened but never acted on). They're all
here, the whole sick crew.
After a while, the parade of
loonies becomes a bit tiresome. And Lynch's ending is so cornball
that I imagine most of this film's audience, attuned to Lynchian
irony, will take it as a joke and snicker at it; but it's by
no means clear that he means it as a joke. The movie is
on fire, though; like it or not, it sticks to the ribs of your
mind. Everything is there for effect, even the performances.
Cage and Dern go way over the top into erotic desperation and
doomed romanticism; the supporting cast, to a man (or woman),
seem to have been encouraged to outdo the excesses of silent-film
actors. There are really no humans here, just actors instructed
to deliver lines that have no connection to our reality but are
somehow true to the movie's own frenetic reality.
Wild at Heart, despite winning the Palme d'Or at
Cannes (or perhaps because of it), has been almost unanimously
denounced by critics, and I think I can see why. The biggest
mistake David Lynch ever made was releasing this film after his
Twin Peaks series premiered and won the hearts of a thousand
journalists looking for a good cover story. There's been so much
Lynch hype that he's begun to seem like the flavor of the month,
the media's favorite oddball. But he's their favorite only when
he doesn't shake them up -- when he works inside a traditional,
not wholly respected medium and brings art and class to it. Such
people, I suspect, would rather Lynch made "nice" films
like The Elephant Man for the rest of his life. That's
all right, Dave, make your little drama for television, but don't
get too crazy -- don't make us lose sleep, don't make
us lose our lunch.
Despite minor qualms, I don't
find Wild at Heart offensive, as many critics have (Roger
Ebert just about wet himself panning the film on his show); but
I do find those critics' stay-in-your-place attitude offensive.
Lynch is trying to grow as a filmmaker, to go somewhere he hasn't
gone before, but the critics want him to deliver Twin Peaks
over and over. I find that too abhorrent to think about.
Pauline Kael once wrote, "If you're afraid of movies that
excite your senses, you're afraid of movies." And if you're
afraid of Wild at Heart...
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