Summary:
Young lovers Sailor and Lula go on the run after Lula’s mother tries to keep them apart by any means necessary.
My Thoughts:
After I had finished Twin Peaks and “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me”, I was looking through David Lynch’s filmography to see how much of his work I had not yet seen, and I was surprised to find that, while I have barely seen any of Lynch’s shorts, I had only not seen two of Lynch’s features: “Wild at Heart” and “The Straight Story”. I set out to rectify that soon after that discovery.
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.
“This whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top.”
After Sailor (Cage) kills a man in self-defense, he goes to prison for twenty-two months. After he’s let out, he and his girlfriend Lula (Dern) head out to California to escape from Lula’s overbearing mother Marietta (Diane Ladd, “Chinatown”). Marietta is obsessed with Sailor and hates to think that her daughter is with him, so she sends a number of men after the pair, including a private investigator (Harry Dean Stanton, “Paris, Texas”), and murderous criminals Santos (JE Freeman, “Miller’s Crossing”) and Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe, “The Lighthouse”).
One of the things that took me by surprise was how shockingly violent and sexual this movie is. Sexuality is a theme that runs heavily through every Lynch movie, so I wasn’t completely surprised by that element, though, I do have to say this film sexualizes Dern far more so than I would’ve expected, and there are a few scenes where the amount of nudity seems a bit superfluous. Still, while the amount of sex was a bit surprising, I was truly surprised by the graphic nature of the violence. To be clear: I didn’t hate what Lynch was doing with the violent parts of this movie, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit; it was just a bit more violent than I was expecting. Even in the first scene, we’re shown a murder (in self-defense) where Nic Cage smashes a man’s head in until his brains leak out of his skull. Many of Lynch’s films have shocking, violent moments (“Lost Highway” in particular), but I’d venture to guess this is probably Lynch’s most violent film he ever made. Throughout the road trip, Cage and Dern come across all sorts of violent incidents; some of those moments make for hauntingly beautiful scenes, and others make for ludicrous and hilarious ones. The way that Lynch navigates and crafts that violence to his story is one of the more interesting parts of the film.
Another thing that I liked about this movie was just the overall weirdness. This tale is essentially just a road trip movie, but Lynch infuses into the story all sorts of fantastical elements, like the more surreal violent scenes, or the references to “The Wizard of Oz” that are peppered throughout the storyline. For the most part, the general weirdness of the movie was enough to keep me 100% invested in whatever it was that was going on. The unique characters keep things interesting, and the way those unique characters interact together is even more so. Out of all the characters, I thought Bobby Peru and Marietta Fortune were the most interesting, but Johnnie Farragut is also a pretty great Harry Dean Stanton character. I honestly thought Nicolas Cage looked like he was coked out of his mind for like 90% of this movie, doing a ridiculous amount of karate, but for better or worse that unrestrained energy brought a lot to the character of Sailor Ripley.
Verdict:
As a whole I think that “Wild at Heart” is a very watchable movie, though I don’t honestly think it’s nearly on the same level as some of Lynch’s other flicks. “Wild at Heart” feels, to me, like a director still trying to find what he’s trying to say with his art, and while this movie has moments of brilliance, it doesn’t inspire me or make me ponder my existence.
Review Written By: