David Lynch.
Love him or loathe him, you have to admit that the man most certainly had his own style that he, mercifully, had not readily compromised in all his years as a prolific and highly esoteric filmmaker. His key titles are predominately dark, absurd, violent and erotic, always with a sly and subversive sense of humor, bordering on satire, that does take some getting used to. As we just lost the man at the beginning of this year, with him passing on to the Great Beyond on January 15th, 2025 from emphysema, which is no big surprise, as the dude happily smoked like a chimney for most of his existence, I’ve been meaning to dive back in and reexamine some of his lesser-seen (by me) titles.
Still, for such a unique ‘cinematic’ voice to be gone for good, we appreciators of the arts will feel the loss, especially in the seemingly brain-dead and nutless cinematic days we currently find ourselves in. However, on a ‘glass-half-full’ kinda note, the man did leave us a helluva filmography to revisit at anytime we choose.
Which is exactly what I did with THIS title.
Way back in the mists of time (early 90’s), my little movie-nerd buddies and I were always searching out the craziest ‘R’ rated shit we could get our grubby lil mitts on. I remember finding this one at the local video store and eagerly renting it, thinking my buddy and I were going to experience some straight-forward crime-spree blood-letting, titties and foul language.
We got most of what we hoped for… just minus the ‘straight-forward’ part.
I’ve always described Lynch’s films as really cool-looking ‘puzzles’…with key pieces missing. Odd, yet purposeful lapses in narrative logic and cohesion, often resulting in a fever dream-like ‘flavouring’, snake through his seemingly linear story-lines, usually taking you off in directions most unexpected.
Wild at Heart was no different and when the credits finally rolled up my buddy’s TV screen back in ‘91, we weren’t even sure of what we’d seen or if we even liked it.
And that’s how it’s stayed for nearly three decades, stuck in my mind as one of those that I’ve never landed a full opinion on, based on that one, solitary confused viewing in my early teens. So, in light of Lynch’s untimely expiration, I found me a decently-priced European Blu ray copy and intended to dive on in immediately upon receipt.
But then Life stepped in, as Life tends to do, rendering me abruptly single and eventually relocated. And finally, now that the smoke and debris from the low-key but necessary implosion of what I’d erroneously convinced myself was Life had settled, I said to my two beloved dog-girls (who I get on weekends, like some kinda pathetic divorcee’) – “Tonight, we’re going Wild at Heart!”. They looked at me, blinked, a fluffy tail wagged twice, and they went back to stealing each other’s snacks, like I didn’t even exist.
Another vodka-soda was concocted, pre-rolled cannabis was sparked (a happy sativa strain, as usual), and the pen and pad were positioned.
PLAY
Here lie scribbles…
-All the usual ‘Lynch’ players present and accounted for. Many directors develop a ‘stable’ of reliable actors, a well of talent that they routinely pull from to tell their various stories. Scorsese does this. Tarantino does this. Flanagan does this. And so did David Lynch. Peppered through the credits were Jack Nance, Isabella Rossellini, Freddie Jones and Laura Dern, players who worked with the man both before and after this flick, along with long-time composer Angelo Badalamenti, who was John Williams to Lynch’s ‘Spielberg’. The only one missing was Kyle MacLachlan (Dune, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks etc).
*Incidentally, Steven Spielberg placed Lynch in his semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans, as legendary director John Ford in an inspired bit of stunt casting, in what would be Lynch’s last onscreen role before his death.
-Instantly uncaged. So this crazed love story / road trip / head-fuck opens with Nicolas Cage’s wild-man ex-mob driver ‘Sailor Ripley’ fighting off an attack on his life by a sloppy hitman and viciously crushing the man’s skull into red pudding on marble steps in front of his girlfriend’s mother’s diamonds-and-furs crowd.
-Diane Ladd. RIP. It took me a moment to realize that Diane Ladd was playing ‘Marrietta’, ‘Lula’s crazed homicidal bitch of a mother. Another of Hollywood’s old-school royalty that we just recently lost as well.
– ‘Sailor Ripley’ is a quintessentially ‘Cage’ character. I’m pretty sure Lynch just told Cage to ‘go wild, be yourself’…and that’s what we got. The love of Elvis, the wild, crazed outbursts, the over-the-top mugging…hell, even the trademark snake-skin jacket he sports was literally out of Nicolas Cage’s own closet, so…*shrugs*
-Way to fuck up the mood, Sailor. Rape story. As ‘Lula’ is breathlessly reminiscing about their just-happened fuck session, ‘Sailor’ casually tosses in the helpful reminder that she was raped by an ‘uncle’ at 13, which understandably shifts the room’s dynamic. But it doesn’t last.
-That absurd ‘Lynch’ness gets me every time. Hilarious, brilliant and unsettling. Random musical number. The rules of Lynch World are their own and they’re not spelled out for you, the audience. Odd shit just…happens. Weirdos come…and go. Scenarios play out, existing within their own strange little spheres within whatever the main narrative happens to be, often contributing something that only Lynch himself seems to understand. Or possibly not. In this case, ‘Sailor’ breaks into a full-blown musical serenade ala Elvis of ‘Lula’, complete with the bar’s metal band and the entirety of the punk-rock patrons joining in, in perfect synch.
-Love Lynch’s close-ups. One aspect that I always appreciate are well-placed and interesting close-ups of things populating scenes, as sequences play out, and Lynch frequently does this in his flicks. As a whole, I like his cinematic style and camera compositions, which I find the close-ups compliment nicely.
-JE Freeman excels at creepy assholes. ‘The Dane’ in the excellent Miller’s Crossing (1990). ‘Dr. Wren’ in the atrocious Alien Resurrection (1997). Those are just two examples. Add ‘Marcelles Santos’ to the list. RIP, good sir.
-Laura Dern / ‘Lula’ is perpetually in heat. It’s kind of funny to look back at Laura Dern’s first outing with Lynch, in his twisted 1986 neo-noir crime tale Blue Velvet, where she played the sweetly naïve girl-next-door / cop’s daughter ‘Sandy’. Here, ‘Lula’ is rearing to bang at every turn and she’s not shy about it. It’s a testament to her range and dedication to Lynch’s gnarly vision that she effortlessly inhabits these two polar opposite characters so well.
-Crispin Glover?! Another Hollywood weirdo. Seems fitting. Notable oddball Crispin Glover (Back to the Future) not only seems like he’s tailor-made for a Lynch cast, but he seems like he just stepped out of the pages of a Lynch script into our Real Life; A-ha Take on Me style.
-2 person mosh pit in the middle of desolate nowhere. Sure, why not. ‘Lula’ and ‘Sailor’ spontaneously rock out in the sand and scrub at the side of a Texas desert road, with both Dern and Cage just givin ‘er in the dust at dusk. Probably looked hilarious on set that day.
-Sherilyn Fenn, you’ve seen better days, girl. Weird, side-quest side-story. Another from other Lynch projects, gorgeous Sherilyn Fenn (Twin Peaks) literally turns up out of the darkness as a car accident victim who stumbles around looking for her purse with a split-open head and internal bleeding, before dying in front of ‘Sailor’ and ‘Lula’, which freaks them out as they see it as a harbinger of doom
-Weird Wizard of Oz theme. Very in-your-face. That. Right there.
-Oh shit! ‘Bobby Peru’! One of Willem Dafoe’s most repellent characters…and here he was.
-Those fucking teeth! ‘Peru’ has big-ass gums and tiny little dirty baby teeth. It’s a fucking unsettling look, rendering the nasty bastard even more reptilian. *shudders*
-Two smokes in one…ok, stress is showing. Gee, I wonder why. Upon finding out that ‘Lula’ is…*SPOILERS*…pregnant (no surprise, given how often we see these two going at it), coupled with their dwindling funds, the hitman weirdos on their tail, and the offer of easy money-via-armed robbery via ‘Peru’, ‘Sailor’ grabs two of his Marlboro’s in one shot, with me thinking he was going to ignorantly pass one to the newly-preggers ‘Lula’, but instead he starts puffing on both like he’s hyperventilating his way through.
– ‘Peru’ is icky, vile. Dafoe is TOO good. There’s a really uncomfortable scene where ‘Peru’ sexually assaults ‘Lula’ while ‘Sailor’ is out and Dafoe plays it so grimy and intrusively, I wanted the fucker dead right then. Badly.
-I see strong parallels to Tarantino’s early works. I was reminded of the amazing True Romance (1993), and the divisive Natural Born Killers (1994) right off the bat. Though not Tarantino, Dominic Sena’s underrated Kalifornia (1993) also came to mind, another hard-edged, crime-spree road-movie.
-Awesomely satisfying, hilarious and gruesome death. SOMEONE takes some bullets to the chest and collapses, coming down on his own weapon (a sawed-off shotgun), literally blowing his head clean off. We see the pulped meat remains in what’s left of a stocking hit the pavement in a sickening close-up. But, man…once you stop laughing in disbelief, it’s very satisfying.
-…And a dog stole a blown-off hand, cuz why not. During the ill-fated bank robbery, ‘Peru’ gets trigger-happy and blasts the two employees, removing one’s hand completely. In a darkly comedic coda to the scene, we see the two bloodied men scrambling around trying to find the missing appendage. There’s a cut, and we see a dog sneak out the bank’s back door, the missing hand clenched in its jaws! Why? Only Lynch would know for sure. Bon appetite, good buddy!
-Is this Raising Arizona Part Two? And ‘Sailor’ ends up in the clink for a time-jump of 6 years. Whenever I see anything where Nicolas Cage is behind bars, the hilarious 1987 Coen Brothers caper Raising Arizona effortlessly leaps to mind. This was no different.
-Oh, damn! Forgot that Ladd and Dern were Mother / Daughter. It’s true…they are / were. And apparently this was NOT the first time they shared a screen together.
-Awww…he dropped the F-bomb. No, not THAT F-bomb…the other one. The gay one. The one that makes me cringe when I hear it, along with the dreaded ‘N’ word.
-Is that Sherilyn again? Close, but no cigar. It was an actress coincidentally named Sheryl Lee, who just happened to resemble Sherilyn Fenn, when she turns up as ‘Glinda’ the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz in a post-beating vision of ‘Sailor’s.
-WTF’s with his nose?! Not sure if I missed some details, but at the very end, when ‘Sailor’ is about to serenade ‘Lula’ again, over the end credits (with the proper Elvis song this time), his friggin nose looks like it’s made of paper mache’; off-colour and misshapen. No idea why.
*Quick inter-webz search says that it was supposed to resemble punch damage from a beat-down we see ‘Sailor’ take earlier, but the effect has been noted as diminishing the impact of the final shot. I agree. They should’ve just employed ‘movie logic’ and have his nose be fine, maybe a little bloody. But no more, not like what they attempted…and failed.
And that was my rewatch / revisit of David Lynch’s 1990 flick Wild at Heart.
What can I say…it’s Lynch. Lynch is gonna ‘Lynch’. You’re either into his style…or you’re not. I think it really is that simple. If you’re a fan of his dark, absurdist takes, his cryptic narratives and bizarre-o world characters, then I can easily recommend Wild at Heart, as it certainly ticks all the boxes for a ‘David Lynch Movie’ checklist.
I will say this – if you’re are thus far unexposed to the experience that is a ‘Lynch’ flick, this, and probably Blue Velvet, are safe bets, when it comes to accessibility for the average movie-goer. All the ‘Lynch’ is there, just tied to a 2 hour and 4-minute long narrative that is MOSTLY linear and easy-ish to follow, if a little long for its own good.
If you opt to give this expectedly strange title a go, it’ll help prep you for more advanced ‘Lynch’ classics, like Lost Highway (1997) or Mulholland Drive (2001), two others that I think are due for some revisit action soon.
“This is a snake-skin jacket. And for me, it’s a symbol of my individuality, and my belief…in personal freedom.”
-Sailor Ripley, 1990
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