Salvaje de corazón

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.

This is how Lynch described his attraction to Gifford's book. It speaks just as well about every other film he made of course where a certain amount of fear makes the things to dream about stand out from the night as all the more urgent.

It has enough going for it either way; a road movie given to us with a gonzo eye, crime and anguish as kitchen- sink ritual, archetypally American male and female avatars of sexual youth, a sense of wanting to just love but the world is a wicked place, and if that's not enough something else will come along in the next scene.

It was awarded the top prize that year at Cannes. I would have to guess that the French saw some of this as archetypally tweaked America, quintessential in the fracture. It's the same audience that was going to receive Pulp Fiction with plaudits in a few years.

And this is the whole thing. At this point Lynch could still be thought of as one among the quirky bunch that included the Coens, Stone and soon Tarantino. But can he be thought of as one of them now? No indeed and that's how much he has evolved.

What sets Lynch apart is that others create movies as self-enclosed worlds; for Lynch it's rather one larger, open-ended world that he carries with him everywhere and now and then summons some part of it in movie form.

The Coens for example, who are closest to him in several ways, both work with metaphysics and indulge loves for song, noir and dreams. Blue Velvet and Raizing Arizona, I can't think of one without the other, both with a dreamlike noir engine that skewers idyllic middle America. But the Coens think up a story and cleanly work out its mechanism, Lynch's work seems to come from prolonged stays in meditative habitation of that world. They are intellectuals, he's spiritual (not the same as pious).

Except this one came from a book Lynch was given while finishing the Twin Peaks pilot and decided to do; not so much summoned from his world as he visited someone else's and came back with impressions. Now in my third viewing, it continues to be my least favorite of his post- Velvet long works that constitute the Lynch world but still one of the most endearing messes I know. It's Lynch letting out steam more than anything.

But I'll keep with me the powerful noir engine that creates the fearful dreaming; two women, mother and daughter, who are traumatized by something they (she) allowed to happen (rape, husband's murder) and this is now spilling and surging through the film as helplessness to resist evil (most notably seen in the helplessness to avert the PI's death and the Bobby Peru scene).

It does show Lynch as a humanist filmmaker, not a cynic, and that alone elevates it above mere carnage.

Almost two years after beating a man to death in a fight, Sailor is released from prison and restarts his relationship with Lula - much to the disapproval of Lula's mother. When Sailor and Lula break parole and head for California, she hires a hitman after them to kill Sailor. Unaware of this, Sailor and Lula continue west, encountering all manner of weird and wonderful people on their way.

I first tried to watch this when it first came on television, but I was watching it with family and felt uncomfortable with the nudity and turned it off. Years later I have seen many other Lynch films, have loved Twin Peaks and looked forward to a chance to watch it. I sat to watch it aware of the basic plot and that it was to be full of references to Wizard of Oz, but I wasn't prepared for the biggest surprise - that it just wasn't that good a film. I am not adverse to Lynch's universe of weird characters but I don't like it when I get the feeling that he is simply being weird for the sake of it.

Certainly that seemed to be the case here: the plot is so loose and meaningless to almost be pointless even as a frame for weirdness - which is what it really is. The references to Wizard of Oz are all there but, rather than being part of the film, they are stuck in with clumsiness all the way - they seem like a gimmicky afterthought rather than a carefully scripted part of the film. The plot is more a collected of the usual Lynchian weirdness and gore. Sometimes this works really well when it is framed within an engaging film, but here the characters, images and action are all just left drifting in a relatively empty film. It's a shame because I really like many of Lynch's films and was looking forward to this, but even I am forced to admit that this film just isn't that good.

The cast features many of Lynch regulars, but many seem to be lost due to the fact that they haven't got the material to do their stuff within. Cage is really quite good despite his simple character. Dern is given more to do but comes across rather hammy with it - her character should have had the emotional buy in to the film but she can't deliver it. Turns from Dafoe, Stanton, Rossellini, Fenn, Glover and others are all good but they exist as free floating weird characters rather than part of the film in the way I would have liked.

Overall this is a typical Lynchian film in it's imagery, weird characters, strange story and violent/sexual content. Usually these would be good things in this context but here they aren't put together very well creating a film that, although worth seeing and weirdly fascinating, is not actually that good a film.

The most creative and controversial director in cinema is back with a road-movie! Wild at Heart is one rough roller coaster ride and a typical Lynch-cocktail of violence, sex and of course…bizarre characters. I challenge you to find one personality in this film that could be referred to as a ‘normal human being'. As usually, Lynch introduces a bunch of wicked individuals in his film who're all messed up in the head pretty bad. Yet, I feel like Wild at Heart might be Lynch's most accessible film (outside The Elephant Man and The Straight Story). The structure remains chronological and quite easy to follow. Unlike the previous Blue Velvet, I feel like the plot and development of Wild at Heart is a bit inferior to the wonderful photography. The greatest aspects in the screenplay are in fact the delicious side-chapters that are told without absolute necessity. Like the story about Lula's cousin Dell (Crispin Glover), the torture of Harry Dean Stanton's character and the nasty and disturbing images of a car accident the protagonists come across. These are the little sequences that truly prove Lynch's talent as a storyteller. Overall and simply put: this movie is COOL! It's a joy to watch and you really hate to love some of the offensive characters. Willem Dafoe takes the cake as Bobby Peru. His portrayal is a neat follow-up to Blue Velvet's Frank Booth. Peru is a filthy and despicable pervert with itchy-trigger-fingers! It's a damn shame he hasn't got any more screen time. Wild at Heart surely isn't the greatest masterpiece out there, but you should love it for what it is: an absurd and entertaining adventure with a couple of thought-provoking values and an extraordinary love-lesson.

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