Wild at Heart
Sometimes you can get struck with a love so consuming, so overwhelming, it's like wildfire, and the rest of the world looks insane by comparison. Wild at Heart is a love story between two very wild souls, Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) and Lula Pace Fortune (Laura Dern), whose passion for one another is all that really matters. But Sailor's affection for Lula infuriates her mother, Marietta (Diane Ladd), who once had designs on him herself, and tried to have him killed as a result of his rebuttal. After serving a brief stint in prison for manslaughter, Sailor breaks parole with Lula by his side; but somewhere over the rainbow, Marietta plots her revenge.
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Directed and adapted for the screen by David Lynch, Wild at Heart is painted in bold strokes with larger than life characters, and is steeped in dream-like intensity and metaphor. Sailor carries himself like a scion of Elvis Presley, even periodically breaking out into song like his apparent guru, throwing kicks and punches for flair on the dance floor. Lula is a fiery, sexual young woman, whose obsession with her man is an oasis from a home life which is suggested to be one that was full of abuse and crime. Although Sailor is no saint, he has a conscience, and is someone who actually respects Lula. Much of Wild at Heart involves Sailor and Lula just talking with one another, opening up and sharing their respective stories, trusting each other more and more, even when it comes with the risk of rejection as these painful confessions. The relationship between Lula and Sailor actually has more in common with the lovers in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, like their amount of time in bed together, smoking, and other introspective moments they share. Sailor is a hero to Lula, someone who can command the attention of a heavy metal club, and also perform a love song by Elvis as though Lula were the only woman in the room. They share stories of their parentage; Lula's mother and her deceased father figure into Sailor's past as well, since Sailor used to be a driver in their criminal organization before he quit and met Lula. Sailor worked for one of Marietta's former lovers, Marcello Santos (J. E. Freeman), who fans the flames of Marietta's wrath to revenge himself against Sailor for something he may or may not have seen involving Lula's late, immolated father. When Santos gets involved, his underworld connections result in a hit called out on Sailor, stepping up the tension of how and when Sailor will be ambushed due to the proverbial hornet nests he kicked along the way, and the bridges he's burned.
Like the myriad worlds of other films by David Lynch, Wild at Heart features supporting characters that are "more real than real", that burst from the screen with eccentric idiosyncrasies and primal intensity. Many references in Wild at Heart are made to The Wizard of Oz; in a sense, Sailor and Lula are navigating their own "yellow brick road", encountering strange "creatures" and trials along the way. There are outlandish characters like "Mr. Reindeer" (W. Morgan Sheppard), a high-ranking figure in the underworld who surrounds himself with topless maids, and orchestrates the hit on Sailor. There is Sailor's one-time ally, Perdita Durango (Isabella Rossellini), a bleached blonde crook with a sardonic attitude. There is Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe), with his rotted teeth and vicious sneer, and an uncouth attitude and sliminess that makes your skin crawl. All of these characters exist in a kind of world that is not our own, that operates by its own rules and logic--like in The Wizard of Oz. Even Lula visualizes seeing her mother upon a broomstick out on the midnight badlands like the Wicked Witch of the West. The complex plot is intentionally muddied to keep your attention constantly off-balance, preventing the audience in becoming complacent in Sailor and Lula's odyssey. Like Lynch's later film, Mulholland Drive, Wild at Heart insinuates a multitude of conspiracies and subplots lurking in its demesne. And like his prior film, Blue Velvet, this film twists and subverts the comforts of nostalgia in order to deliver grim or even terrifying encounters, teasing a world filled with light, but only by braving the deepest darkness. In this perilous domain, people fall prey to the madness lurking in the shadows. Marietta is one example, overwrought with being unable to rationalize her obsessive control over Lula and her conflicted feelings for Sailor--putting her in a constant state of breakdown or on the verge of one. Even Lula's story to Sailor about her insane cousin, called "Jingle Dell" (Crispin Glover)--for his obsession about Christmas--indicates that the world of Wild at Heart is one where the naive or innocent are chewed up by the forces of evil, be they criminals or something more abstract.
The casting of real-life mother/daughter combo of Diane Ladd and Laura Dern is inspired; not only does it add an extra dimension to their interactions on screen, but their similarities in appearance suggest a lot about the similarities in their characters. Coming off of the runaway success of "Twin Peaks", Wild at Heart also features many key players from the TV show in minor parts, including David Patrick Kelly, Sherilyn Fenn, Grace Zabriskie, and Sheryl Lee, who plays "The Good Witch" in another nod to The Wizard of Oz. Even in comparatively minor roles, the effect is that the world of Wild at Heart is like a tangent plane of existence to "Twin Peaks", orbiting some distant star in the cosmos of David Lynch's universe. Wild at Heart features both a musical score by long-time collaborating composer, Angelo Badalamenti, as well as an eclectic mix of both classic rock and rockabilly music alongside thrash metal, in keeping with Lynch's oeuvre. The music often corresponds with the quick transitions between moments of light-natured dialogue and extreme violence, sometimes quick as a wink. There is a kind of raw, wild poetry to Sailor and Lula, including meditations about the disintegrating ozone, ponderings about the deeper meaning of a snakeskin jacket, and the persistent metaphor of fire--the spirit of the flame which burns inside them both. The titanic personalities in Wild at Heart move like comets, burning hot in the night sky, and makes the film a manic, intense thrill.
Recommended for: Fans of a fiery and outlandish adventure through a surreal, almost nightmarish representation of the South, in the iconic style of David Lynch. This is a place where rationale is a burden, and the experience is found in the energy of the film more than the plot proper.
Like the myriad worlds of other films by David Lynch, Wild at Heart features supporting characters that are "more real than real", that burst from the screen with eccentric idiosyncrasies and primal intensity. Many references in Wild at Heart are made to The Wizard of Oz; in a sense, Sailor and Lula are navigating their own "yellow brick road", encountering strange "creatures" and trials along the way. There are outlandish characters like "Mr. Reindeer" (W. Morgan Sheppard), a high-ranking figure in the underworld who surrounds himself with topless maids, and orchestrates the hit on Sailor. There is Sailor's one-time ally, Perdita Durango (Isabella Rossellini), a bleached blonde crook with a sardonic attitude. There is Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe), with his rotted teeth and vicious sneer, and an uncouth attitude and sliminess that makes your skin crawl. All of these characters exist in a kind of world that is not our own, that operates by its own rules and logic--like in The Wizard of Oz. Even Lula visualizes seeing her mother upon a broomstick out on the midnight badlands like the Wicked Witch of the West. The complex plot is intentionally muddied to keep your attention constantly off-balance, preventing the audience in becoming complacent in Sailor and Lula's odyssey. Like Lynch's later film, Mulholland Drive, Wild at Heart insinuates a multitude of conspiracies and subplots lurking in its demesne. And like his prior film, Blue Velvet, this film twists and subverts the comforts of nostalgia in order to deliver grim or even terrifying encounters, teasing a world filled with light, but only by braving the deepest darkness. In this perilous domain, people fall prey to the madness lurking in the shadows. Marietta is one example, overwrought with being unable to rationalize her obsessive control over Lula and her conflicted feelings for Sailor--putting her in a constant state of breakdown or on the verge of one. Even Lula's story to Sailor about her insane cousin, called "Jingle Dell" (Crispin Glover)--for his obsession about Christmas--indicates that the world of Wild at Heart is one where the naive or innocent are chewed up by the forces of evil, be they criminals or something more abstract.
The casting of real-life mother/daughter combo of Diane Ladd and Laura Dern is inspired; not only does it add an extra dimension to their interactions on screen, but their similarities in appearance suggest a lot about the similarities in their characters. Coming off of the runaway success of "Twin Peaks", Wild at Heart also features many key players from the TV show in minor parts, including David Patrick Kelly, Sherilyn Fenn, Grace Zabriskie, and Sheryl Lee, who plays "The Good Witch" in another nod to The Wizard of Oz. Even in comparatively minor roles, the effect is that the world of Wild at Heart is like a tangent plane of existence to "Twin Peaks", orbiting some distant star in the cosmos of David Lynch's universe. Wild at Heart features both a musical score by long-time collaborating composer, Angelo Badalamenti, as well as an eclectic mix of both classic rock and rockabilly music alongside thrash metal, in keeping with Lynch's oeuvre. The music often corresponds with the quick transitions between moments of light-natured dialogue and extreme violence, sometimes quick as a wink. There is a kind of raw, wild poetry to Sailor and Lula, including meditations about the disintegrating ozone, ponderings about the deeper meaning of a snakeskin jacket, and the persistent metaphor of fire--the spirit of the flame which burns inside them both. The titanic personalities in Wild at Heart move like comets, burning hot in the night sky, and makes the film a manic, intense thrill.
Recommended for: Fans of a fiery and outlandish adventure through a surreal, almost nightmarish representation of the South, in the iconic style of David Lynch. This is a place where rationale is a burden, and the experience is found in the energy of the film more than the plot proper.