Wild At Heart (1990)

Now, time to tackle some Lynch.

I've been on a Lynch high recently. Watching Wild At Heart, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and before all these, the Twin Peaks series and prequel movie. Lynch has become somewhat of a fascination to me now and I rate all of his stuff that I have seen very highly and would say Twin Peaks is possibly my favourite TV show in existence, but this review is of his 1990 movie Wild At Heart. Here goes...


Now I know this is going to be a hard film to review, for reasons simply being it's a David Lynch film. People who know about and have seen some of his work will know what I mean. Some of the things this man puts on film are either hard to describe or leave you speechless. I can't say for sure that this movie on a whole did either of those things to me, but certain scenes of it did.

Now, although this film isn't the hardest film to sum up (compared to say Mulholland Dr.) I'll try my best. This flick is about a "couple" called Lula Pace Fortune (played by Laura Dern Blue Velvet) and Sailor Ripley (played by Nicolas Cage). This couple are very much in love but Lula's mother, Marietta Fortune (played by Diane Ladd) is trying her hardest to keep this couple apart, hiring a private detective to find them and a hitman to kill Sailor. All sounds simple doesn't it? Well, this is a Lynch movie...

The opening scene of this film shows Sailor, who is brilliantly played by Cage in my opinion (although in most other films I don't like him, except maybe Face/Off) getting bothered by a man who eventually pulls out a knife, Lula seeing this knife shouts to Sailor and a brutal manslaughter takes place. Now this is all within the first 5 minutes and the murder of this person by Sailor is pretty brutal and graphic (topped only by the scene of a character blowing his whole head off with a shotgun!). Kudos to Lynch for being brave enough to show how dangerous he wants Sailor to be portrayed as in this film. Sailor is put in jail and the film skips forward to when he is released, picked up from jail by Lula and the couple embark on a road trip together.

Now, the film on a whole seems rather disjointed, which is sometimes expected from Lynch. So rather than try to talk about the film on a whole, I'm going to talk about some of my personal stand out scenes.

One of which being when Lula and Sailor find a car crash out in the desert in the middle of the night. This is one of those classic Lynch scenes where you don't know whether to laugh or cry. The couple go and investigate after spotting some clothes scattered out on the road. What they find is a car turned on it's head and two dead bodies. At first we see the couple just look around the wreck, but then we see someone who has survived the crash come out of the darkness and talk to the couple. This person is played by the lovely Sherylin Fenn (Audrey Horne from Twin Peaks). The person is delusional and starts babbling on about losing her credit cards. Sailor attempts to help her but she eventually dies in his arms. This scene stood out as being powerful to me as it showed that Sailor cares for others and not only himself or Lula. It showed that this couple, although technically being "bad" can also be good and are good. This is what I like about Lynch movies, his characters may seem one dimensional at times but then something will happen to them and you realise that they are very human.

Another stand out scene for me is when Sailor sings to Lula at a concert. This again is another classic thing to happen in a Lynch movie. Lynch seems to like to tell emotions and stories through music and will have his characters sing songs. The scene stood out for me mainly for that reason, but it is also a very visual pleasing scene. The lighting is very good and everything compliments everything. But that can be said about the rest of the movie (or any other Lynch movie).

This movie is basically about the strengths of love and the limits some people will go to either prove their love of the limits they will go for their love.

This movie was hard to write a review for but I felt I wanted to write it as I enjoyed it so much. It was graphic, funny, engaging and emotional. What more do you need? Oh, and it had Sheryl Lee (Laura Palmer of Twin Peaks) dressed as "the good witch" too!

I recommend this film and any other Lynch film to anyone, although they are not to everyone's tastes...

More Lynch reviews in the near future.