Wild at Heart
Venting a director’s frustration with movie reviewers, John Boorman once stated, “they care about the conventional values of narrative and construction and performance, rather than the other virtues that are more important: the rhythm, the flow, the imagery, and the underlying theme.” Such is the case with most reviewers of David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. They complain that it is composed of gratuitous, carnivalesque tableaus that at best weakly contribute to the plot.
In response, we should note that Wild at Heart is a road movie a la Wizard of Oz, thus by its nature picaresque. In addition, plot always comes second for Lynch, who is fascinated with scenes in themselves. He loves to create unsettling moments, which derive their power from breaking free of linear structure, or even contradicting it, hence the narrative confusions of Lost Highway and Mullholland Drive. Wild at Heart is similar, albeit less extreme. In it, Lula (Laura Dern) tells Sailor (Nicholas Cage) that “it’s just shocking sometimes, when things aren’t the way you thought they were.” As with life and most of Lynch’s films, the narratives we construct for order and clarity have a tendency to collapse when assaulted by a larger, far less structured reality, which can resemble chaos. In Wild at Heart, disillusionment never stops hitting hard.
Sailor and Lula hit the road for “sunny California,” to elude Lula’s obsessive and violent mother, Marietta Fortune (Dianne Ladd, Laura Dern’s actual mother), who has already tried to get Sailor killed by a man named Bobby Ray Lemon. A man whom Sailor kills by incessantly smashing his head against brass railing and marble flooring, in rhythm with heavy metal until it is fractured beyond repair. This scene sets the tone of the movie: little will be spared or censored. Sailor spends 22 months in jail as a result, yet Lula waits for him and they continue where they left off, as if nothing happened. True love or true innocence? I say both; it’s so pure and uncomplicated. A Lynchian innocence in fact, one in which murder can exist alongside it.
Living up to her last name, Marietta tries her hand at playing fate, beleaguering the two lovers with legions of grotesques, particularly Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe), a “black angel of death,” with brown stubby teeth and a pencil thin moustache, who has a sleazy habit of referring to himself as Bobby Peru. Yet control is something no character can maintain in this film. Marietta quickly loses hers when she hires Marcello Santos (J.E. Freeman), a real thug, whose sure passion for “irreparable brain damage,” exposes her to her impotency in the face of stronger evil. All the kind characters prove ineffectual. Johnnie Farragut (Harry Dean Stanton), the benign and henpecked detective, gets killed and the well-intentioned elderly men at the hotel lobby in New Orleans are crippled. There is no higher power, no Oz the characters can go to; they are desperately alone in a world that appears to have no institutional or natural law.
This apparent lack of a natural law works itself deeply into Lynch’s films and is what disturbs his viewers. A trio of sadistic murderers takes Johnnie Farragut “buffalo hunting.” A ritualized act of sex and violence, that even contains a box of junkets they shake for dramatic affect, in which Juana (Grace Zabriskie) and Reggie (Calvin Lockhart) get hot over killing Johnnie and having him watch them grope at each other. This part has caused heart palpitations, cleared theatres. While stylized, it’s not unrealistic, serial killers have done worse. Lynch is working to destabilize us, perhaps fascinate us (few can deny the artistry of this scene). His art is one of exploration not morality.
Perhaps the hardest scene to stomach as a viewer occurs when Bobby Peru visits Lulu alone. After assaulting her with some grotesque comedy, he ensues to push himself upon her, forcing her to say she “wants Bobby Peru.” Despite her resistance, her will breaks down and she finds herself desiring him. This utterly traumatizes her, leading her to tell Sailor that, “this whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top.” A phrase that captures the essence of the whole movie; it makes sense of the ubiquitous images of fire. Life might be more elemental than we believe. Lynch seems to be showing us that we are pushed by a basic, blind, non-rational drive, not unlike Freud’s Id, that can cut down dark alleys and twist itself up in all varieties of ways (which can leave some viewers’ stomachs in knots). Sex and violence, sadism and tenderness, the grotesque and the sublime, all can commingle if you go deep enough, and all can pervert the surface if you let them rise high enough.
Lynch is a visual director. His focus is on the “more important virtues” of film, Boorman identified as “rhythm, flow, imagery, and underlying theme.” Wild at Heart justifiably indulges in its dark tableaus since its theme is the onslaught of reality perverted to the extreme. Lynch is a master of the mise en scene. While the movie has dragged for me in the past, the more I watch it the longer I wish it to last. Each viewing reveals something new. I’m thankful to MGM who has saved Wild at Heart from the drab visual and aural quality of its original VHS production. If one hasn’t experienced Wild at Heart on DVD, then one needs to, for it illuminates the tenderness as much as the darkness, and does justice to Lynch’s merits.
Casting: A+
Story: B
Acting: A
Visual: A+
Originality: A+
Enjoyability: A
Overall: A
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