**½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B
starring Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Crispin Glover
screenplay by David Lynch, based on the novel by Barry Gifford
directed by David Lynch
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Back when I ran my website DAYS OF THUNDER, I identified the problem with David Lynch in general (and with Mulholland Drive in specific) as that of a man who didn't want to know: his films tend to revolve around bland milquetoast heroes and heroines who open Pandora's Box and then either become destroyed or must stuff horrible people back inside. But when I wrote that, I had repressed the memory of Wild at Heart, which chucks Velveeta America entirely and imagines a world run by Frank Booth and his ilk. Indeed, Wild at Heart wallows in the kinds of kinky horrors that are viewed in Lynch's other films from a distance, and it's not a pretty sight. Here is the fallen Eden, Lynch-style, where everyone has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and been cast out of paradise to fuck, shoot, and act unnaturally before meeting untimely, gory ends.
This is not to say that it doesn't fit a Lynchian template. Wild at Heart still conjures up what passes for a couple of young innocents, specifically Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage), all pumping fists and snakeskin apparel, and Lula (Laura Dern), his 20-year-old lover with a shaky past and a mother (Diane Ladd) who does not take kindly to the pair's romance. After Sailor's brief stint in jail (he killed an assailant sent by Momma), the two hit the road, sort of fleeing the knowledge that the other, repressed Lynch heroes uncover. Though they're really fond of death metal, sex, and shrieking and wiggling for no visible purpose, they're on the receiving end of that which is normally reserved for the victim-Others in the director's oeuvre. Think of the film as being from the point-of-view of Dorothy Vallens in Blue Velvet; Lula even has the sexual-assault scars to prove her entry into that club.
The flimsy veneer of suburbia also comes in for lumps. Ladd's Marietta Fortune constantly presents herself as a woman of quality and a protector of daughter Lula, but of course she's responsible for her first husband's fiery death and keeps two lovers, the sedate detective Johnny Farragut (Harry Dean Stanton) and the clearly criminal Marcelles Santos (J.E. Freeman). Her urge to choose between these two extremes predictably ends in disaster: she can't just settle for Farragut's legal and moral search for her daughter, calling in Santos to target Sailor for death. However, Marietta's comfortable base camp is left behind in a flash for the weirdoes surrounding Santos: the crime lord Mr. Reindeer (W. Morgan Sheppard), with his surrounding servants/prostitutes; Juana and Perdita Durango (Grace Zabriskie and Isabella Rossellini, respectively), also on the wrong team; and Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe), a man whose rude sense of humour seems to have rotted his teeth. There is no hope for normalcy, only an onslaught of horror from under a thin veil of civility.
And it's this wallow in deviant horror that defines the film's strengths and weaknesses. Granted, nobody but Lynch could've put together this parade of freaks and have it all hang together: Wild at Heart is an insanely well-wrought collection of not just diegetic madness but also stylistic grotesqueries like lens distortions and flash musical cues that coalesce into a seamless stylistic barrage. Yet that barrage is never-ending like nothing else in the Lynch canon. His other films are based on the process of opening and closing the forbidden room, a fort/da game of peek-a-boo that needs the tension of what's on the other side of the door. Wild at Heart is nothing but what's on the other side–a non-stop freak-out that through repetition gets a tad predictable in its unpredictability. The film starts off arresting but grows increasingly wearisome and, finally, boring.
Perhaps it would've helped had Lynch identified something he actually liked within the horrorshow: his sensual misfits are largely hostile forces arrayed against our heroes. Make no mistake, though, I would rather watch this fertile semi-mistake than some "normal" director's neat little hit. It's the work of a filmmaker throwing himself the full length, and it always has something to look at and (crucially) to hear. Regardless, its madness reaches an endpoint where you can take no more. As The Incredibles might say, if everyone is special, no one is–and if the whole world is a ten-ton freak with a funny hat, then that novelty is eventually going to wear out its welcome.
THE DVD
Debuting in late 2004, MGM's long-awaited DVD release of Wild at Heart looks and sounds fantastic. The director-supervised 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is at once sharp and lustrous, a feat for a film with so many shadows and murky colours. It's a gorgeous presentation that strikes the right balance of fine detail (sans edge-enhancement) and vivid saturation. The Dolby Digital 5.1 remix is almost as effective: as per Lynch's "10% rule" (whereby the surrounds are never more than ten percent as loud as the remaining channels), it's a little front-heavy, but it magnificently renders the varying volume of Lynch's jarring, evocative sound design. Wild at Heart's marginally inferior original matrixed surround soundtrack is alternately available.
Lynch participates for the first time in the DVD extras for one of his films, starting with "Love, Death, Elvis and Oz: The Making of Wild at Heart" (29 mins.), a retrospective making-of that's simultaneously thorough in covering the bases while failing, despite a few valuable insights into Lynch's stylistic choices, to see what lies beneath. Most of the actors interviewed offer pat summations of their roles and the piece doesn't press them for more, although there is the revelation that a monologue delivered by Zabriskie sent test audiences running for the exits. "Specific Spontaneity: Focus on David Lynch" (7 mins.) is a love-in courtesy a lot of vague generalities about a "true artist" and "original" from Lynch's collaborators, while "David Lynch – On the DVD" (2 mins.) is an unusually informative bit wherein Lynch himself explains the process of colour-correcting, how it has to be done a second time for video/DVD, and the lengths to which MGM went to do right by Wild at Heart.
The centrepiece of this disc is "Dell's Lunch Counter," a menu of sorts where you navigate several of the Crispin Glover character's smooshed sandwiches to uncover various Easter eggs. In "Cannes" (3 mins.), Lynch and some tech collaborators reflect on the festival, the efforts to synch up the film at the Palais theatre, and the Palme d'or win; "The Red Pipe" (2 mins.) finds DP Frederick Elmes revealing why, according to Lynch, an incidental prop pipe had to be painted red; "Lula's Momma" (3 mins.) details the first day of the shoot (Sailor and Marietta in the bathroom)–Cage is suitably grossed-out by Ladd's candour; "Sailor and Lula Get Born" (2 mins.) has source novelist Barry Gifford discussing the origins of the protagonists; "Pigeons" (2 mins.) deals with Freddie Jones's brief scene and how he got his voice pitched up high; "Not Your Head-Head" (1 mins.) is Willem Dafoe relating a rude anecdote about urine; "Wild at Heart and Weird on Top" (2 mins.) sees Gifford ruminating on the film and book's signature line; "The Good Witch" boils down to Sheryl Lee claiming she would only be hoisted on a crane as the Good Witch for David Lynch; and "The Snakeskin Jacket" (2 mins.) is Cage expounding on Sailor's "symbol of individuality."
Also included is the original EPK (6 mins.), which is actually keener than the newly-minted special features: Lynch mumbles a few things about the various "elements," but castmembers come up with pointed statements on what it's like to be directed by the master. A "Sailor and Lula Image Gallery" is a slideshow of publicity stills featuring Cage and Dern; four TV spots, the trailer, a trailer for Wicker Park, and MGM propaganda (both general and for "male movies") round things out.
124 minutes; R; 2.40:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround, Spanish DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; MGM
