Inspired by Barry Gifford’s novel, David Lynch followed the 1986 Blue Velvet, which was an artistic and commercial success, with Wild at Heart, a flamboyant romantic fable, starring Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern.
In many ways, the movie is a paean to The Wizard of Oz, a feature that’s densely rich with allusions to other movies (including Kurosawa) and pop culture works.
Grade: B (*** out of *****)
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Theatrical release poster
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The central couple, Lula Pace Fortune (Laura Dern) and Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage), take their own Yellow Brick Road in search of the Wizard. Ripley has just served 22 months and 18 days in prison for manslaughter in self-defense.
Driving from Cape Fear, North Carolina to the end of the line in Big Tuna, Texas, they are followed by Marietta (Diane Ladd), Lula’s monstrous mother. Fearing Sailor’s knowledge of her plot to murder her husband, Marietta mobilizes “black angel” Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe) and Perdita Durango (Isabella Rossellini) to track him down.
In outline, Wild at Heart recalls Badlands, though it lacks Terrence Malick’s detached irony. Lynch took a slim work and pumped it up into a pop epic. The dopey Lula and Sailor realize their destiny through intense lovemaking, smoking Kools and Camels, eating burgers and drinking beer. Sailor likes to kick-box in crowded discos to loud guitar music, pick fights (he smashes a man’s skull with his bare hands), then take the mike and croon Elvis songs to his girl.
Once they land in Big Tuna and Lula gets pregnant, the film changes gears. In the motel, Lula’s in bed, listening to classic music on the radio, while Sailor goes on a bank robbery that will send him back to jail. In the film’s scariest scene, shown in menacing close-up, Bobby Peru invades Lula’s room and insists that she says, “Please, fuck me.”
Flashbacks reveal Lula’s incestuous Uncle Pooch and Cousin Dell, a man so obsessed with Christmas that he wears a soiled Kris Kringle suit and counts the days all year round. Mother and daughter temporarily unite, though at the end (5 years, 2 months and 21 days later), Lula defies her mother and goes with their son to greet Sailor.
To be sure, the major point of reference is MGM’s 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz. Thus, Marietta serves the Wicked Witch, and the Good Witch Glinda floats down on a large soap bubble, telling Sailor, “Lula loves you, don’t turn away from love.”
Sailor then goes back and renders Elvis Presley’s popular tune, “Love Me Tender,” as the end credits start rolling down.
Unlike Blue Velvet, here Lynch’s bizarre inventions become ends in their own right. Fr instance, not much is made of a fleeting image of a severed head, or a solemn look at a toilet bowl. The shocks have little resonance and the weirdness is trivial: Cousin Dell walks around with cockroaches in his underpants.
Once again, fire is the dominant metaphor: In the opening credits, a kitchen match is struck and the screen erupts into intense flames with the roar of a blast furnace.
The film’ hyperkinetic wildness is mostly on the surface; the images are elaborately conceived but meaningless. The script, basically a series of vignettes, needed more dramatic tension. Lynch infuses the story with menace, but he can’t escape the material’s lurid nature.
In this picture, Lynch stylizes Sailor and Lula’s innocence, but their dreams are so infantile that most viewers respond with condescension. All the characters, not just the villains, are schematically constructed, cartoonish figures thrown int a messy tale,
Greeted with mixed reviews, Wild at Heart was a commercial flop, and is now considered as one of Lynch’s weakest works.
My Oscar Book:
Oscar Alert:
Oscar Nominations: 1
Supporting Actress: Diane Ladd
Oscar Context
The winner was Whoopi Goldberg for the supernatural romance, “Ghost.”
Cast:
Lula Pace Fortune (Laura Dern)
Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage)
Marietta Pace (Diane Ladd)
Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe)
Perdita Durango (Isabella Rossellini)
Johnny Farragut (Harry Dean Stanton)
Dell (Crispin Glover)
Juana (Grace Zabriskie)
Marcello Santos (J.E. Freeman)
Mr. Reindeer (W. Morgan Sheppard)
Credits
Directed by David Lynch
Screenplay by David Lynch, based on Wild at Heart by Barry Gifford
Produced by Monty Montgomery, Steve Golin, Sigurjón Sighvatsson
Cinematography Frederick Elmes
Edited by Duwayne Dunham
Music by Angelo Badalamenti
Production companies: PolyGram, Propaganda Films
Distributed by The Samuel Goldwyn Company
Release dates: May 19, 1990 (Cannes) August 17, 1990 (US)
Running time: 124 minutes
Budget $10 million
Box office: $14.6 million
