Review of Wild at Heart (1990) by Josh M — 29 Aug 2009

When I first started to really get into Lynch a few years back and watched Wild at Heart for the first time, I wasn't a huge fan. So when it was announced as a midnight movie, I was pretty excited.

Maybe a second viewing would clarify the cult status of this one. Sadly, the opposite was true - I liked this even less than last time this time around. There's so much that Lynch does well - surreal interludes, dreamlike tension, inexplicable terror - and yet, almost none of that pays off here.

A lot of the blame, I think, has to go to Cage and Dern - not that they're terrible, but that their roles are too far over the top. Lynch works best with someone approaching a "straight man," for lack of a better term - someone who's as bewildered by what's happening as we are.

(Think Watts in Mulholland Drive, or Pullman in Lost Highway.) Sailor and Luna, by contrast, are every bit as weird as everyone around them, so even when you get someone like Defoe's insane criminal, they don't stand out like Blake in Highway or Hopper in Velvet.

There are some moments I like, to be fair - I love the eerie and unsettling car crash scene with Sherilyn Fenn, and Jack Nance's bizarre cameo cracks me up. But, by and large, I just really don't like Wild at Heart.

I often can't tell if I'm laughing at Lynch or with him, but I really think it's the former in this case.