Review of Wild at Heart (1990) by Craig W — 23 Jun 2008

David Lynch's hymn to both trash cinema and pulp novels is the closest he's come to making an exploitation B movie, and the result is enthralling.

Taking the oldest trash narrative there is (the starcrossed couple on the run), the movie sends Elvis-obsessed ex-con Nicolas Cage and Wizard of Oz-obsessed wild child Laura Dern on a vivid, sexy and surreal journey across a fantastical American landscape. Throwing in generous helpings of pop cultural references, explicit sex, retro soundtracks, shocking violence, disturbing setpieces and assorted grotesquerie, Lynch does nothing by half here and the result is a movie which is messy and scattered. But this is precisely the point; 'Wild at Heart' is not only a chaotic film but one which consciously appraises the real world as a quagmire of chaos and attempts to find some darkness and joy among the myriad fluctuating fragments.

In equal measure heartwarming, horrifying, hedonistic and hysterical, this movie is quite unlike any other in terms of its ambition. It's difficult to conceive of another filmmaker indulging in his own extremities as Lynch does here and getting away with it. But somehow, via a beguiling combination of visionary brilliance and almost childlike glee, Lynch pulls it off.

The aura of chaos and uncertainty is reflected in every aspect of the text, from the kaleidoscopic cinematography to the period-blurring production design to the impeccably compiled soundtrack which combines a multitude of styles, themes and cultures.

The casting is likewise attuned and this film displays Lynch's indisputale strength in conducting a large ensemble cast (a lesson well learned from 'Dune' and capitalised further in later films like 'Mulholland Drive' and 'Inland Empire'). Recruiting an impressive group of accomplished and distinctively different actors, Lynch makes great use of each performer's individual stylistic quirks to exaggerated effect, giving the finished work the feel of some untapped form of trash theatre. In addition to Cage and Dern's absurdly heightened characterisation, the viewer is treated to Harry Dean Stanton's marvelously melancholy private detective, Diane Ladd's neurotic soap opera queen, Isabella Rossellini's noir femme fatale, and Crispin Glover's fabulously unhinged, cockroach-obsessed lunatic. The real gem though is Willem Dafoe who, with the aid of a sleazy John Waters moustache and some of the most hideously decayed teeth in cinema history, brings the fiendish Bobby Peru to lewd life in a tour de force performance that is both hilarious and terrifying.

While certainly not for all tastes (a phrase which ought to be synonymous with the name David Lynch), and perhaps lacking the finesse of much of the director's other work, 'Wild at Heart' is nonetheless an unapologetically visceral, ghoulishly enjoyable, and remarkably unpretentious effort by one of cinema's most distinctive artists.