Yesterday at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, I saw my second favorite movie : David Lynch’s 1990 masterpiece Wild at Heart, starring Nicolas Cage at his pinnacle of integrity, Laura Dern at her pinnacle of cuteness, Crispin Glover at his pinnacle of kookiness, and Willem Dafoe at his pinnacle of coolness. It also sums up Lynch’s entire body of work in one line of dialogue: This whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top.
Rift with violence, complexity, dark humor, sex and heavy metal, this is the ultimate Love Story for people who always hate Love Stories, but always want to like them.
This movie always stuns me. Beyond the quirky Lynch characters and captivating imagery, there is a story laced with epic themes: Love, Devotion, Deceit, Murder, Crime, Elvis Presley, and Buffalo Hunting.
Lynch made this film immediately after the untimely demise of Lynch’s Twin Peaks TV series. I always got the feeling that this movie was Lynch’s way of getting Twin Peaks out of his system, as Lynch uses many of the same visual themes (fire, cigarettes, domestic turbulence), and even some of the same actors (Sherilyn Fenn, Sheryl Lee and Jack Nance).
Wild at Heart is also a violent, raunchy modern-day take on the Wizard of Oz (which is my first favorite movie ever). Both are “road” movies in which the characters are taking a journey in search of themselves and a pot of gold while pursued by a crazy witch and her henchmen. Lynch’s wicked witch (below) has a red face covered with lipstick, instead of green.
Instead of Munchkins and a Scarecrow, we get gang of fetish executioners and Crispin Glover at hunched over a kitchen counter table teeming with lacerated bread screaming “I’m making my lunch!”
Diane Ladd's Marietta Fortune: The Wicked Witch of the South
