Wild at Heart is a film of extreme violence and ugliness, and it’s far more conceptually loaded than it needs to be, with a complicated thicket of murderous lowlifes and Wizard of Oz references that are sometimes clumsily grafted on to the action and the dialogue. This was not the expected fate for a Palme-winner from one of the greatest film-makers.Īnd yet, it’s not impossible to understand why it’s slipped through the cracks a little. While other Lynch films have been treated to Criterion editions and repertory play, it was hard to find on DVD in the US for years and it’s still not available to stream anywhere. But Wild at Heart opening to polarized reviews and middling box office, and its reputation over the years hasn’t improved as much as Fire Walk with Me or Lost Highway, which both seemed ahead of their audience at the time. Such a reception at Cannes can often be a badge of honor – L’Avventura and Taxi Driver also got an earful – and Lynch would get booed again when he premiered Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me at the festival two years later. Thirty years ago, Wild at Heart arrived in theaters after winning the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was greeted, according to the critic Dave Kehr, with “the most violent chorus of boos and hisses to be heard in a decade”. The forces of good and evil that Lynch had limited to a small town four years earlier with Blue Velvet are blown out into the larger expanse of the American road. That uneasiness is the lifeblood of Wild at Heart, which sets a love of the purest and most passionate kind against a sun-scorched landscape of ceaseless hostility. The appeal of road movies is that they allow for a certain amount of narrative spontaneity, with every exit teasing the possibility of a new and unexpected subplot. The sequence is Wild at Heart in microcosm, with the AM stations representing treacherous pitstops on the lost highways between a deep south correctional facility and sunny California, where Sailor and Lula hope to carve out some place for themselves. Romance pokes through the violence and discord like a bloom through cracks in the pavement. And then suddenly, the adrenalized thump of Powermad’s Slaughterhouse fades out and the lush strings of Richard Strauss overwhelm the soundtrack. As the two thrash along in the embankment – Sailor, with his karate-kick dancing style, seems like a terror in nightclubs – Lynch’s camera cranes upwards to a magic-hour sunset across the field. “Sailor Ripley, you get me some music on that radio this instant!” she screams, and he obliges, scanning past more talk-radio mayhem before landing, improbably, on a track by the Minneapolis speed metal band Powermad. Their horizons are constituted by little more than TV they think they're wild at heart and their romance sets them off on a post industrial Odyssey.Lula pulls the car over in disgust. Sailor and Lula are amalgamations of distanciated American iconography. Lula waits for him to be released, teams up with him, and they both cross the country trying to stay one step ahead of the mother. Sailor kills the attacker, and ends up in jail. Lula's mother hates Sailor, and pays a man to attack him. Full of lurid imagery and references to The Wizard of Oz. Sailor and Lula encounter an assortment of extremely bizarre "people" while discovering hidden secrets about one another. Lula's mother sends out a private detective and a hitman after them. After breaking parole for self defensive manslaughter, Sailor Ripley and his girlfriend Lula Fortune head down the highway for sunny California. After being stranded in a small town, Sailor agrees to join the loathsome Bobby Peru in a criminal venture. During their journey, Lula and Sailor relate the events of their lives to date, while encountering a typical gallery of Lynch grotesques. Young lovers Sailor and Lula take off for New Orleans following Sailor's release from prison, with Lula's hysterical mother, a weary detective and a sinister hitman after them. until they witness a young woman dying after a car accident - a bad omen. Unaware of this, the two enjoy their journey and themselves being together. However their mother hires a killer to hunt down Sailor. Ignoring Sailor's probation, they set out for California. Lula's psychopathic mother goes crazy at the thought of Lula being with Sailor, who just got free from jail. Wild at Heart is a 1990 American film written and directed by David Lynch, and based on Barry Gifford's 1989 pulp novel Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula.
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