Wild at Heart (1990) road trip romance
Rating: 6/10
Plot: See here where I already wrote about this movie.
I like this movie, one that I’d always considered a bit of an oddball in Lynch’s filmography, a little more every time I see it. It’s the closest Lynch has done to straight comedy which, since there’s a romance at the center of it all, makes it Lynch’s cockeyed version of the rom-com genre. It’s also a cool road movie and a nightmare noir with Wizard of Oz references, filled with sex and violence and the oddest assortment of characters you’ll ever see. So there’s a little something for everybody!
Start with that cast! This has one of the greatest casts ever assembled. And no, I’m not joking. One of the greatest casts ever assembled! Cage, in one of the high points of his career, gets to play Elvis in a snakeskin jacket (one that came from his closet apparently), and he fits in great in Lynch’s stylized world where adults play peek-a-boo and with the pre-Tarantino stylized dialogue where characters say things like “Stab it and steer,” “Johnny Farragan is on us like a duck on a june-bug,” and “a boner with a capital O and guys are planted instead of killed and counties are burnt through.
After some shockingly over-the-top hard rock violence, we get a great Nic Cage point (has anybody ever compiled all the times Cage points in movies into one orgasmic video?). Later, he tells a story in which he’s invited to take a bit of peach, and we all know from Face/Off that Cage can eat a peach for hours.
Best of all–and by “best of all,” I’m thinking this should be in the running for the greatest moment in movie history–Cage dances, kung-fu dancing with roundhouse kicks and flailing that proves that Cage is a being that is closer to an animal and still greater than a human. The second time the pair dances, in the desert after a Dern freak-out and a Cage scram that gave me goose pimples, managed to top the first dance scene which already topped every single thing that has happened in any other movie ever. Dern, Lynch’s little tidbit, is a natural with Lynch’s type of dialogue, and she brings an artistic trashiness to the character that, if it does turn you on, makes you a little sad at the same time. She might be able to dance, but I was only paying attention to Cage during those scenes.
Same with the sex scenes probably. Willem Dafoe has made a career not being afraid to do anything on the screen, and Bobby Peru is one of his most disturbingly memorable characters. He’s so weird looking here with those teeth, snarling “One-eyed Jack’s yearning to go peeping in a seafood store” and “You’ll hear a deep sound coming down from Bobby Peru.” Peru’s character gets it in a spectacular way during a ridiculous scene that starts with hosiery on heads and ends with deceased guys searching for a missing hand that a dog is carrying away. Only in a David Lynch fever dream! Harry Dean Stanton’s in this one playing the same droopy-faced guy he’s always playing.
His magical moment is when he starts barking at a television. Diane Ladd gives an unhinged performance as Miss Fortune, coating herself in lipstick and writhing. The most baffling female performance is Grace Zabriskie’s as Juana Durango who looks like a Martian from a cheap 50’s sci-fi movie, and Isabella Rossellini is a more subdued but equally dangerous Perdita Durango. J.E. Freeman plays his typical tough guy, Marcelles Santos here who gets to say a line it seems like Freeman was born to say: “I am in a killing mood.” William Morgan Sheppard is awesome as the awesomely-named Mr. Reindeer, and Crispin Glover is a non-sequitur as Dell, arguably one of the great one’s wackiest appearances complete with a little roach-in-underpants dance, a shot of Glover in tighty-whities, and a demonstration of perfect comic timing with a yelled “I’m making my lunch!” I want a Dell spin-off movie so bad.
Other characters on the periphery: Marvin Kaplan, the perfectly shocking face of the awful Uncle Pooch; Sherilyn Fenn, babbling and bleeding as she searches for her purse; the other recipient of one of Reindeer’s silver dollars, Reggie, played by Calvin Lockhart who should be applauded for his ability to keep a straight face when working with what Zabriskie is doing; cool John Lurie; the great Freddie Jones (Bytes in The Elephant Man) with the hilarious quacking and talk about how pigeons spread diseases, an appearance that Cage and Dern watch so stoically that it makes me laugh just thinking about it; Frank Collison who hilariously gives 120% as Timmy; the “Hey, man, same thing happened to me last year–shiiiiiiii!” guy, Nicholas Love pumping his arm from a wheelchair. Oh, and Sheryl Lee plays the Good Witch. And then, of course, there’s Jack Nance with this brilliant and brilliantly-delivered monologue:
“My dog barks some. Mentally, you picture my dog, but I have not told you the type of dog which I have. Perhaps, you might even picture Toto from the Wizard of Oz. but I can tell you my dog is always with me. Woof!”
Cage watches that with the same expression he gave the quacking man.
Hell, why am I not giving this movie a 20/20? I guess because it doesn’t really add up to much of anything. But it’s certainly hilarious. Lines about smoking since the age of four, manslaughterers, and possible buffalo hunting along with a hilarious Sailor apology and Big Tuna’s welcome sign. It all makes me laugh.
And you just have to love the fringe details in a movie like this. A pair of jazzy guys on a New Orleans sidewalk who Lynch shows us even though they don’t matter one bit. Lingering on a weird-looking dancer with gypsy jazz hands. A guy at a gas station snapping his fingers to the radio. A lonely shot of an elderly guy vacuuming. A guy with a plastic bag. It’s a weird, weird world that Lynch’s characters inhabit which, if you want to oversimplify things, is probably a lot of the point of all this. Add Badalamenti’s eclectic score with some musical contributions from Lynch himself (I really like the “I fell for you like a bomb” song [“Up in Flames” with lyrics by Lynch and music by Badalamenti]) and you’ve got yourself a movie that could only come from the mind of David Lynch. And no, it’s not going to appeal to everybody, but I think it’s wildly entertaining, frequently hilarious, and even more frequently disturbing.
Oh, and did I mention that Nicolas Cage sings Elvis songs?
One more thing: Would bOner be a cool band name? People who get the reference would be impressed maybe.
