film: Wild At Heart

Wild at Heart. There's no point in setting up a poll, it's already been decided that this movie is terrible. And I am an enormous Lynch fan. Enormous.

For starters, Lynch is a genius at being subtle. In Wild at Heart, there was this building suspicion that he was going for ridiculously easy Wizard of Oz allusions, confirmed by things like the mother's shoes curling and frequent mentions of yellow brick roads and the wicked witch. I threw up a little bit in my mouth when Lula clicks her heels together, but nothing prepared me for the ending. I actually shitted in my chair when Glenda the good witch made a cameo. I didn't realize Lynch was ever a fan of clumsy parody and cheap shock value (referring to the wasted and meaningless violence).

David Lynch wastes a lot of time being ashamed of Dune, a project that he had little control over. What he should be doing is buying up every copy of Wild at Heart and burning them. Sorely disappointed and angry that I saw this movie. I'm going to watch Mulholland Drive many times to make it better.

say fuck me...

^
Okay, maybe there was that scene. But there was also this scene:



I don't have a scale with me, but I'm pretty sure Glenda the Good Witch has a greater weight in my overall judgment of this film.

orly?
try Industrial Symphony #1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted

pukes

^
Jesus christ. It has Laura Dern, Nicholas Cage, and it was made in 1990. I think I've suffered enough. The writing is on the wall and I don't need to walk through the red door. I'll watch it, but I just can't believe that Lynch at the time was fascinated with Wizard of Oz and Elvis movies to the point that he incorporated those elements literally into his films. This crap is not the work of David Lynch, it's the work of a twelve year old who is writing and directing movies that he wishes David Lynch would make.

I liken this to when I saw Hudson Hawk with Bruce Willis. Before then, I thought Bruce Willis was the coolest guy on the planet. Then I watched Hudson Hawk and I haven't really been able to look at Bruce Willis the same ever since, knowing that at one point he thought for an extended period that Hudson Hawk was clever.

LOL while I was reading your post I had horrible flashbacks of a movie where Christian Slater gets his heart replaced by a baboons...and I realized I was thinking of Untamed Heart. Watch it, captainballs, and you will never be disappointed in another David Lynch movie AGAIN!

aww man i liked wild at heart, u seen the grandmother?

Erm, I quite liked it too. I can see why it might not be everyone's cup of tea. Particularly enjoyed Bobby Peru's patter and unpleasant sticky demise. The cheesy aspect is deliberate and reflects the 'innocence' of the protagonists within their incestuous environment. Also liked the freaky collection of assasins/hitmen employed by Dern's mother to get Sailor.
It doesn't seem to me that far from Lynch's other work.
I just want to praise Eraserhead, while I'm at it. A weird, dark film with hazy plot that is open to all sorts of interpretations. The 'fairy' motif is in that as well.

eh, i think he is overrated. the only movies i like from him are elephant man and mullholland drive.

I am a huge Lynch fan. Eraserhead is a classic. Sure when you smoke a few grams of hash and watch it, it makes no sense and freaks you out, its still a cinematic masterpiece.

Blue Velvet is sweetsauce, and the Straight Story is one of Disney's best movies made by an avant garde film maker.

And certainly his classic TV series Twin Peaks, is one of the best TV shoes ever.

L2R, it pains me to say this after having been let down by Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern in Wild at Heart, but I just watched and enjoyed the Industrial Symphony #1. It's a musical the whole time, and all of the pieces are decent I thought. It was cool to see what a David Lynch play would look like, and I could imagine sitting in a dark opera hall and enjoying this. I knew David Lynch had an abstract, quantum mechanical hard-on for musicals after watching his Inland Empire ejaculation with the finale of that film, but now I know where the woodsman fits into the picture.

CC, I can't stand Christian Slater, but I will watch that movie next. Something about a concept so bad, not handled by a genius like Lynch, just begs to be watched.

As for the defenders of Wild at Heart, I have given it another run-through and obviously appreciate more what is done correctly, but it's still unforgivable that Lynch made it so easy - I like the underlying logic that defines him in films like Mulholland Drive and Eraserhead, this sense of redemption that it gives you when you let yourself drift with the abstract logic and finally feel that everything worked out according to the hidden laws of Lynch's universe. I feel like Wild at Heart is a non-sequitor in his career, as he goes for symbolism and "weird" ideas that the mass-public can appreciate at large. Nonetheless, he did it and I can buy (a little) that the cheesiness was symbolic of the characters' innocence... but the calculating evil represented by the bad guys was just not deep or scary enough.

It was worse than Dune?

Dune doesn't count, there was a lot of studio drama and editing that lynch didn't approve. He denounces it every chance the subject comes up, even as an aside in his "Catching the Big Fish" book (which is mainly about medititation)

Wild at Heart wasn't nearly as bad as Inland Empire.

I actually like most of Lynch's films - even the really weird ones 'cause they do make some sort of twisted sense you can bend your mind around. But Inland Empire is just random nonsense...

I agree. This movie is garbage. Goes for shock value and lots of surrealism for surrealism's sake.

far out cb, then perhaps i need to give industrial symphony another go. my one attempt i didn't enjoy at all.

oh and i'm renaming this so that it can be a proper wild at heart thread.

that would be fair, since there seems to be more than one opinion about this film.

film: wild at heart

maybe someone wants a poll to give it more than a one or two star review
so i add the poll against the request

I honestly like it in certain ways, more for individual character moments than as a whole film, but I still think there is some great performances in it. Harry Dean Stanton and Willem Dafoe are terrific, and the mother character is definitly interesting, though completely over the top. I have mixed feelings about both Cage and Dern though. This is after having seen it only once though, and I probably didn't pay it the attention it deserved, although from the look of things in here maybe I was better off that way.

I guess it was a nice movie.but i haven't watch this movie ..