THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH YELLOW BRICK
"This whole world's wild at heart and
weird on top !"
- Lula Fortune (Laura Dern)
WILD AT HEART (1990), director David Lynch's contribution to overheated Southern-Gothic filmmaking, is a four-way collision of EASY RIDER, THE WIZARD OF OZ, a "lost episode" of TWIN PEAKS, and the best movie Elvis never made. Perhaps too overheated; after the back-to-back triumphs of BLUE VELVET and PEAKS, lots of people (critics and ticket-buyers alike) were put off by the blend of explicit sex, gory violence, grotesque supporting characters, incomprehensible plot swerves, and a genuine happy ending.
In other words, it's a typical Lynch film outing, and that's fine by me.
Young lovers Sailor Ripley (Nicholas Cage) and Lula Fortune (Laura Dern) have a slight problem: Lula's mother Marietta (Diane Lane, also Laura's real-life mater) who, in the film's opening scene, sends a knife-wielding thug after Sailor in a theater lobby. Sailor promptly beats the thug's brains out and spends nearly two years in the joint for manslaughter. Upon his release, Lula -- defying Momma's demand never to see him again -- picks him up at the prison gates. So inspired, Sailor promptly breaks parole and sets off with Lula on a road trip to California. Marietta, understandably upset at this state of affairs, sends her private eye/paramour Johnny Farragut (the great Harry Dean Stanton) after them. What Farragut doesn't know is that Marietta's also contacted old boyfriend/drug dealer Santos (J.E. Freedman) to have a hit put on Sailor -- and that one of Santos' conditions for taking the job is that he gets to take out Farragut as well...
Secrets, both revealed and concealed, are at the core of WILD. Both Sailor and Lula know things about Marietta's shady dealings (and fondness for fiery retribution) than they are willing to admit to each other. Sailor's ex-associate Perdita (Isabella Rosselini, in a sexy cameo 180 degrees from her BLUE VELVET masochist) knows that there's a contract out on Sailor, but won't tell him -- much less why. And finally (and most fatally), Sailor conceals from Lula that he's about to earn some extra money by helping the slimy Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe, as Lynch's vilest villain since Dennis Hopper's turn as VELVET's Frank) to rob a bank.
Cage is one of those actors whom I'm slowly realizing I enjoy watching whatever he's in, and WILD AT HEART's Sailor is no exception; he doesn't so much "do" Elvis as organically becomes him, whether shutting down a speedmetal punk who tries dancing with Lula or engaging in postcoital philosophising. At the same time, there's more than a trace of Hi from RAISING ARIZONA in Sailor, i.e. the well-meaing schnook who, while trying to Do The Right Thing By His Loved One, winds up in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Likewise a good description of Stanton's character, and eventual fate...) On the other hand, Dern's Lula is best when she shows the fear and uncertainty in this woman-child, as her oversexed Dixie-bunny scenes often degenerate into broad self-parody. (As a contrast, Lane's scheming Southern matriarch strikes the right balance between camp and viciousness.) PEAKS freaks will get a kick out of the cameos by regulars Sherilyn Fenn (a bloodied car-crash victim, wandering around in shock muttering "Where's my purse?"), Grace Zabriskie (a club-footed voodoo hit lady), Sheryl Lee (as Glinda the Good Witch), and the late Jack Nance ("Mr. Eraserhead" himself as a brain-damaged old coot giving an incomprehensible speech about his dog).
See WILD AT HEART and get "lost" on a different kind of highway...
* Thanks to Rachel Cosgrove Payes, author of HIDDEN VALLEY OF OZ and THE WICKED WITCH OF OZ, for this week's title.
It's a strange link, isn't it?
The Black Lodge - Mike Dunn's central clearing house for all things Lynchian, including an extensive online shrine to Laura Palmer herself, Sheryl Lee.
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