Wild at Heart (1990) - Reivew

I included Wild at Heart in this collection of "New Orleans" setting Nic Cage movies after finding it in a list online. There is a sequence that takes place in New Orleans, however that scene is brief. I nevertheless placed it in this sequence of my project because it was watched as part of my initial list of movies based in New Orleans.

Wild at Heart is a drama movie directed by David Lynch. It stars Nicolas Cage as "Sailor" Ripley, a man who is attacked and sent to prison after killing his attacker in self-defense. After release from prison, Sailor makes contact with his lover Lula (Laura Dern), who is combated by her mother (Diane Ladd) and her associates (J.E. Freeman and Harry Dean Stanton) in pursuing and running away with Sailor to start a new life. The pair encounter a variety of strange characters and circumstances on their trek across the country.

Wild at Heart is true to David Lynch's surrealist style. The pair, Sailor and Lula, are driven by their love and lusts for each other to establish a new life, and as was stated above, encounter strangers that are completely anachronistic to the story being told, but are oddly at place. Almost every character is larger than life, but there are very few people that are portrayed on screen as "normal", high functioning individuals. Harry Dean Stanton's Johnnie Farragut acts as a foil to the insanity that his lover, Lula's mother, is trying to enact to stop Sailor and Lula from continuing on their pursuit of love. His foil is continually met with frustration, as Lula's mother undermines his concern by interacting with a known criminal and another of her lovers, Santos. The theme of fire plays a prominent role as well and comes into play throughout the story as Sailor and Lula continue to not only know each other better, but as Lula comes to terms with the various traumas that she has endured in her life. The intensity of the fiery imagery matches the intensity that Sailor and Lula have for each other throughout the story.

The characters that Cage and Dern inhabit are brought to the screen with such enthusiasm that it can only be described as contagious. Cage is let loose in pursuing his usually absurdist, over-the-top portrayal of a man in love. Belting out his favorite artist, Elvis, is where he truly shines, conveying his love for the music to his portrayal of the love to his so-character. Dern is equally over-the-top, however, she retains some semblance of maturity when compared to Cage's Sailor. She is able to become vulnerable when Sailor fails to leave his love-induced haze of trying to continue the good times. The only sort of conflict that Sailor provides is when Willem Defoe's Bobby Peru ropes Sailor into a quick money scheme and robbery job gone out of control. At that point in the drama, it comes a little too late to make meaningful changes to the viewer's perception on Sailor. Overall, I can see the viewer's experience colored by their opinion of Lynch's style of film; those who grow tired of his surrealism might have a negative view on their opinion, however, those who tend to enjoy Lynch's corpus of work may find this in good company with many of Lynch's other projects. I would see this movie as a good time capsule of Cage's beginning works and as a must-watch for anyone interested in Cage's complete body of work.