She really doesn’t know what she wants, but loves being rebellious and wild with her beau. Lula is a spoiled rich girl, who’s controlled by her mother and lashes out with the “bad boy” Sailor in order to give her mother the proverbial middle finger. He wants so desperately to live a normal life, but his past keeps fueling his ego and his wild nature even though it’s not something he really wants to continue on with. Sailor is a wild one, but he’s at odds with himself. Lula and Sailor are trying to make it out from under the hooks and claws of their past life. In typical Lynchian style, the general story of finding true love when you’re “wild at heart” is pretty easy to see. Wild at Heart is a strange film with a seemingly lack of narrative hook, but the story is there under the surface. What happens next is sheer lunacy, with Sailor and Lula against the world, fighting bar flys, killers, and drug dealers alike in an effort to get out of Dodge and make the world their oyster. Marietta (Diane Ladd) is not about to let her young daughter go though, and sends a host of weirdo killers after the pair with the intent to have Sailor killed and her young daughter dragged back. A year later, Sailor is out and Lula (against the wishes of her mother Marietta) runs off to California with the love of her life. The film sets the mood for the entire production, opening up with young Sailor (Nick Cage) and his girlfriend Lula (Laura Dern) getting assaulted outside of a party and Sailor viciously beating the man’s brains into the cement (literally) before looking up with that wild “Nick Cage” look and getting hauled off to jail. This time in the guise of Thelma & Louise, or Bonnie & Clyde. Wild at Heart is the follow up to his ode to crime thrillers, Blue Velvet, using the same style of “in your face” insanity to fuel another nightmaric thriller. They just can or can not accept his style of film making as something they enjoy. Neither side of the love/hate relationship are wrong in my opinion. But at the same time I fully understand why his surreal style of film making doesn’t jive with the general public. I’m a bit on the edge with the love, as I truly TRULY enjoy his films as you just get absorbed in the insanity. You either love his films to death, or you hate them. It really is true that some directors are an acquired taste, and David Lynch is at the top of the heap for that category. He’s widely regarded as a genius, a madman, an autuer, and a strange director that really is an acquired taste. Wild at Heart was the director’s 5th feature film, coming in right after he found his footing again with Blue Velvet (he spent a good four years stumbling around and ended up making Dune, which nearly killed his career), and marks a return to truly strange form, ala Eraserhead. Watching a David Lynch film outside of the few mainstream films he’s done is a true experience, and there’s no other way to describe it. General audiences may recognize him from the incredibly botched Dune, or the amazing Twin Peaks, but his most powerful (and most insane) films tend to be his arthouse dramas like Eraserhead and Wild at Heart. Nor is there one whose films are so utterly fascinating, even if you wonder if you’ve been on an acid trip after watching one of them. There are very few directors out there that is as controversial as David Lynch.
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