Wild at Heart movie review & film summary (1990)

And then there's the scene where the villain (Willem Dafoe) blows off his own head with a shotgun, and the head flies through the air and bounces along on the ground. This was the scene that got to the MPAA's film rating board, which threatened "Wild at Heart" with an X. But the movie qualifies for an R rating by adding a little gunsmoke to the shot, so that you can't see the head coming off quite so clearly. (What the wise men of the MPAA thought about the brains being pounded on the floor, I can't say. They blessed it with the R rating, which means kids of all ages are admitted if they can round up anyone who can pass as an adult guardian.) The violence aside, "Wild at Heart" also exercises the consistent streak of misogynism in Lynch's work. He has a particular knack for humiliating women in his films, and this time the primary target is Diane Ladd, as Mariette Fortune, the town seductress and vamp. The way this woman is photographed, the things she is given to do, and the dialogue she has to pronounce are equally painful to witness. Not even Hitchcock was ever this cruel to an actress. Laura Dern is Ladd's real-life daughter, and in the movie she, too, is subjected to the usual humiliations. Ever since I witnessed the humiliation of Isabella Rossellini in "Blue Velvet," I've wondered if there is an element in Lynch's art that goes beyond filmmaking; a personal factor in which he uses his power as a director to portray women in a particularly hurtful and offensive light.

All of these wounds and maimings are told within the framework of a parody, in which Dern and Cage play young lovers on the run from unspeakable secrets in the past, and the vengeance of the Dern character's mother and her hired goons. It's a road picture, with a 1950s T-Bird convertible as the chariot, and lots of throwaway gags about Ripley's snakeskin jacket, his "personal symbol of individuality." Cage does a conscious imitation of Presley in all of his dialogue, and even bursts into song a couple of times, delivering "Love Me Tender" from the hood of the car in the big climax.

I've seen the movie twice now. I liked it less the second time.

Take away the surprises and you can see the method more clearly. Like "Blue Velvet," this is a film without the courage to declare its own darkest fantasies. Lynch wraps his violence in humor, not as a style, but as a strategy. Luis Bunuel, the late and gifted Spanish surrealist, made films as cheerfully perverted and decadent as anything Lynch has ever dreamed of, but he had the courage to declare himself. Lynch seems to be doing a Bunuel script with a Jerry Lewis rewrite. He is a good director, yes. If he ever goes ahead and makes a film about what's really on his mind, instead of hiding behind sophomoric humor and the cop-out of "parody," he may realize the early promise of his "Eraserhead." But he likes the box office prizes that go along with his pop satires, so he makes dishonest movies like this one.

Understand that it's not the violence I mind. It's the sneaky excuses.