Wild At Heart

26 March 2023

Director: David Lynch

See

Her: Wild at heart’ - David Lynch’s 1990 road movie   Starring Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern, the film that won him Cannes palm d’or though was never considered the favourite by Lynch’s fans. 

Him: Nicolas Cage as Sailor and Laura Dern as  Lulu, a Bonnie and Clyde type couple, mad and bad and dangerous to know but with minimal bank robbing and much more Elvis and sex centric romance. He’s on trial for manslaughter. She bails him out. On parole they skip the state and head on a roadtrip.

Think 

Her: Lynch’s dark aesthetics that is often considered surreal, freaky, unexplainable, always made sense to me and has always been close to my  vision of the world and dual nature of everything living in it. He ridicules human vices but doesn’t underestimate how dangerous they can be. Considering how little David Lynch talks about his films, I think it’s enough being said about thinking.

Him: Never been a fan of David Lynch. The absurdity, audience laughing at inopportune moments, digressions in the narrative, and character actors like Willem Dafoe, Harry Dean Stanton and others seem to serve no purpose other than to be tangents to the story. David Foster Wallace said after Dune Lynch decided to reign in hell rather than serve in heaven, and described Lynchian as “the utterly macabre coupled with the utterly banal.” Maybe I don’t get it, or perhaps it doesn’t speak to me.

Feel

Her: If there’s an America that I’ve ever wanted to see then it’s Lynch’s America. He captures its cultural essence and paints it in true colours without romanticising any of its elements (by adding humour when the situation is about to get cheesy). That said, this film being a rom com is the most romantic of all his films but still in his own style. To put it simple, I think Lynch is all about feel first, think second and you either get him or not. He never touches any current affairs, his dispositions are always small and discreet. His world exists between dream and reality, light and shadow, comedy and tragedy and, frankly, that’s how I feel about this world every single day.

Him: I felt restless watching this and waiting for it to be over. I’m glad I saw this in a cinema but I think it’s Badlands by Terrence Mallick with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek that I’m keen to see. If I’m to spend so long without a story or characters I can relate to I atleast want it to transport me to some place.