Wild at Heart

David Lynch is so highly regarded and yet, confronted with his films, I am reminded of being a little boy and being told to eat my spinach because it’s good for me. Lynch for me is the same category as Antonioni. This is occupied by artists who are clearly masters of the technique but whose work mostly leaves me unengaged. Not to suggest that these two are anything like the same kind of artists. In contrast to chilly (almost Nordic) Antonioni, the Lynch of WILD AT HEART is passionately Mediterranean in its mise-en-scène. The colour palette is fabulous, dominated by things on the red/yellow earthy spectrum. The images have something of the Pop Art comic-book style in their framing. One can easily envision this film on the story-boards or transferred into print with speech bubbles. And yet through the motion in these images, there is no suggestion – as one might find with Peter Greenaway at times – that this is anything other than a motion picture.

WILD AT HEART is on the chain of the increasingly self-aware Hollywood products of the 1980s. The artificiality of the film is very pronounced. It’s as if Lynch feels his audience is so uncritical that he had to beat it over the head to learn ‘This is all done by people making conscious choices.’ (Perhaps he had been talking to Roger Ebert beforehand.) He recycles the mid-century American mythos in the shape of allusions to Elvis Presley and THE WIZARD OF OZ. In their ways these both seem unnaturalistic art, and Lynch whacks all that ‘up to eleven’ along with a Southern Gothic sensibility that is part of the Lynchian universe.

The story, based on a novel I have not read by Barry Gifford, sends two young lovers on a journey from Cape Fear, North Carolina (itself the setting for a memorable film), and ends in El Paso, Texas (although I don’t believe it is specified), by way of New Orleans. I found Lula (Laura Dern) and Sailor (Nicholas Cage) unsympathetic characters, not helped by Lynch’s decision to have his actors perform in an overwrought manner that may be intended to mock the histrionics of young lovers. Is this a commentary on the artificiality of acting or simply intended to keep consistency with the highly stylised imagery of the film? All this reaches its apogee with the appearance of Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe), whose dentistry and demise bring the film to its demented apogee of violence as a stylistic choice.

Despite its visual vibrancy (in which I saw echoes of bits of ZABRISKIE POINT) and happy ending, the film is quite dark at its heart. (‘Dark at Heart’ might have been just as effective a title). Greed and a desire to control are presented as the source of all evil in America or possibly in all humanity. It’s hard to argue with that and for all the darkness Lynch seems to suggest that there is a consolation in this vale of tears in the love one receives from others. (For the record, it turned out that I just didn’t like the way my mother cooked spinach.)

© 2026 Paul Brewer