Wild At Heart
As Morgan Freeman once famously said at the end of Se7en: “Ernest Hemingway once wrote, ‘The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.’ I believe in the second part.” Indeed, what defines the terms of what makes our world “fine” can often fall upon grey areas, as while it can be argued that the world in its purest natural state is certainly a thing of great beauty, when you factor in the human element and the ugly nature of most people’s dog eat dog, stab someone in the back as if it’s the same as breathing attitude, then maybe it would appear as if Freeman’s character was right on the money when it came to that statement, but then there is the additional factor of true love between two people, that is if one believes that love is the most beautiful thing possible in this world, so much so that it can redeem the most wicked of people into caring more for someone other than themselves, but unfortunately can also spark an enormous amount of hatred and jealousy in those who see the happiness of others and seem to make it their own personal life’s mission to destroy it any way that they can, all while using completely superfluous reasons to justify why they would do such a thing to explain the rationale for their hatred. While “lovers on the run” movies have been around for a long time with their sometimes unwieldy combinations of romance and violence going all the way back to 1967’s Bonnie And Clyde, the literal attempts of any of these movies to establish a greater subtext and allegory about the pathetic state of the world itself at large is rare indeed. But then you have this release from 1990 (probably one of the very few movies to use Wilmington, NC as one of the major story locations without ever having actually filmed there itself) directed by the one and only David Lynch, a guy whose films have always been a cerebral feast for the intellectual type while also causing the typical layman movie lover to want to tear their hair out in frustration over the massive amount of mixed messages, symbolism, and just plain weirdness that has defined his work. After masterfully firing off on all cylinders with Blue Velvet and creating the groundbreaking TV show Twin Peaks, here Lynch goes for one of his most linear storylines while he makes it clear that he’s lost none of his usual bizarre touches, and that effect certainly worked for some, winning the very prestigious Palme D’Or at The Cannes Film Festival that year, but coming back stateside to a bit of a cooler reaction here, with many feeling that Lynch’s pessimistic, even nihilistic view of our world as presented here represented a step down from his once great period, although those familiar with the director’s entire resume will see that he certainly had something new and different to say here even while he utilized his usual trademark style and approach and more importantly, succeeded in creating some of the most memorable characters and performances ever in his work, as the film utilizes a fantastic and unusual cast to bring this story to life, and more importantly, make Lynch’s seemingly overall point that goodness is a path that we must choose ourselves based on the various choices between right and wrong that we are faced with every day and that living life on autopilot to please the whims of others may very well lead to the withering of our own immortal souls. The film stars Nicolas Cage (just coming into his prime at this point, with his well known real life fixation on Elvis Presley being a major factor in his performance here) as Sailor Ripley, a ne’er do well type with a shady past who has nonetheless found the love of his life and soulmate in privileged daughter of the south Lula Fortune (Laura Dern, never the most appealing of actresses but who here benefitted greatly from the proper application of deep red lipstick). Cage’s Sailor is a wild man of the first order, but is still one who believes that the bonds of love mean proving himself to whom that is you love the most, giving him an overall sense of decency that comes across as refreshing given the rest of the cast of characters here, while Dern continues her tradition in Lynch films at that time of playing a girl who can talk a hazy, spacey blue streak, but despite her character’s blatant white trash tendencies, comes across as a lost soul who realizes that she’s found her savior at hand to walk with her together across any state of adversity. The film opens with the two of them leaving some kind of fancy benefit party only to be approached by who seems to be a random black male who suddenly pulls a knife. Cage wastes little time in going completely around the bend and not only succeeds in killing the assailant, but (literally) bashing his brains in as well. Turns out the whole episode was a setup, as Cage has the unfortunate luck to have his girl’s mother (Diane Ladd) absolutely despise him to no end, possibly due to the grotesquely aging southern belle’s stereotypical feelings that he just isn’t good enough for her daughter, along with an obvious age difference and a few other things as well. Having hired the unlucky knife wielding attacker to kill Cage and failing that, succeeding in securing him a two year prison term, as the film goes on we learn just exactly what an obsessed, deranged woman we are dealing with, including the (possibly imaginary) postulation that she may even be a witch, and Ladd (also the real life mother of Dern) brings out the crazy yet also strangely pathetic qualities of a woman long past her prime yet still stubbornly carrying herself as if she believes that all men actually desire her when only the absolute lowest of the low still remain at her side willing to do her twisted bidding, and Ladd managed to make the most favorable impression on the awards show crowd that year, scoring a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for a truly grotesque performance that at times has to be seen to be believed, if one really believes that a once respectable woman whose insanely sheer hatred for her daughter’s boyfriend has caused her to transform into this hideously monstrous creature. So monstrous in fact, that when Cage gets out of prison and he and Dern hit the road to start a new life together, that she decides to turn to a number of her lowlife “male friends” to track them down and help bring her daughter back, starting with a sniffly yet good natured private detective (Harry Dean Stanton, amazingly always good when cast in any film despite being so unappealing as an actor) who has the bad fortune of being madly in love with this gargoyle like woman. But it’s when Ladd turns for help to a truly shady type with a clear obsession for her named Santos (J.E. Freeman) that the story becomes VERY interesting. Santos appears to have some extremely heavy connections, in particular a very rich and sleazy older fellow (W. Morgan Sheppard) who would appear to maybe even be a possible Ilumminati type figure, judging from his predilection of having mostly naked, much younger women around him at all times (suggesting a possible involvement with the human trafficking market) as well as the type of “assassins” that he sends out on Santos’ behalf to track down Cage and others, miscreants that do NOT prefer to simply kill their prey as a typical mob hitman would do, but rather destroy their victims’ souls from the inside using methods up to and including that of a ritualistic satanic sacrifice. This becomes all the more apparent when Cage and Dern decide to hole up in a craptastic one stoplight Texas town and wind up running into one Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe), a giggling, perverted, obvious scumbag with extremely bad teeth but yet still with an intensely evil, charismatic quality about him that some might describe as seductive. And it is here that Dafoe gives one of the most showstopping performances of his storied career, not making his grand entrance walking onscreen until almost an hour and twenty minutes into the movie, and then completely taking over and sending it into overdrive, accompanied by his mysteriously alluring girlfriend who is also an old friend of Cage’s (Isabella Rossellini), Bobby Peru is that most sinister of hitmen: Besides needlessly sexually assaulting Dern in order to get some cheap thrills, he eschews coming up on Cage from behind and shooting him in the back of the head to instead make him an offer he can’t refuse (even though Cage had sworn to walk the straight and narrow in order to do right by his girl after his last prison stint): Accompany him to a robbery on a local feedstore in order to rip off the fairly measly amount of $5000 cash, with the master plan being to turn on Cage during the robbery after the broke Cage has already in essence sold his soul by agreeing to take part in the robbery in the first place and then blowing him away along with the two unlucky, elderly employees working in the place itself. Just the very concept of how diabolical this whole plan is breathtakingly mindblowing, but again it illustrates the plight of having something as pure as absolute, unconditional love in a world as sick and twisted as this one is. Certainly we might be talking about two damaged souls here, with Cage’s demons being self explanatory and Dern having always suffered from the aftereffects of being raped at a young age by a family friend, but still they vow to stick together even after witnessing the suffering of others, including that of a teen girl dying from a car accident that they come across while still looking for her purse, and a flashback story about Dern’s crazy cousin Dell (Crispin Glover, highly and prominently billed despite two minutes of screen time and three lines, two of them being high pitched screams), and showing that if you find that someone that you cannot live without, you had better find more than just petty reasons to ever walk away from that person, thus making Lynch’s ultimate message that being one of hope, even for those who don’t understand that the weirdness in the worlds that he creates for his films can sometimes pale next to the overly bizarre nature of the actual real world that we ourselves populate in our lives…
10/10