Wild at Heart

 

 

Please note the purpose of this blog is to discuss established classics that I've never seen. As such, the following is laden with spoilers.

Why So Long?

There are certain films you're meant to catch at a certain age, miss them during that window and god only knows when you'll manage to fit them in. Wild at Heart is very much one of those films and I didn't even come close to watching it in those formative house-party-bore years of eighteen to twenty-three. I'd planned on watching In the Mood for Love the other night but couldn't get the DVD player to work, this is currently free on Netflix so that is how I came to fit it in.

And? 

I am genuinely curious as to what I would have made of this film as an eighteen year old. That kid who loved the like of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers who has now become the adult who has no burning desire to ever stick it on again. This isn't a question about the quality of the film, rather an acknowledgement of a changing in maturity - not to claim an improvement, simply a change. As an eighteen year old I was also happy to frequent the chain pubs of Stirling, music blaring at a level rivaled only by the levels of water in the beer, as I imagine many eighteen year olds, pandemic aside, would be happy to do today. 

 

  

And so this is the question of Wild at Heart, did I genuinely not enjoy it, or did I not enjoy it because I'm now in my mid-thirties? There's certainly enough going on here, between Lynch's inventive direction and the performances from the two leads for one to describe this as a "good" film. The occasions remain rare when such talents can come together and not manage to leave something of some quality up on the screen.

What is unquestionable though, is that the talents involved do not manage to carry the whole thing. This film begins with a bang, manages to sustain it for thirty minutes or so and in fairness, manages a decent pop again at the end. What lies in between is a trudge and at times is borderline unwatchable, a lonely highway festooned with all the cliches of the American outlaw/road film. Cliches invested with some Wizard of Oz symbology and some hamming from Willem Defoe, neither of which does enough to kick-start the second of third act.

"Are those toenails dry yet sweetheart? We got some dancing to do"

 

 

 

It's Christmas so I'll end on a kind note, that and as I've mentioned before, it takes a special kind of dickhead to write online about how crap you think everything is. Here's a special word of appreciation for all things Nicolas Cage, now more of meme than an actor, its easy to forget just how good he could be when he wanted to. Its a great turn from him here, one with a knowing wink to camera that suggests he was way ahead of the in-joke that would soon come to blight his public persona. Hopefully we're due a bit of a revival in his career, one of these latter-age reinventions we get now. Based on this evidence, it'll be a lot of fun.

 

Will You Be Watching It Again?

Nope!

Has Any Light Been Shone on Some Heretofore Unknown Bit of Pop Culture?

Also no.