It’s not everyday you get to watch a David Lynch film on the big screen. Once you do, it’s a high that you seek in every cinema-going experience after. The moment Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) began serenading his girlfriend Lula Pace Fortune (Laura Dern) with Elvis Presley’s Love Me, greasy hair and all, I knew I’d leave the screening with a new candidate for my Letterboxd top four.
After breaking parole for self-defensive manslaughter, Wild at Heart (1990) follows Sailor and his girlfriend Lula on an erratic road trip to California. Faced with the wrath of Lula’s mother and the threat of imprisonment, they must confront the uncertainty of their future, questioning whether love is enough to combat all forces against them.
While most of Lynch’s filmography is largely characterised by dark themes and moody imagery, Wild at Heart almost embodies the tone of a typical romantic comedy, stirking a precise balance between infinite tenderness and absurd humour. Though Lynch’s signature directorial style and dialgue still persist throughout the story, both of which are executed and complemented tastefully by Cage and Dern’s performances. No matter how ridiculous they may seem, you believe they are as real as you are.
I dismissed the love Sailor and Lula expressed to one another in the early stages of the film, believing their relationship to be no different to a regular passionate summer romance — intense with heat, but temporary like the seasons. But as I witnessed their late night discussions in bed and their drives into the sunset, I quickly realised that for Sailor and Lula, love erases all odds, simplifies all complex equations, and ultimately defeats even the unforgiving brutality of time. They choose each other, time and time again, choices that aren’t defined by fate but rooted in complete sober reality. We have a tendency to complicate love through contemplation. Our thoughts easily cage our emotions, confining honesty and sincerity within the walls of our own hearts. Sailor and Lula remind us that love exists within all of us, but to love, is something we must act upon.
“Edinburgh Filmhouse – geograph.org.uk – 293394” by Sandy Gemmill is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.