Wild at Heart is the most Lynchian response to a David Lynch movie such as Blue Velvet. Adapted from a Barry Gifford novel, which focuses on a couple of star-crossed lovers attempting to rid themselves of hateful and malevolent family members, there is no doubt Lynch saw tremendous opportunity for irony and comical commentary on America’s loving obsession with violence and the often macho bravado that drives it but cannot seem to control it. By his nature, Lynch appears to be anything but an aggressive man, yet his deep fascination with such behavior emits a darker shade to his persona, one that needs to be coaxed and prodded enough until it forms itself in such memorable characters as Frank Booth or Bobby Peru. Yet, if both of these men are the heavies in their respective movies, in the case of Wild at Heart Lynch must also have appreciated the pent-up potential of its protagonist, the aptly-named Sailor who spends the entire picture searching for dry land in an ocean of cruelty and deceit. If Jeffrey Beaumont represents the sunny, inquisitive nature of David Lynch’s personality, Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) is the romantic rebel, filled with heart and passion but willing and able to lash out intensely when pushed too far. In the very first scene, Lynch shows how willing he is to test that trait. Faced with an assailant with a knife, Sailor does not merely disarm him but proceeds to beat him so brutally that it makes you wonder if Lynch wants this scene to be a parody of violent action movies, so popular at the time. Indeed, as Wild at Heart plays out, parody is the word that continues to emerge. The tone is so outlandish and the situations so deftly mixed with gruesome imagery and humorous anecdotes, there is no doubt that Lynch’s intention is to confuse the viewer to the point where cringing and chuckling occur in the same breath. As in Blue Velvet, the binary of innocence and decadence becomes pivotal in the movie’s attitude towards its subjects and the audience.

Perhaps above all else, Wild at Heart is a road picture which, given its rich history in cinema, has its own baggage and limitations but also can be quite enriching when taking a close look at two people and their relationship to their environment and its elements. Lynch has described the movie as “finding love in Hell,” which in a way spins off from the thematic content of Blue Velvet and Lynch’s career entirely. The binary between heavenly love and hellish violence not only sets the tone here but also allows the characters to reveal themselves as either full of love, violence or even both. In the case of Sailor, he certainly shows his capability to love, but perhaps only Lula (Laura Dern) as he is so protective of her that his passion manifests in aggressive behavior towards nearly everyone else. Then again, it is nearly everyone else they encounter who is willing to dispose of them as a means for their own end, and Lynch’s heavy emphasis of this element illustrates the binary of excess so prevalent in his work. As much as Sailor can love Lula, he is that capable of violence and despite little explained about his background, Lynch makes it clear that one of the reasons these two are drawn together is their need to find someone else in life that can complete them, which comes down to love instead of hate and deceit. In the case of Lula, her mother holds such sway over her that while being with Sailor is about love it is equally about rebellion and her willingness to put herself at risk indicates how much she both loves Sailor and needs to rebel in order to escape her mother.

The role of Lula’s mother (played by Laura Dern’s real-life mother, Diane Ladd) is crucial enough that she comes to symbolize a whole different aspect of the story as Lynch fleshes it out. In this case, that aspect is a parallel story which happens to be The Wizard of Oz. Lula’s mother is obviously paralleled with the Wicked Witch of the West and the men she enrolls to kill Sailor and Lula are the flying monkeys. Yet, the reasons for this parallel are not exactly clear except, perhaps, to David Lynch. This certainly was a creative choice of the adapter rather than the original author, Barry Gifford, and Lynch has spoken of his love for that iconic American film but its larger purpose is not easily surmised. Perhaps Lynch saw The Wizard of Oz equally as a road picture and the journey both Dorothy and Sailor and Lula take are similar in that their encounters challenge them to remain steadfast in their convictions and trust that these circumstances can be overcome. At the same time, the artistic possibilities of meshing a violent, neo-western road picture with an iconic Technicolor fantasy could not have been resisted by someone as creative as Lynch. The result is scenes that sometimes play for laughs and others for horror and many others for both. And while Lynch has always been willing to teeter on the brink between these two extremes, unlike Blue Velvet the two never balance well. Scenes like Sailor and Lula having bizarre conversations with small-town residents in Texas or Lula being sexually harassed by gangster Bobby Peru are meant to be both shocking and funny and their larger significance to the story is not only miniscule but frustrating. Lynch has shown his willingness to go way out on a limb, but why does he dangle with no safety net here?

In his review of the movie in Sight and Sound, film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum highlighted Lynch’s “freewheeling adaptation” of Gifford’s novel, believing this to be the ultimate reason why the movie fails. He further cites Lynch’s preferral of “iconography, not characters” as a major barrier in allowing the story to unfold organically and suck in the viewer. What we get instead are images of deliberate shock value and intense emotion but little to tie them together. Rosenbaum believes the injections of Elvis and The Wizard of Oz to be evidence of “the desperation of a surrealist vaudevillian stuck for a finish” and this is not an altogether unsatisfactory interpretation. Given that he was working on the Twin Peaks pilot simultaneously, Lynch’s devotion and focus were never going to be of his usual prowess and the simplest answer may be the most useful: the need to quickly churn out a script in order to meet production schedules puts a lot of pressure on any filmmaker and rarely does this result in one’s best work. While elements stand out as eccentric and memorable, little about the project coalesces into a comprehensible whole and all we are left with are the pieces of the puzzle familiar on their own: Elvis, The Wizard of Oz, images of shock and black humor and a love story that defies unhappy endings.