david lynch 🤝 laura dern
david lynch 🤝 isabella rossellini

the name of the game here is decay and disarray. if no country for old men met magnolia and blue velvet in a bar fight, i think this film is the brawl that would ensue. wild at heart is visually beautiful to look at, but what a twisted, tornado-esque, whirlwind cornucopia of madness, destruction, misery and chaos this was. i literally watched with what felt like a permanent replused grimace on my face for at least 75% of the runtime. but you can be sure with a lynch work (as it seems to me so far) that you can never in your life wipe away the scalding imagery that creeps inside your head. it crashes in like a freight train or a tidal wave, and it's not for the squeamish. i'm not sure whether it's a good thing or not, but i will never be able to forget this film.

the acting was incredible, i'll give this movie that much credit, where it's due. i'm really starting to like young laura dern, she's very versatile and uses her charm as an actress to her utmost benefit. i still heartily dislike nicolas cage, and frankly i hated every other character but laura's, but i can't take away the cast's dedication to their roles, or their performances, which they really knocked out of the park. most notable for me was the sizzling chemistry between laura and nic - i really found their somewhat ludacris couple dynamic believable and maybe even beautiful, in its way.

with that being said though, this has to be one of the weirdest and most abrasive films i've ever seen. i don't think this is the film to watch if you haven't seen anything else by its director; i definitely wouldn't call it very accessible at all. lynch relishes his unusual and carefully crafted characters, has a fixation on the disgusting and disturbing, and i feel like he lives to confuse his viewer. i mean i literally had no idea what i was watching most of the time. i also think he loves to make his characters violent for the sake of being violent, and to make his stories shocking for the sake of being shocking. that never works for me, and although blue velvet did work for me far more than this film, the negative aspects (in my viewpoint they are, at least) still put me off of enjoying either one of those films like i wanted to. it's vividly strange to the point of expulsion. also this runtime felt extremely brutal to me, like i was constantly checking how much time was left. david really said "how much more can olivia sit through without caving?", huh?

from what i've watched thus far, lynch likes to drip feed his viewer the information of his stories non-sequentially, and although this is a very interesting approach, it still isn't successful for me, on the whole. as a general observation, i've never seen anyone's work create such apprehension through its scrambled plot lines and deeply uncomfortable characters, who have zero basis in the real world. i mean these people are written straight out of the figments and fantasies of lynch's own mind, and while some people may love that, i do not. sometimes i think it's beneficial to have at least some kind anchor point or foot in reality. and i think someone should probably go check to make sure lynch is alright, cause i'm starting to worry about how anyone could possibly come up with some of the jarring, vulgar, and downright nasty scenarios he's able to concoct. overall, the eccentricities are just way too much for me, and ultimately i feel like going so far overboard with these outer realm portrayals and ideas obstructs and hinders my ability to enjoy or connect with any or most of the subject material. so, in short, i ended up really disliking this film. i hate to give this such a low score, especially since i was looking forward to it so much, but i just can't justify going any higher than this, based on my own personal feelings. sorry miranda D: also - would somebody PLEASE, for the love of god, get this man a toothbrush??? you know who i'm talking about. also lynch loves himself some fire and cigarettes, doesn't he? i wonder if he thought to himself "this movie is fire" while making it?

(david lynch - ranked)

(part of my priority watchlist of 2019)