David Lynch
Wild at Heart
The Straight Story
Hello, dear readers! There’s no need to get your eyes checked, you have read the title of this post correctly, and I am indeed doing a David Lynch Double Feature. If you’ve ever read this blog before, you might’ve caught some of the subtle or not-so-subtle shade I’ve thrown at the films of David Lynch, that has spurred from various forced-viewings of his films in college, and his sustained ubiquity and fierce admiration among the film nerd community. His films may not be my cup of damn good coffee, but I can still appreciate the courageous creative swings he took with each of his subversive projects. My first Lynch film was technically The Elephant Man, one of his only linear, straightforward narratives, but what I mostly remember from my childhood viewing was watching my mom cry. The first Lynch film that I actually remember watching was Eraserhead. I was extremely curious about this one because I’d heard it was uniquely terrifying, and as a horror aficionado I had to see it for myself. I was not terrified, but disappointed, because it wasn’t my flavor of horror. But those bizarre images may be burned into my brain forever, which may have been Lynch’s goal. In college I took a class called Feminist Film Theory, where I watched Mulholland Drive, a film that frustrated me more than I can succinctly articulate. My frustration didn’t come from a lack of intrigue, or an absence of weird tastes—I was just learning to acquire a taste for surreal cinema at that time, and my displeasure of this film felt like a personal failure. And a literal one, because the paper I wrote on this film earned me a C. I guess my professor was a hardcore Lynch defender, which I can appreciate as a film critic, but as her student, I would’ve loved to have been graded by my writing skills and not my opinions. Blue Velvet was my next Lynch, which I viewed at my college’s film club, an activity I took part in mostly because I had a crush on the boy who ran it. I remember watching his face gaze at the screen in awe, totally dazzled by Isabella Rosselini’s singing, Laura Dern’s innocence, Dennis Hopper’s cartoonish depravity. I was more entertained and perplexed by people’s reaction to this film, than by the film itself. What was I missing? Why wasn’t I as satisfied or as tantalized by the old Hollywood references and dark semiotics and weird for the sake of unarticulated weirdness? Why am I moved by David Cronenberg’s surrealist body horror, Wes Craven’s absurd sense of camp, and John Carpenter’s blunt brand of bizarre, but not Lynch’s earnest, eager strangeness? I’m not sure. Why does cilantro sometimes taste delicious then sometimes taste disgusting to me? I’m also not sure.
I used to have a smidge of disdain for the uber fans of David Lynch, because many of them just seemed so much more pretentious than the artist, himself. Everything I’d read about Lynch, every interview I’d seen him in, he seemed like the cheeriest, goofiest film geek, who really loved what he did. I enjoyed hearing him speak about his processes, his kooky trains of thought, and his modes of inspiration. As with many things in pop culture, it’s partly the extreme fans that put me off of his work, and it’s the fact that he was at some point placed on some sort of impossible pedestal that shirks any critique of his work or his symbolism or consistent usage and abus-age of the female form. Lynch himself seemed like a kind sweetie of a man, who wouldn’t judge me for not obsessing over his work. Although, I somewhat recently watched his least favorite movie he ever made, Dune, and I actually loved it. Even his most loyal fans do not like his Dune adaptation, but I thought it was actually really fun and imaginative and whimsical, in the way that sci-fi media used to be. Needless to say, although I’ve just said it many times, I have a complicated relationship with David Lynch’s films. But I’ve never turned my nose up at them, I’ve never questioned their place in pop culture, and if anything, my aversion to his sensibilities only makes me want to understand the man more. So when David Lynch tragically passed away last week, I knew I had to learn more about him, and pay tribute to this mythic filmmaker by braving a couple more of his films. Don’t ever say I never watch movies outside of my comfort zone! Lynch had his favorite themes, performers, disjointed but disturbing visuals, that over time garnered cult-admiration and eventually, awards recognition. Lynch was also a painter, an electropop musician, a furniture designer, and an advocate of transcendental meditation. He had connections to Ira Einhorn aka The Unicorn Killer, and worked with real-life "mafia cop" Lou Eppolito. He wasn’t ever that controversial, but he is certainly coincidentally tied to some controversies. For example, he was on Alex Jones’ show once. I found out this crazy info from this incredible Letterboxd review, where the author also sums up how I often feel about Lynch’s movies: “Theres a limit on how much ‘exploring evil-ambiguity’, virginal purity, charismatic demon magik & moralizing torture/murder wrapped in surreal symbolism & twilight language I can take from the ‘panties in my mouth’ guy.” (This was obviously all new info to me but I’m dying to know if any Lynch stans were aware of these fun facts…) Pauline Kael described Lynch as “the first populist surrealist”, and Mel Brooks referred to him as “Jimmy Stewart from Mars.” Lynch claimed to not be political, leaning toward a libertarian then anti-authoritarian stance, saying, “No government and not so many rules, except for traffic lights. I really believe in traffic regulations.” His filmmaking style is so distinct and well known, that the term “Lynchian” became as commonly-used and misused as “Freudian” and “Orwellian”, and through his absurdist films and cult-classic tv show Twin Peaks, he crafted some of the most iconic aesthetics and iconography of modernish film.
It was while he was directing the first season of Twin Peaks that he began production on his 1990 film Wild at Heart. Based on the novel of (nearly) the same name, Wild at Heart introduces us to two troubled young lovers named Sailor Ripley (Nic Cage) and Lula Fortune (Laura Dern), who are madly, deeply, absurdly in love. Sailor spends a stint in jail for killing a man in self defense, and when he is released, Lula and Sailor run off in a convertible together to avoid the wrath of Lula’s mother, who orchestrated the entire thing. Sailor and Lula bond over their respective fucked-up lives, and they love each other despite the deep emotional scars they’ve endured. These two lovebirds delight in their honeymoon of a road trip, that is until Lula’s mother Marietta (Diane Ladd), hires a detective (Harry Dean Stanton) and a hitman (J.E. Freeman) to go after them. Wild at Heart is just as free-wheeling and unconcerned with realism as Lynch’s other films, but here, it all just felt a bit more fun. There are some great cameos along their journey like Crispin Glover, Willem Dafoe, Sherilyn Fenn, Calvin Lockhart, and Isabella Rosselini, and every single member of this ensemble is, as usual, very tapped into the specific flavor of frenetic surrealism that Lynch loves to convey. What I liked most about Wild at Heart, apart from staring longingly at a young, broody Nicolas Cage, was its sense of humor and its commitment to selling its love story. I really believed in Lula and Sailor’s love—their desperation to both devour and protect one another is palpable, not so much from the script but from Dern and Cage’s performances. It felt like a much more palatable, much more thrilling take on the starcrossed-damaged-lovers archetype than, say, Natural Born Killers, because Wild at Heart was clearly made with just that: a wild amount of heart. I loved Laura Dern’s anxious but rebellious spirit, and I was pretty obsessed with Nic Cage’s Elvis accent, but Diane Ladd really stole the show for me, as she becomes increasingly unhinged in her pursuit of controlling her daughter’s life. Wild at Heart, though wild and goofy and full of unwieldy horniness, was far more compelling to me than any other Lynch film I’ve seen thus far. And the same thing could be said for his 1999 film The Straight Story, minus the horniness.
The Straight Story is Lynch’s only G-rated movie, his only Disney movie, it is also one of the only films he made that’s based on a true story, and follows a linear narrative. In 1994, a 73 year old man in Laurens, Iowa named Alvin Straight wished to visit his ailing brother in Blue River, Wisconsin, and with no other means to get there, he got on his lawn mower and travelled the 240 miles to see him. This miraculous journey was covered in the New York Times, which caught the attention of several people, including Mary Sweeney, a frequent collaborator of Lynch’s, who adapted this story for the screen with fellow writer John Roach. The real Alvin Straight died in 1996, and when Lynch got ahold of Sweeney and Roach’s script, he was immediately enchanted by it and wanted to memorialize this magical moment of mundane Americana. Richard Farnsworth stars as Alvin Straight, who has just received word that his estranged brother, Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton), has had a stroke. Ailing from his own health issues and stranded without a means of typical transportation, Straight acquires a 1966 John Deere riding lawn mower–which he attaches to a trailer full of his stuff. His adult daughter, Rose (Sissy Spacek–-who helped finance Eraserhead), is bewildered by Alvin’s plan, as are his fellow small town old buddies. Even as he begins to slowly creep along the town’s main thoroughfare, Alvin’s friends slow-jog alongside and tell him how crazy he is. But this doesn’t stop Alvin, as he slowly but surely, over the course of six weeks, makes his way to Wisconsin. Along the way, Alvin camps out in the woods, in cornfields, off the side of dusty highways, and even in a cemetery, meeting kind people along the way who are dazzled by his far-out adventure. He lets a teenage runaway share his campsite and dinner for a night, tries to help a busy businesswoman who hit a deer with her car, and occasionally stops by a local bar or feeding hole, where he meets even more friendly folks. It’s a very sweet, very wholesome story that could’ve been heavily-dramatized or overly sentimental, but The Straight Story had Lynch’s trademark matter-of-factness, with just a slice of surrealism. At one point, when his mower breaks down and he’s waiting for the repair, a woman asks Alvin if he’s ever scared being “out there” all alone, since there’s so many “weird people around now”, to which he responds, “I fought in the trenches of WWII, why would I be afraid of a cornfield?” While the road trip in Wild at Heart is teeming with shady, deplorable characters, the road trip in The Straight Story only focused on the kindness of strangers. Those long shots with little to no cuts that are essential to Lynch’s style can sometimes feel tedious, but in this film they felt more than appropriate. I loved each extended moment of dialogue between this traveler and the people he encounters—it was nice to see this patient filming style used for coherent, lovely conversation instead of anxious vibe-building for a change. I shan’t reveal anymore details of this daring, dreamy story, but I will say to prepare to feel emotional when the Straight brothers are finally reunited. Farnsworth and Stanton and Spacek all do an impeccable job with this somewhat sparse script, and so much is expressed in their faces without uttering a word. I don’t care if this film is known as “Lynch for normies”, or that people find it to be too slow or mundane for Lynch’s manic M.O. The Straight Story captivated me and touched me because it was so slow, so mundane, so real and forgiving and patient. If your attention span can manage it, I highly recommend watching this lesser-seen Lynch, because I think it reveals this creator’s soul just as much as his other works. And there’s still some classic David Lynch surrealism here, with some gorgeous cinematography and editing that blew my mind the way Mulholland Drive was supposed to. This film, perhaps more than any other, proves Lynch’s diverse abilities within storytelling, and his depth of thought when it comes to just about any topic.
Wild at Heart and The Straight Story both proved to be far more nostalgic and sentimental than I’d anticipated, and they further confirmed that Lynch’s perceived-cool-guy reputation does not necessarily reflect the mindset of the man behind the movie madness. I’ve covered so many other iconic directors on this blog, it was time that I paid attention to the one I’ve avoided the most. Thank you for putting up with my anti-Lynchian ways, dear reader, and thank you, Mr. Lynch, for your service and dedication to freaky cinema. And if you can’t understand how I can dislike this man’s movies but still appreciate his legacy, allow me to answer with a quote from your fav:
“It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It's better not to know so much about what things mean. Because the meaning, it's a very personal thing, and the meaning for me is different than the meaning for somebody else.”
—David Lynch
Ttyl!
