willem dafoe wild at heart willem dafoe young

The lead character, literally named “Sailor”, is played by Nicolas Cage doing a wonderful full-on Elvis Presley impersonation.

So, what we have here is something which resembles a road movie through the lens of a fifties “teenage rebellion” picture, along with a far more cynical modern crime film. I’m not such a blind devotee of Lynch that I believe he doesn’t wander into abstract cinema just for the sake of abstract cinema – but I do like some of it. One person’s deeper meaning is another person’s pretentious nonsense. Lynch’s work is so richly layered with subtext that books could be written (and have been written), devoted to decoding the hidden symbols and meanings that the director has put in place. Of course, this is undoubtedly an overly simplistic reading. Good, Lynch seems to suggest, doesn’t so much beat evil as it endures whatever evil can throw at it. Sure, horrible things happen (repeatedly) to good people, it seems that our heroes are fighting against odds that simply won’t be beaten, and Lynch devotes a great deal of time to sinister deconstructions of core American stereotypes (be it the family life of the Fortunes or the romanticism around desert outlaws), but the cast is populated with a few genuinely decent and empathic human beings who do (occasionally) earn a happy ending, even if they have to travel through hell to earn it.

In many ways, Wild at Heart feels like Lynch tending towards being somewhat idealistic.

Willem dafoe wild at heart willem dafoe young