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esteeb.art · @esteeb.art@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Wild at Heart 9/10

I got ahead of myself so I watched this as LSC Week 5 extra credit. I feel like I say this every time I watch something by Lynch. But wow what a movie. I've never seen anything this raw and unflinching manage to coexist with this level of schmaltz. It's like watching Golden Age Hollywood get in a car crash with the 90s Indie Boom in the best possible way. From the explosive first scene to Love Me Tender this movie puts you in a choke hold and doesn't let up. Cage and Dern are incredible, Dafoe is only in about 10 minutes of screen time but I would say he stole the movie if it weren't for the fact that it firmly belongs to Diane Ladd. Lynch must be one of the best actor's directors I've ever seen. The way he gets so much real, raw emotion out of a script that is built for maximum melodrama and camp is like a magic trick. That's really the core of this movie and really a lot of the appeal of Lynch's work. A lot of people can't get past the weird, but when you sit and really look you see a very clear method to all of it. Lynch wields the fantastical and the surreal in order to push through the barriers we put up for ourselves to explore the real. The surrealism and the camp and the Wizard of Oz references are the candy coating to get us to take an unflinching look at trauma, lust, murder, rape, violence, and death. But what I love about Lynch is that he never wallows in the dark, because he shows you all this ugliness and terror also to come out the other side and highlight how special and fleeting real love is. He's not an edgelord or a cynic, he's a romantic and I feel like this is Lynch at his most romantic. What a movie.

#lsc9 #lsc9 week5 #movie

Published 2023-10-05 00:00 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere