Elvis Goes to Oz: “Wild at Heart”

 I watched Wild at Heart in memory of the late Diane Ladd: it was one of three films for which she received a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, though she never won the statuette. In 1974, she first earned a chance at Oscar glory for her supporting role as a feisty diner waitress (“Kiss my grits”) in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. She was nominated a second time in 1990 for Wild at Heart, and then a third time a year later for Rambling Rose. Remarkably, in the latter two films she played opposite her real-life daughter, the very talented Laura Dern. (There’s a Roger Corman connection too—Laura, born in 1967, was apparently conceived while her parents were on location, shooting Corman’s biker classic, The Wild Angels.)

 Wild at Heart was written and directed by David Lynch, who had burst into the public consciousness in 1986 with Blue Velvet. In that provocative film, which explored the perverse underbelly of an apparently wholesome mid-western town, young Laura Dern (about 17 at the time) played a schoolgirl whose sunny naïveté is in marked contrast to the perverse doings going on all around her. She was again to star for Lynch four years later, but in a highly different role. In Wild at Heart, Dern plays Lula Pace Fortune, a North Carolina cutie simply oozing with sexuality. Her man is Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage), a ne’er-do-well Elvis Presley enthusiast who treasures Lula even more than he does his genuine snakeskin jacket. Soon after the film begins, he’s carted off to prison, but when he returns it’s Lula he wants most. And the bulk of the film becomes their odyssey through the American South, heading for the distant dream of California.

 I hardly anticipated that this film is an unlikely nod to Dorothy and her friends easing down the Yellow Brick Road. (Instead of walking, the lovers cruise in a gaudy convertible, but the far-off Emerald City shines brightly in their eyes.) Of course an Oz story needs a Wicked Witch, and that’s where Diane Ladd comes in. As shrill socialite Marietta Fortune, she’s determined to separate daughter Lula from her lover, and it’s only gradually that we fully understand why. A widow, Marietta has several useful local men at her beck and call, and her intentions are hardly honorable.

 Though the film’s Oz references do not overwhelm the story, they give it a fanciful quality that sets it apart from darker Lynch projects. Nor does it fit tonally into the familiar “lovers on the lam” film genre, which encompasses grim dramas like Badlands and Natural Born Killers, as well as such older classics as They Live by Night (1948) and Gun Crazy (1950). It’s fun to spot the Ozian allusions, which include ruby slippers, a big pink bubble, and a real-life oversized Munchkin. True, Wild at Heart is not without its moments of graphic Lynchian mayhem. But its violence is of the comic book variety. And the ending is one that Lynch himself considered happily ever after, with true love conquering all, even wicked witches. (This was a marked change from the conclusion of the novel on which the film is based.)

 To the surprise of many (including critic Roger Ebert), Wild at Heart was cheered at the Cannes Film Festival, and received the prestigious Palme d’Or. Back at home, though,  Lynch learned his flick would be X-rated if cuts were not made. What I saw on DVD was still pretty wild. It may be perverse, but I liked encountering a “Dorothy” who could emphatically declare, “You got me hotter than Georgia asphalt.”  

 

In the Family Way: “Moonstruck”

I wonder what genuine Italian-Americans think of Moonstruck, which in 1987 was a huge critical and popular hit. Do they consider it a charming, heartwarming representation of a vanishing way of life? Or do they cringe at the clichés, annoyed at being presented to the world as superstitious, hyperemotional, in love with food, sex, and opera? Maybe they’re just glad that this fanciful version of life in an Italian section of Brooklyn--while it may boast some (offscreen) lusty coupling and a smidgeon of adultery—contains nary a single Mafioso. Not being of Italian descent myself, I am free to enjoy this fairytale (which, I should note, is based on an Oscar-winning original screenplay by John Patrick Shanley, who is no more Italian than I am).

There is, I should note, a mostly Italian-American cast, featuring Vincent Gardenia as a philandering papa, Broadway avant-garde specialist Julie Bovasso as a lusty aunt, and the late Danny Aiello as a hapless suitor. The leading man is Nicolas Cage, who is actually a Coppola with a name change. But the film’s two performance Oscars were won by women whose kinfolk came from other locales. Cher (born Cherilyn Sarkisian) can claim Armenian descent, and Olympia Dukakis is Greek-American. Well, I guess their Mediterranean roots make them close enough for Hollywood.

At any rate, their characters are definitely people with a well-defined outlook. They strongly believe in luck, mostly bad. (Cher’s Loretta started off her marriage on the wrong foot because there was no church wedding. As a direct consequence, her husband was hit by a bus and died.) Whatever their behavior during the week, these women go to confession on Sunday. They crave romantic rapture, but remain highly suspicious of it: to marry for love is to invite disappointment. Still, there’s always room for the occasional miracle, like the one in faraway Palermo that solves everyone’s problems at the film’s end. So long as that huge round moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie (as in the Dean Martin musical oldie that opens and closes the film), everything will turn out as it should.

You can call this movie a watered-down form of grand opera: the snippet of Puccini’s La Bohème we hear in Moonstruck captures something of the characters’ baroque emotional journeys. Though the operatic performance that’s a key part of the plot takes place at WASP-y Lincoln Center, it tugs directly at the heartstrings of the blue-collar Italians in attendance. (There’s a key moment when Loretta, overcome by her first taste of opera, breaks down her emotional barriers. Her eyes moisten, and suddenly this self-sufficient woman is ready to clutch the proffered hand of someone who loves her This night-at-the-opera trope was stolen, I suspect, by the writers of Pretty Woman, who created a similarly transformative moment for Julia Roberts, in the company of Richard Gere, three years later.) 

More than anything, though, Moonstruck is a movie about the unbreakable bonds of family. To cast off (or cast out) a family member is to invite disaster. On the other hand, to bring family together (especially around a dinner table stocked with plenty of pasta and wine) is to usher in God’s grace. At a time when most of us are stuck in self-isolation, sometimes separated by great distances from loved ones, it sounds like a dream come true to be crowded around a table groaning with the weight of good food. Would that this year’s Easter and Passover celebrations could allow for that “all in the family” kind of joy.