7.4 | / 10 |
Users | 4.2 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
If Lula knows one thing in this world, it's that she's destined to be with her ex-con boyfriend Sailor no matter how many times her mama tries to kill him. But when she and Sailor finally hit the road in a desperate bid to find happiness, their journey plunges them into a disturbing underworld filled with sexual secrets and dangerous desires that form a terrifying "tapestry of human extremity" (Variety).
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Diane Ladd, Isabella RosselliniDrama | 100% |
Dark humor | 29% |
Crime | 12% |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Romance | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
Music: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
There are very few directors whose films make such an impression that lots of viewers can recount the first time they watched a movie by that given individual. One of this select few is undoubtedly David Lynch. I still remember being dragged off to an art house in San Francisco by a buddy of mine who had just gone to see Eraserhead and was going back for a second helping (of not quite dead yet chicken, perhaps?) and wanted company. I sat in stunned silence throughout the film, not having the slightest idea if Lynch was a genius, a madman, or some new mutant combination of the two, a reaction I daresay has been shared manifold times by other film fans as they've experienced any number of Lynch outings. Eraserhead took a while to find its cult audience, but it was apparent to anyone who loved film that this extremely odd little outing announced an incredibly distinctive talent, something that became completely obvious with Lynch’s first mainstream feature, The Elephant Man. Lynch stumbled pretty badly four years later with his flawed but still quite fascinating take on Frank Herbert’s massive Dune franchise, but he rebounded rather spectacularly with Blue Velvet in 1986, a film which seemed to state unequivocally that Lynch was through playing “Hollywood” and was going to make films his way, come hell or high water. Lynch only doubled down on that attitude with his follow up to Blue Velvet, his still extremely controversial ode to crime thrillers and maybe even film noir that was roundly decried by a host of critics upon its release but which still managed to capture the Palme d’Or that year at Cannes (a disparity of critical reaction that was certainly nothing new to Lynch). Lynch’s in your face approach with Wild at Heart can still be off putting, and the film is most decidedly an acquired taste, especially for those who want narrative clarity and at least some normative hook to anchor otherwise bizarre proceedings.
Wild at Heart is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Lynch's typically vivid palette is brought lustrously to life in this high definition presentation, with such standouts as Dern and Ladd's blood red lipstick really popping with a lot of intensity. The image is quite grainy at times, especially in some of the darker sequences. What might be perceived as a soft transfer is at least partially attributable to Lynch's use (along with DP Frederick Elmes) of diffusion filters, something that casts a kind of "golden era" gauziness on otherwise fairly sordid proceedings (it's almost exactly the same approach the two utilized Blue Velvet ). There are some brief distractions like dirt and white specks that show up with a fair amount of regularity, and general clarity is slightly inconsistent, but overall this is a very nice looking transfer. Aside from some very minor haloing evident in a couple of moments, the image does not appear to have been digitally tweaked in any significant way.
Lynch throws so much visual information at the viewer that some audience members will probably only have a subliminal reaction to the sound design of Wild at Heart, but it's quite creative in its own way and is certainly heightened by the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 repurposing offered on this disc (for the record, there's also a standard DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix available). From the thundering LFE as the first matches are lit and the credits appear, to such wonderful segues as a shot morphing into the echo of the tin sign identifying Big Tuna warping in the wind, Wild at Heart's soundtrack is surprisingly nuanced and offers good, if somewhat inconsistent, utilization of the surround and subwoofer channels. Dialogue and the film's quirky score (by Angelo Badalamenti, who sounds like he was listening to lots of Bruckner while writing this) are also very cleanly and clearly presented in a track that boasts excellent fidelity and no problems whatsoever.
David Lynch maybe doesn't seem to be a touchy-feely sort of guy, but if you look just beneath the frenetic surface of Wild at Heart, there's a fairly basic love story that plays out like a post-modernist take on an old Douglas Sirk melodrama. Despite its patent oddities, Wild at Heart is surprisingly sweet natured, if it's also just as (probably unsurprisingly) bizarre, surreal and downright strange. It's David Lynch--did you expect anything less? This Blu-ray offers solid video and audio and comes with some great supplements ported over from the DVD. Recommended.
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