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COUNTERCULTURE
Clumsy Hearts and Banal Saviors
by Terry Francis
Wild at Heart ★★ With Wild at Heart, David Lynch,
one of the three or four most gifted directors at work in
American movies today, appears diminished—seriously
—as an artist.
But first, a word about the film's plot. Laura Dem and
Nicolas Cage play a pair of lovers on the run from her
mother (Diane Ladd, Dem's real-life parent), who's con
tracted a small-town mobster to blow Cage's head off.
The essential plot revelation concerns the reasons
underlying Ladd's vendetta against Cage. The film takes
on the structure of a road movie, and its filler consists of
the adventures that dog Cage and Dern on their way to
California, which the pair view dreamily as some sort of
Emerald City.
Wild at Heart is a film that moves by fits and starts,
with scene after scene spangled in Lynchisms, the visual
and aural eccentricities by now trademarks of the direc
tor's work.
In fact, Wild at Heart's materials are so thin that the
Lynchisms appear to be the film's principal reason for
being. As the film runs on, the flaws accrue. The exposi
tory dialogue is the clumsiest I can recall in a Lynch film
(he tells us what he's showing us); and a scene of a man
on fire (part of a weak, recurring visual motif) is lifted
directly from Bergman's Fanny and Alexander.
The film also includes a scene that is unabashedly
homophobic. Near the end, Cage is attacked by a gang of
thugs whom he addresses with, "What do you faggots
want?" They proceed to beat the hell out of him, and as
he's lying in the street he has a magical vision. Upon wak
ing, he apologizes to the street toughs for calling them
"homosexuals," and runs away enlightened.
I repeat: in every sense, a step down in the artistic
development of David Lynch.
Jesus of Montreal ★ 1/2 It turns out that 1990 is not
only a wretched year for movies, it's also a hard time for
Christ figures. Lothaire Bluteau—called Daniel in Denys
Arcand's Jesus of Montreal—plays a softly handsome
actor commissioned by a hypocritical Montreal priest to
produce a Passion Play commemorating Christ's crucifix
ion. Daniel rounds up an assortment of his friends to act
in the play, which will be performed outdoors at different
stations, as in a medieval pageant. Arcand establishes the
level of his allegory early on: Daniel recruits one of his
actors from a well-paying job as a dubber of porno films.
How's that for sophisticated irony.
The whole film, apart from a few bits of keen social
satire, is sophomoric and self-impressed in the worst way.
The Passion Play within the film is dreadful—a juvenile
rendering of a colossal moment in history. And the
enclosing film condemns everyone in sight. Jesus of
Montreal is a flat-footed expression of disgust: at theater
sycophants, journalists, modem Christianity, advertising,
lawyers, groupies, actors, medicine, the police, and so on.
What gives the film the lie is that Daniel, clearly standing
in for director Arcand, says, near the film's ludicrously
melodramatic conclusion, that contempt really bothers
him—this, after nearly two hours of a film expressing
nothing but contempt.
The press kit for this film is a treasure: "Critics agree
that Bluteau gives such a powerful performance that he
leaves the audience with a dilemma: is Daniel an actor
playing Jesus, or Jesus reincarnated as an actor?"
Personally, I believe it's Jesus reincarnated. Only a deity
capable of leaving this planet so benighted could deliver a
performance as inept as Bluteau's.
Arcand, in his earlier The Decline of the American
Empire and now even more with Jesus of Montreal,
proves himself the holder of a sophisticated film tech
nique. This film is beautifully executed. What's small is
Arcand's ability to grapple with serious ideas, all of which
here function on a level comparable to a banal high
school production. I hope he discovers a good screenwrit
er soon.
Southern Voice/August 30,1990 9