THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD
by Wild at Heart to The Wizard of Oz
Ada Lanzaro
Wild at Heart (Wild at Heart) 1992 Director: David Lynch; screenplay: David Lynch; Cast: Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Isabella Rossellini, Harry Dean Stanton, Crispin Glover, John Lurie, Jack Nance, Sherilyn Fenn, Sheryl Lee, Diane Ladd, from the novel by Barry Gifford, The Wild Life of Sailor and Lula
"Wild at Heart is a road movie, a love story, a psychological drama and a comedy violent. A strange mixture of all these ingredients" (Rodley 1998: 169). As a very clear narrative level and elusive to every canonical definition, the structure of Wild at Heart is classified as belonging to the category of road-movies. A film from the path of travel rather odd, though, considering that the flashbacks and parallel stories included in the narrative continuum ripped the temporality of the narrative between past and present, the here and elsewhere, preventing progress towards a final release and breaking the film into a false speech movement along the main American roads.
"Wild at Heart is an unusual road movie, as it leads nowhere" (AA.VV. 1991: 80), and the presence of the road as a narrative structure refers more to a mental place that material in a path, since there is no attempt to relate the characters with the surrounding space and the horizon as a backdrop to the story remains limited. The movement in this film is given more by moving through the inserts, filmed in the subjective (the memories of the characters, their visions) from advancing in that car and get lost in the vastness of the American continent, as happened to other couples on the run of road- movies.I continuous references to a "reverse that is not met, that is untied, and isolates the characters in their first film and then the existential loneliness "(AA.VV., 2000: 72) tell us the nature of the journey of the protagonists, a move bound to an illusory space, which indeed takes place regardless of anywhere reale.Il treatment Lynchian basic dramatic intrigue is not so bizarre when you consider the narrative style of the novel by Barry Gifford that was inspired by: The Wild Life of Sailor and Lula, who at the time of completion of film had not yet published, is a road novel that has "a ballad in the form of unstructured [...] in which the action, reduced to essentials, and no little progress" (CHION 1995: 141-142) .
In the book successive chapters separated from each other, sometimes very short and never numbered but named as if it were many small incidents unrelated to the narrative level, as the story develops along two main characters and events narrated by referring to the past, rather than occurring in the present of narration (CHION 1995: 142 and HUNT 1992: 90). The director shall respect the lack of temporal linearity in the novel placing in his film, on the sidelines of the stories which they abandon continuously Sailor and Lula, the images in a subjective or flashback to break any kind of suspense and fragment the forward thrust typical road movie. Barry Gifford, which is not party to the making of the film or the drafting of screenplay, contrary to the expectations of the press was happy ply perverse, almost morbid taken by the story in the film: if journalists speak of a "catalog of bizarre encounters and often extremely violent" (Rodley 1998: 266), Gifford comes to declare that, in his view, it is "a fantastic film. Wonderful. It's kind of big, dark musical comedy" (Rodley 1998: 266). The adjustment, according to Lynch, has done nothing but make what was a bit light 'brightest and what was a little black' blacker, highlighting contrasts, precisely "because life alternative to other wonderful aspects horrible "(Rodley 1998: 275).
At a formal level the film is the result of a combination of aggressive elements and scenes disjointed and sometimes conflicting, in which an assembly "and insisted sudden" (CHION 1992: 150) recalls the style rather rapid, accurate and fragmentary video clips. The director uses the soundtrack to accentuate this gap, using a mixture of musical styles different from each other, from rock to '50s synth sparse, minimalist songs written by Angelo Badalamenti. To punctuate the different tracks filmed central axis switching back from hard rock (the powerful guitar riffs of the Slaughterhouse Powermad), which opens the film in the scene of the beating and scans the moments of intimacy between Sailor and Lula, Im Abendrot orchestral introduction to Richard Strauss, amplified by the use of Dolby that accompanies the opening credits and the long kiss at sunset of the protagonists: "They are like two expressions of the same power of love - with the emphasis falling on the concept of power. Strauss is not in fact the composer more Nietzschean, and not only because it derived a symphonic poem by Zarathustra? " (CHION 1992: 152). Even the prose of Gifford was supported by frequent references to music played by the two in the car or in the place where you go, a characteristic also typical of any history of travel, road-road-movie or novel, worthy of respect. At the end of the film, however, contrary to the conventions of the genre and the closed end of the novel, in which Lula Sailor leaves, the couple faces a cruel fate, but decides to stay together, suggesting that the expected future as a happy family together, he also added that it was the arrival of a child: "their driving days are over" (Alexander 1993: 124). Many critics have questioned the final scene of Wild at Heart, if this is a solution for "free" economy of the story as some of the stories that will fit without any apparent logical connection, or if there is a presumption that the Lynch 'has added to have more potential in terms of commerciale.Il director himself said: "commercially is much better than there is a happy ending, but if I had not changed the ending, so that people could not have said that I tried to follow the market, I would not be faithful to the substance of the film. Sailor and Lula were to remain together, the problem was to devise ways and at the same time preserve the scene where they break up. In the end, the solution helped The Wizard of Oz "(Rodley 1998: 275).
Although the ghost of The Wizard of Oz has long hovered Lynchian imagination in the form of goblins, witches and ghosts that populated his earlier films, or more directly in the Dorothy played by Isabella Rossellini in Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart in the theme of the magical world of Oz is revealed more explicitly by invading the plot. The Wizard of Oz, a series of fourteen books written since 1899 by Frank Baum, was intended by the author a new kind of fairy tale, typically American and no spells, dream-fantasies of cruelty and the European tradition, represented by the brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen or Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland. For
Baum, Oz was a real world where a girl named Dorothy was actually gone, even if the film that Victor Fleming took out in 1939 suggested that the adventures of Dorothy in the kingdom of Oz had taken place only in a dream and sometimes indulged , contrary to the principles of the author, and a grim details crudeli.La film's plot follows that of the book to a certain point: besides the fact that Dorothy is no longer a child of five or six years, but a twelve year old girl (also played by a sixteen year old Judy Garland), the Wicked Witch of the West remains the only threat to obstruct the path, while in Dorothy's story the way he was continually thwarted by a world full of giant spiders, wild animals, trees with sprawling branches and numerous other pitfalls (HARMETZ 1981: 31-41). The subtext consists of The Wizard of Oz, a work that has influenced much U.S. cultural imaginary and the substrate, acts as a constant counterpoint (in its film version than in the novel) to the fabric of film Wild at Heart and becomes a constant point of reference, although was completely absent from the novel by Barry Gifford.Generalizzando, both stories can be regarded as a parable of innocence, trust, trustful, kind of a variant of the "American dream".
Wild at Heart may in fact be called a "childhood film, a film of a child who sees everything in great and strong contrasts (CHION 1998: 155) in which the protagonists to soften trivial (consider, for example , the necklace of candy that gives Lula Sailor) and often speak or act with an almost childish immaturity and fickleness: Lynch spoke of the same pair as two "idiots" (Hunting 1992: 87) underlines the candor and 'ingenuity, and in this sense that should be read in the many references to the world of Oz. Another distinctive feature of the film, which takes an already distinctive style of Gifford's novel, are "the captions that mark the history of" pointing "years-months-days past, but now to relate the time required to bring that present-bazaar does not come "(AA.VV. 2000: 50) This timelessness exasperated feeds the indeterminacy and favors the presence of a halo and magical fairy tale in which fit well and explains the strange appearances and visions that alternate the characters 'normal', polarizing the story about an insane coexistence of opposites. Hence the strong stigma of good and evil within the narrative, typical character of a fable, just as the lack of irony and the presence of ambiguous scenes, poised between tragedy and comedy, such as that of the death of Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe), whose head explodes for a gunshot like a balloon, which is thematically related to the transformation of putrescent liquid wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz. Still, Lynch pauses on some shots of the wicked witch flying on her broom, the couple beside the car and a final part of the Good Witch (also borrowed from the novels by Baum), "fairy ex machina" (CHION 1995: 145) that comes down from heaven to help the Sailor, in trouble because they suffered a violent beating inside a pink bubble (1). The simplicity of the special effects used by Lynch strengthen the accuracy and reliability of vision, making it sometimes more disturbing comic. As in every fairy tale characters are characterized by a particular aspect or element of their morbid physical or personality: Juana, the torture of Farragut, has a complicated prosthetic leg while Dell, the cousin of Lula, is an unbalanced obsessed with his physical relationship with cockroaches and Mr. Reindeer, a hit man who lives in a brothel, is a sort of "sinister Wizard Oz eccentric who sits on the toilet talking on the telephone, watching naked girls dance in His bathroom" (ALEXANDER 1993: 118-119). The sequence that takes place in Big Tuna, then, is even "a study in Lynchian abjection" (Alexander 1993: 120) in which the young couple made the acquaintance of a number of misfits: "I know it's Not Exactly Emerald City .. ., "says Sailor.
Keep in mind that not always, in Wild at Heart, the mixture of "violence and destroy affectation" (CHION 1995: 154), light and shadow, humor and fear, unable to reach a perfect synthesis. This maybe because the presence of the magical world of Oz as a counterpoint to the underlying film was not planned from the beginning, but rather an idea that has arisen during the filming, a sort of divertissement copyright may choose to support of dimension of the "visionary child" (AA.VV. 2000: 104) always present in his films, or that of multiple worlds, just as important. "If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I will not look Any Further Than my own backyard, "said Dorothy wisely, but in Lynch's film no one seems to have a firm base to return after being lost, and this abrupt alternation between fairy tales and hard reality seems to explain the sense of displacement continued, the lack of spatial references that pervades the film. All I dream of two young players is to reach them too, along a yellow brick road, Emerald City, which is merely a normal life, away from wicked witches, away from a world that is "wild at heart and weird on top". In this sense the dedication of The Wizard of Oz to all those who are "young at heart" fits perfectly the idea of \u200b\u200ba world lynchiana narrated from the point of view, fragmentary and unresolved youth dimension, deeply imbued with heterogeneous elements, narrative fragments, mythology of rock and advertising, not especially interested in the resolution of the plot. In Wild at Heart
issues may remain unresolved unclear, and this is because the halo derivatogli fairytale universe of Oz, where "there is a certain amount of fear, but also something to be able to dream. So, in a sense, it seems true "(Rodley 1998: 270).
shelf unit: Cinematerapia
Soundtrack: Rogue Wave - Publish My Love
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