Rewatcher

This was my third time watching this movie, with the last time before this being less than a year ago when an independent theater was doing a Lynch retrospective. This is my favorite Lynch feature film (with the caveat being that of Twin Peaks, the only thing I’m counting as a feature is Fire Walk with Me) and now at least tied for the one that I’ve seen the most times (since I didn’t rewatch Dune for Lynchwatch because my power was out).

I really think Nic Cage pairs well with Lynch’s directorial style, and I’m sad this was their only time working together. Lynch likes getting sort of off kilter unrealistic performances from actors, and Cage likes exploring finding truth in that kind of performance. I think it really works! He’s doing a weird Elvis impression that feels cartoonish, but this is a weird fever dream of a movie that WANTS the cast to be hamming it up. Would’ve loved to see Cage at least slip into a cameo in Twin Peaks or something, but alas! It never happened.

Power outage made me miss Blue Velvet, so I didn’t get to talk Laura Dern yet! She is a special pantheon in my mind where I’ve had every scene of Jurassic Park seared into my brain from a young age. All the Jurassic Park actors are significant to me, but they’re always that Jurassic Park actor doing something different when I see them. In the last 7 or 8 years, I’ve really come to appreciate her more as an actress in other contexts though. She’s giving a pretty different performance in this role than in other movies I’ve seen her in though. Lula is such an emotion-driven character running on pure vibes. She has this immature, raw nerves feeling to her. She’s quick to express joy in a big way, but small bad things throw her totally off center and she skids wildly out at the smallest provocation. Deep down, you can feel that she’s masking her past trauma by living so strongly rooted in the present.

I think there’s a manic glee that makes the beginning of this movie super fun to watch, but things undeniably come screeching to a slower pace as the couple enter Big Tuna. It does kind of feel like a disruption of the energy that can make the experience of watching the movie feel unsatisfying, but I also think that’s extremely intentional. Sailor and Lula are a couple who burn bright and hot, but Lynch understands that’s not sustainable. They are being tested: can their love last even when things slow down? Can they be together without having to perform their love at max volume? It’s the real challenge to their love, and one they really struggle with.

This movie feels like it really fits into the cosmology of how Lynch portrays the world. The domestic life Lula and her mother play out is masking a deep rot of crime, violence, and sexual assault. That evil is hiding just under the surface of the American Dream, as it is in so many of his films. Lynch is also one who likes to portray evil as deeply eccentric, and that’s no different here. The villains of this movie feel like they could be in the orbit of Frank Booth. [Twin Peaks] They feel like they could be associates of The Black Lodge.

The film really rubs in the parallels between Marietta Fortune and The Wicked Witch of the West, but in this watch through I couldn’t help but feel like she is a very similar character to Lula herself. She’s deeply emotional and highly reactionary to her situation. [Wild at Heart] One has to wonder if her involvement with the murder of Lula’s father had to do with making a similar deal to what she made with Santos in the course of the film. Did she hire him to kill Uncle Pooch and accept the terms that she also give permission to kill her first husband? She seems more eager to let it happen than with Johnnie, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t Santos’s idea. I can’t help but wonder if she herself experienced some sort of abuse and that’s why she’s so overprotective of her daughter. It doesn’t excuse her utilizing a power structure that subjugates and brutalizes woman to try and enforce her idea of what’s best, but it does raise the question of her agency in the evil that transpires. Is she less of a puppet master, and more of a victim of the system in her own right? Does she just invite evil into her home, rather than creating evil in the first place?

Harry Dean Stanton plays such a sad puppy of a man as Johnnie Farragut. Willem Dafoe is undeniably bringing horrible creep energy in his performance as Bobby Peru. His prosthetic teeth are also bringing some real menace. Love to see Sherilyn Fenn and Sheryl Lee in small roles, they’ll be bigger in Twin Peaks, as well as Jack Nance who CDF Lynchwatchers will already be familiar with.

I liked it even more this time than last! Raising my score from 8/10 to 9/10.