WILD AT HEART: PORTRAIT OF AN UNORTHODOX ROAD MOVIE

If you're truly wild at heart you will fight for your dreams - The Good Witch, Wild At Heart.


BASIC TRAITS OF THE ROAD MOVIE GENRE

Road movies are often positive. In them, the road is seen as a blank tableaux upon which people (often young people) paste their hopes and dreams.

Road movies often involve characters who are in their formative years. These films play out cultural myths about young adulthood and cultural myths surrounding hope, desire and prosperity.

Road movies often involves movement from one physical place to another. This often involves traversing unfamiliar territory, both physical and emotional.

Often involves a romantic or some other close relationship, often between a couple or several people of the same sex who are often fleeing from some kind of authority figures: parents, the law. Much of the movie might revolve around fleeing from these figures.

Road movies often revolve around the journey from childhood confusion to adulthood and self awareness. Road movies often play out growing tensions, conflict and their resolution by movie's end.

THE MORE UNCONVENTIONAL ELEMENTS OF WILD AT HEART IN RELATION TO THE ROAD MOVIE GENRE

+ The death of Sherilyn Fenn +
Where road movies usually depict the road as something well under the control of it's characters, Wild At Heart revells in the random nature of fate. This trope is carried on throughout the film via references to the Wicked Witch of the East and montage sequences in which we see a witch stroking a crystal ball.

+ This film refutes the Western individualist notion that all people control their own fate +
Wild At Heart reveals that their can be forces at work in people's lives than their will. Gifford / Lynch's use of tropes from the Wizard of Oz fable - such as the yellow brick 'road' - throughout this film, reinforces the unpredictable nature of life. By the film's end, the films central characters (Lula and Sailor) never physically reach their destination. Similarly, their emotional journey towards and away from one another is at the whim of destiny.

+ Murder, sexual abuse, abortion, arson, jail, Elvis, pregnancy, pornography movies, Good Witches & Bad Witches:
All these elements from Wild At Heart are a testament to it's deep subversion of the road movie genre.

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