From: drewds@peptide.ecn.purdue.edu (David A Southwood)
Subject: Blue Velvet/Twin Peaks vs. Wild at Heart
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 18:07:10 GMT

There are many,many things about Blue Velvet that I liked that Wild at
Heart lacked.  Blue Velvet is probably the only movie I have seen in
quit awhile that requires actual thought to understand.  It is a highly
symbolic movie and this is where most of its brillance lies as compared
with other movies.  It almost takes a 'scientific thought meets humanities'
approach, and it melds the two perfectly.  The whole message of Blue 
Velvet is that things that we see on the surface often do not tell the
whole story and that we must look underneath that and sometimes in high
detail if necessary to solve a mystery or it may be that Lynch thinks
that American values have become perverted underneath and we have
put up a facade of 'clean innocence' in recent times to cover this up.
The colors presented at the beginning of the movie (white fence, red roses
, blue skies) obviously stand for America or possibly American values.
Lumberton is a town where things like Frank aren't supposed to happen, but
they do and just like most of the older people in the movie we tend to
ignore problems like Frank and not do anything about them.  
The father falls at the beginning of the movie at the same time the hose is
bending -similar to something a vein would do in the body.  This is what I
mean by 'scientific symbolism'.  
I could go on and on about the symbolism, but I am short on time right
now.
The movie also uses repetition to hauting effect.  Sort of like a 'mind
probe'.  Every time we see a repeated event in some form or another
our memory recalls the part of the movie that it is connected to and
places the next scene in context with the past.                
The movie takes a 'serial event' way of thinking where one idea is linked
to another unlike most movies that take a 'parallel event' way of thinking.
Overall it is almost an entirely new way of presenting a movie.
Wild at Heart on the other hand has 
   a.  no connectivity (it throws out random events that seemingly have
       no meaning or purpose to the rest of the movie at any point.)
   b.  vague symbolism (referencing the wizard of oz weakly at best.)
   c.  no plot (Cage and Dern take a ride to Big Tuna Texas to get away
       from their problems.  WHO CARES.
   d.  characters that seem to have absolutely no purpose.
   e.  fat women making a porn movie (that was really sick).
By the time you get the end of Wild at Heart do you have any meaning at all?
No!.  This movie almost looks like something Lynch made just to see if he
could win awards by producing garbage (and he did).  Anyone could write a
movie that makes as little sense as Wild at Heart.  That's why I ask if
I missing some symbolism or something in this movie, but I do not think so.
Why do I like Basic Instinct?  Because of the raw action and sexual power
it conveys.  Lynch's movies may be 'deep thinking', but it would be nice
if he threw in some action scenes now and then.  Too many words at times
make his shows drag on.  This became a problem in the later Twin Peaks
episodes where things got soooo sloooooowww that I stopped liking the
show as much.  The whole plot of the last 7 or 8 episodes could be wrapped
up in as much time as any one among the 1st 7 episodes.
Sorry, but I am out of time for now....
Xref: sparky alt.tv.twin-peaks:1377 rec.arts.tv:9715 rec.arts.tv.uk:2595