First of all, a memory, like a burn, from the very beginning of Wild at Heart (1990), his fifth feature film. A close-up of a match ignites an immense blaze that spreads across the entire surface of the CinemaScope frame, an unforgettable opening to a frenetic road movie that was itself nothing less than a formidable blaze. Thirty-five years later, against the backdrop of another blaze, on Thursday, January 16, the film’s director, David Lynch, died at the age of 78. He had been evacuated from his Laurel Canyon home by the flames that ravaged Los Angeles for several days. The filmmaker was suffering from pulmonary emphysema, made public in November 2024, inherited from his long years of uninterrupted smoking, an obstruction of the airways that eventually took its toll on him.
The loss is immense. In the hierarchy of modern American independent cinema, there aren’t many geniuses. John Cassavetes, Monte Hellman, David Lynch. All have played with fire, all have been burned. In this respect, the opening of Wild at Heart responds directly to the iconic closing shot of Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktopin which the American utopia is consumed in flames, along with the film.
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