Initially the couple's enjoyment of each other and of their rebellious journey is so intense that it seems to jump off the screen.

But eventually, this life of pure enjoyment catches up with them and they begin to get too close to the truth of their desires. Likewise, Sailor and Lula initially leave their homes in order to escape into their fantasies and let their enjoyment of each other run free of the respective restrictions of family and society. The film's use of the tropes of the road film genre are no coincidence: these journeys away from the restrictions of society always contain an element of fantasy, usually for another time (return to the past) or another place (return to nature)-a fantasy which often finds itself broken or empty by the end of the journey (e.g. The characters in this scene will reappear elsewhere, and these events will be returned to in flashback (although importantly from the point of view of other characters, with its objectivity removed), but this is the only time we will see the world Sailor and Lula are trying to escape from. Kansas) is in its prologue, where Sailor kills a man who assaulted him with a knife.

The closest Wild at Heart gets to its presentation of objective reality (i.e. Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern) are two lovers who go on a road trip to escape various repressive aspects of their lives (prison/parole for Sailor family/mother for Lula). Wild at Heart continues to develop this theme in a slightly different way: by showing what happens when characters get stuck in their fantasy world. Like in The Wizard of Oz, Lynch shows us (objective) reality and the character's (subjective) vision of it, and the thematic development comes from the contrast between the two. He has explored this most explicitly in Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, each of which presents us with two entirely different versions of reality. One of David Lynch's central thematic concerns is the way our dreams and fantasies influence our perception of the reality around us.

'Did I ever tell ya that this here jacket represents a symbol of my individuality, and my belief in personal freedom?'

Wild at heart (1990) poster