SOURCE: McKinney, Devin. Review of Wild at Heart, by David Lynch. Film Quarterly 45, no. 2 (winter 1991-1992): 41-6.

In the following essay, McKinney discusses the excesses and graphic violence of Wild at Heart, contending that Lynch intentionally subordinated conventional narrative expectations to the power of recurring visual motifs.

Apparently, no one ever instructed David Lynch in the rules that govern what a work of art should be—the forms it should take, the boundaries it should honor—let alone the accepted truisms on what a modern audience expects in return for its admission. But through a serendipitous (and fairly mystifying) configuration of the Zeitgeist, Lynch has emerged as one of the few American directors with the popular sanction to do what he pleases. Despite his sudden celebrity, though, he remains oblivious to both critical and commercial commonplaces. We should be grateful for such intractability. For without it no filmmaker...