When Lynch wants to say something he takes his time, no doubt about it. Sometimes he takes his time even when he doesn't have much to say. Example?

Isabella Rosselini in torn stocking, shabby wig, and red shoes is swaying gently to some music when Willem DaFoe crashes in and gives her a vigorous smooch. That's the beginning and the end of the scene. Another example? Cage and Laura Dern are having an argument just after he's let out of the slams. She's nervous and upset because she hasn't seen him in six years. He looks at her intently and tells her it's a mistake for them to get back together again. There is about a twenty-second closeup of Dern's magnificent blue eyes. They don't drip with tears. They don't even blink. They stare directly into the camera. Why? Like you, I'd have to guess. (I'd guess that her unblinking, unteary stare is meant to tell us that she sees things pretty clearly despite being shaken. That's pretty banal, I know, but my mind is open to other interpretations.)

I don't mean to sound as if I'm bashing the movie because that's not what I mean to do. Let's linger a little over a much later scene. It takes place in the middle of a city street, El Paso I would guess, but it's one of those industrial-area streets that are deserted on weekends. It's a wide sun-baked silent street cluttered with drunken-looking telephone poles and lined with one-story factories and warehouses, and there is a city skyline way in the distant, cerulean with urban haze. And Cage is walking alone through this bleak and ominous landscape. But it's not only the visuals that makes this scene outstanding. A handful of viperous dudes wearing black fall in behind Cage's figure and another group of Thugees finally blocks his way in mid-street. The music comes to an abrupt halt. Nobody says anything. The atmosphere throbs with threat. Cage sets down his suitcase, takes the time to deliberately light a cigarette, looks around him, and asks, "Okay -- what do you faggots want?" What they want is to beat the hell out of him, and they get their wish. The unconscious Cage has a vision of The Nice Witch of the West (don't ask) and when he recovers he finds he's still surrounded by these sadistic brutes who ask him if he's had enough. He struggles to his feet, gingerly feeling his "broken" rubber nose, and says, "Yes, I've had enough. Furthermore, I'd like to apologize for referring to you dudes earlier as homosexuals. You've taught me a lesson." Then he runs away ecstatically. How many other movies can boast ten minutes worth of film like that?

Now, I can see where a lot of ten-year-olds (or ten-year-old minds) might be bored with this film. It's long. There isn't an abundance of violence, although DaFoe does get his head blown off by twin blasts from a shotgun. I mean, quite literally, his head is blown completely off. It bounces off the wall like a football and lands with a loud splat on the pavement. So maybe there's a little hope for the horror afficionados after all, but not much, when you get right down to it.

The movie is punctuated with violence and, even more, with oddities, but mostly it moves languorously. Cage and Dern thrum through the Texas night in a shiny old convertible whose radio plays nothing but news like, "A man won his appeal today for dismissal of charges that he ate his own child." Well -- not that, but equally weird. One relative of Dern gets his kicks by putting a cockroach directly on his nether orifice. Willem DaFoe should definitely sue his dental surgeon. He thrusts his mouth close to Dern's at one point, urging her to say something filthy to him and he'll let her go, and his mouth is like a limpet's, his lips a disgusting circle of membrane filled with hideous teeth.

I wouldn't argue that "Wild at Heart" should be put into a time capsule, but it's not a movie that's easy to forget. David Lynch may or may not be a hot commercial property but he's one of the most original directors working today.