Directed by: David Lynch.
Wicked
Games was one of the major songs on the Wild at Heart soundtrack. The movie has
an eclectic mix of music – Elvis, heavy metal, Angelo Badalamenti’s excellent,
offbeat score – and Chris Isaak’s love ballad, which Lynch returns to in the
film when we are alone with Sailor and Lula. Lynch also directed the music
video for Isaak’s song – the second video he directed in his career. The video
really isn’t all that special if I’m being honest. It cuts between shots of Isaak
and his band performing the ballad – in beautiful black and white shots – and
shots from the movie itself – a fairly typical approach for music videos from
soundtracks. What makes it of limited interest is both the scenes that Lynch
chooses for the video, and how he often manipulates the image of those scenes.
Most
often in soundtrack based music videos, the selected scenes from the movie act
as a “greatest hits” package – basically turning the video into a trailer for
the movie. But Lynch doesn’t do that here. There is no hint of the extreme
violence from the movie in the video. Lynch simply concentrates on the two
lovers – in the throes of ecstasy – in the scenes he has chosen to be in the
video – often fading between the scenes and Isaak’s band using the flames, seen
so often in the movie. At times, Lynch manipulates the image, blurring it,
stretching it, trying to heighten the erotic charge in the visuals. The song is
good as well – not great by any means, it’s kind of a sickly, sweet ballad, but
it works perfectly in the context of the film, and in the video as well. The
video and the song are forgettable – unless you view them in conjunction with
the movie itself.
As
a side note, I have to admit I know next to nothing about Chris Isaak – just
that two of his songs, which by themselves I’m not sure are great, are forever
stuck in my head because of how great directors used them – Wicked Game by
Lynch in Wild at Heart, and Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing by Kubrick in Eyes Wide
Shut.
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