Movie Review: Wildlife

Wildlife **** / *****

Directed by: Paul Dano.

Written by: Paul Dano & Zoe Kazan based on the book by Richard Ford.

Starring: Carey Mulligan (Jeanette Brinson), Ed Oxenbould (Joe Brinson), Jake Gyllenhaal (Jerry Brinson), Bill Camp (Warren Miller), Zoe Margaret Colletti (Ruth-Ann), Mollie Milligan (Esther), Darryl Cox (Clarence Snow). 

 

Wildlife is a film about a typical, middle class, white family in the 1960s, and how each of the members of that family are adrift, struggling to fulfill the expectations that society – and themselves – have foisted upon them. This is a film about this family who is unable to communicate with each other – and are trapped in this life that perhaps they never wanted, but it’s the one they have. Both parents make bad decisions – and yet, the movie never judges them, never shows them less than the empathy they deserve. They hurt each other – and themselves – to be sure, but what choices did they have.

 

It’s the 1960s in Montana, and the Brinsons have just moved to town. It isn’t their first move – there is vague conversations about trouble with jobs back from wherever they were from. Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) now works at the local golf club – grounds maintenance, golf pro, etc. – but that doesn’t last very long. Jerry doesn’t take it well – he doesn’t take setbacks of any kind very well – and even when he’s offered his job back, he won’t take it. It’s the principle of the thing – even if he would have a hard time articulating what that principle is. Desperate for another job, he signs up to fight the distant wildfire – a job that won’t pay very well, but will take him away from his wife and child for months. This sets into motion the rest of the movie – which is what takes place at home when Jerry leaves.

 

Jean (Carey Mulligan) is really the star of the film. She has been dragged around the country by Jerry, and how now in essence been left by him – along, with their 14-year-old son in a town she doesn’t know. She is trained as a teacher – but isn’t working as one. She does get a job teaching swim lessons at the YMCA – but how fulfilling can that be? It’s here where she meets Warren Miller (Bill Camp) – older, richer, divorced. He could provide for Jean what Jerry cannot – and what Jean cannot really do for herself. She starts seeing Warren – and doesn’t really hide it from her son Joe (Ed Oxenbould) – who is confused by what is going on. He longs for his father to come home, if not because it would fix anything, then at least because then his life is recognizable. But like Jean, he is powerless.

 

The film was directed by Paul Dano; from a screenplay he co-wrote with Zoe Kazan. They are both actors, and you can tell that in the approach to both the screenplay and the direction – in that it trusts the actors a great deal to fill in the blanks, to fill in the silences with meaning and emotion. No one ever really explains anything in Wildlife, and as a director Dano spends more time than most watching his characters think – watching them as they process whatever new information they have to take in that moment, and then make the decisions that they do. It is a film dependent on the performances to work – and Dano is lucky enough to have four great actors at its core. Young Oxenbould is really the main character – everything is from his POV throughout the movie, and he is quiet and observant, and just wants things back to normal – even as he sees how miserable his parents are. Gyllenhaal is terrific in limited screen time – playing a man beaten down by life, unable to really figure out what he wants. Camp, who has become a go-to character actor, is perfect as Warren – a big guy – a charming guy, with money, who knows how to make everyone love him, which of course makes him all the more infuriating. But the movie really belongs to Mulligan – whose Jean is certainly a flaw woman, but is one who is doing what she can, with the cards she is given. She is only 34, and yet she already has a teenage son a few years away from not needing her at all anymore, she has no real opportunity for a career or life of her own, and a husband who more often than not, just seems to want to get away from everything. It would be easy to make Jean into a monster – she does quite a few very questionable things throughout the course of the movie – but Mulligan (and Dano and Kazan) never do that. They understand her – she her from the outside in a way that I don’t even think the character sees herself.

 

The film is sensitive and subtle – quiet and immersive and represents an excellent debut for Dano behind the camera – who brings the same intelligence and humanity to his film behind the camera as he has always done in front of it. If he wants one, he’ll have a long career behind the camera.