Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Paul Dano
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Carey Mulligan, Ed Oxenbould, Bill
Camp
Actor Paul Dano makes his directorial debut with an adaptation of Richard Ford's novel Wildlife, cowritten with his partner, the actress Zoe Kazan. An intimate family drama, on the surface it's exactly the sort of movie you might expect from an actor stepping behind the camera, but Dano's direction is assured and he displays an understanding of how the simplest reaction shots can say more than lengthy soliloquies.
It's 1960, which means it's still very much the '50s, as the '60s as we now think of it didn't really kick off until 1963, when the Beatles and the Stones released their first albums, JFK was assassinated, MLK was arrested and things began heating up in Vietnam. Americans were too distracted by the threat of reds under their beds, the giant fridges in their kitchens and the frivolity allowed by disposable incomes to indulge in any soul searching.
When Jerry loses his job for indulging in gambling with his customers, tensions begin to rise. Refusing to take his job back when his employers reverse their decision, Jerry instead heads off with a crew of men to fight forest fires in the distant woods. Joe takes a part-time job at a photography studio, helping to take pictures of other all-American families in front of a soothing blue background. Jeanette behaves as though Jerry has left her for good, and readjusts her life accordingly, taking a job as a swimming instructor and embarking on an affair with Warren (Bill Camp), an older man who runs a car dealership in town.
Jeanette's behaviour is so cruel and narcissistic that I initially had trouble buying into the character. I felt I was lacking context for this sudden shift in her personality, but then I remembered a key moment. On the way back from viewing the fires, Jeanette and Joe stop off at a diner and the boy asks his mother what age she is. "34," she replies. I'm no mathematician, but by my calculations she would have become an adult during WWII. In another scene, Jeanette raids her wardrobe and dons an outfit she tells Joe she wore as a younger woman. It's a pair of jeans and a shirt with rolled up sleeves, and it makes her look a lot like the woman on the wartime "We can do it!" posters. During the war, Jeanette probably found herself working what was then considered a man's job, and with all able-bodied young men away on duty, she may have been pursued by older men like Warren. In an odd way, it may have been the best time of her life, and Jerry's departure may have prompted memories of a time when she, and the women around her, were in charge of their own fates. Similarly, when Jerry looks longingly at the group of men queuing up for the truck that will take them to fight the forest fire, it probably reminds him of the unique comradeship he found in wartime, and the lack of responsibility he once took for granted at a time when a future seemed a far off fantasy.
If you lay out Wildlife's plot it doesn't offer much that we haven't seen before in such stories of domestic strife behind the picket fences of suburbia, but it boasts a couple of the year's most compelling performances from Oxenbould and Mulligan, and Dano is canny enough to let his camera focus on capturing their quiet brand of magic.
Wildlife is on MUBI UK
now.