Upon a Father's Departure, a Mother and Son Must Learn to Adapt

Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal in "Wildlife"
Photo Credit: Imdb.com

Movies that deal with drama within families can seem repetitive, as they might tend to focus on a lot of the same issues that could occur within those stories.  However, talented filmmakers are able to take familiarities like these and show them from a new perspective to make us look at them a different way.

Actor Paul Dano accomplishes this with his directorial debut, “Wildlife,” a drama that simmers with tension, thanks to his newfound filmmaking talents and powerful performances from its three leads.

In 1960, Jeanette Brinson (Carey Mulligan), her husband Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal), and their son Joe (Ed Oxenbould) are living in Great Falls, Montana, having moved several times.  When Jerry is fired from his job at a country club, he’s lost at what to do for work.  Soon, he's given a low-paying job to fight a forest fire in the nearby mountains.  As Jerry’s away, Joe and his mother try to look for jobs of their own, while Joe also takes up some of his father's housework.  Although things are fine at first, Jeanette and Joe’s lives will go through changes that will alter their family forever.

Mulligan portrays her character as someone who seems to have everything together at first.  She shows her character bringing out a more self-assured side to herself once she's faced with having to take care of the household with only her son, as she’s someone who’s now aware of the once-unknown possibilities that her life has for her.  Once Jeanette begins making decisions that could damage her family's lifestyle, Mulligan shows Jeannette's awareness of the potential harm of her actions.  It's a performance where Mulligan displays her character's apparent happiness towards what she chooses to do, but could also be questioning herself behind that happiness, resulting in a performance that never fails to compel.

Gyllenhaal always seems like he has an intense power to him that remains underneath his calm exterior until it's called to come out, and his latest performance isn't any different.  As a father who takes pride in his work, Gyllenhaal brings to life a middle-class, salt-of-the-earth type of figure who does what he can to make sure that his family is taken care of.  Gyllenhaal brings across Jerry's admirable work ethic, which makes us feel a more potent emptiness within him as he remains at a loss of what to do with himself until he's provided with his new job.  When it gets to the point of whether Jerry's determination to work is all for his family or for himself, Gyllenhaal succeeds in having that aspect of his character stick in our minds for the duration of the film.

Oxenbould exhibits unwavering confidence when acting alongside talents like Mulligan and Gyllenhaal.  Throughout the film, Oxenbould shows how much his character’s trying to hold his family together before and after his father leaves, showing both the strength and the burden that comes with having to become an adult at such a young age.  Oxenbould shows a naturalism in handling the film's dramatic material, and his ability to sink into his character makes it easy for us to experience the sense of Joe's home life shifting around him and see him try to keep it in balance.

The screenplay by Dano and actress Zoe Kazan (also Dano’s partner), which is based on Richard’s Ford’s 1990 novel of the same name, shows how this family that seems to be happy hasn’t been so for a while.  We’re given small details into what this family has dealt with in the past and see how all of this influences the events of the film.  We learn about how the Brinsons have moved several times and restart their lives, and this all ties into theme of the film, which is the necessity of knowing how to adapt to significant changes in one’s life.  Just like the fire that's making it's way towards Great Falls a little bit each day, such is the case with the significant changes that get closer and closer to the Brinsons.

The narrative also has you ponder the decisions that are made by the three main characters, as there are multiple reasonings behind them.  We look at the events taking place that are reshaping their lives, and the routes that the characters take from scene to scene shows us choices from the characters that make us wonder if the current circumstances leave them making these decisions because they need to, or because they want to.  This again ties back into the story's theme of having to do what's best, or what you think is best in order to adapt.

A lot of the story is told from Joe’s point of view, and by doing this, Dano and Kazan succeed in placing the audience in the difficult experiences that Joe faces, solidifying this as a superb coming-of-age story.  We're left to feel the impact of what Joe's witnessing as the peaceful life that he knows reveals sides to his parents that he didn't know were there, and to have the narrative's events be shown through his eyes gives us a better sense of how his family's instability effects his innocence.

The cinematography by Diego García offers several beautiful shots of Montana from high in the sky as we see the small town below and the fields and towering mountains in the distance, the images of which emphasize Dano and Kazan’s metaphorical approach to the familial drama.  There’s one shot that stand outs which occurs when, in order to show the danger that Jerry is facing, Jeanette takes Joe for a drive and has him step out of the car to witness the intensity of the fire, which he can see in great detail, but from a safe distance.  As Joe gets back into the car, the camera stays on the woods and pans up, showing more and more of the fire’s incendiary power.

Throughout the film, Dano constructs scenes that capture all of the pressure that occurs within the family.  While there's a noteworthy scene here and there where the characters’ emotions have to be more forceful and we're more focused on what they're saying, Dano excels in drawing us into the scenes that require the actors to be more reserved.  Although we can still pay attention to what the characters have to say in these scenes, their subdued nature allows us to take in the smaller details of what's happening between them as we wait to see how they will recover, if at all, from what's occurring.

"Wildlife" provides an enthralling and poignant view of small-town America that exposes the hardships behind what looks like a typical family's existence, and as the movie progresses, you'll be anxious to see what remains in the ashes. 

Grade: A