Wildlife
Oscar nominees Carey Mulligan
and Jake Gyllenhaal, along with 17 year old Australian actor Ed Oxenbould all
collectively star in actor Paul Dano’s (There Will Be Blood) first directorial
effort in the film “Wildlife”. A story about a 1960 young married couple who
moved from Oregon to get a fresh start in life, only to see their move to the
rural Midwest region be the cause unexpectantly of their marriage going completely
off the rails in a blink of the eye.
PLOT: Jeannette
(Mulligan) and Jerry Brinson (Gyllenhaal) have recently moved to Great Falls,
Montana with their teenage son Joe. Tensions soon build up after Jerry is
fired from a job as a golf pro at a country club for making gambling bets with the members
there. However, in short order he is offered his old job back but refuses out
of male pride and instead takes a very low-paying job fighting an uncontrolled forest
fire raging in the nearby mountains.
While Jerry is away, Jeannette
takes a job as a swimming instructor where she meets a middle-aged man that she
becomes romantically involved with named Warren Miller, a prosperous older man
who owns an automobile dealership. Jeanette not only becomes involved with
Warren but has a complete change of life experience that results in their young
and decent son Joe the only one seemed vested in keeping the family together.
REVIEW: With
a Rotten Tomato score of 95%, and with great actors Mulligan and Gyllenhaal and
a superb actor in Paul Dano directing all in tow, I had very high hopes for
this nuanced slice of life story. But what started out as a promising story quickly
turned into a very odd screenplay who transitions from the beginning of the
story to the middle part of the story to the film’s finale made very little sense
as far as the principle characters motives and decisions they made. Especially
in regards on how it would impact their well-adjusted and kind son.
The film wants to be a thorough
examination of a conventional era “she stays
at home while the father works” marriage that on the slightest of reasons
crumbles rapidly. And while the acting, the pacing and the atmospherics of the
story were great, I just could not buy the overall premise
that the actions of the respective parents made any real sense.
Analogy speaking, their transitions
as some perfect, nurturing loving couple devolving into the dark side of TV’s Married
with Children Peg and Al Bundy” back to the perfect couple was just not very plausible,
at least not for me. The one shinning, compelling and highly entertaining component
of the entire film was the eloquent and touching performance by Ed Oxenbould
who was both the embodiment of a gentle adolescence child while being the mature
heart and soul adult in the room. We watch him viscerally struggle to respect
both parents even while they have little regard on how their action may affect
him. You empathize with young Joe as he earnestly
desires never to judge his parents as he loves them both equally even when they seem to be
hell bent on hurting themselves and everyone else in the room with them.
“Wildlife” I suggest to you on
some snowy, freezing rain kind of day is definitely worth a rental, if you are drawn to these types of stories and actors. It’s really
a great movie in spades and parts, in pieces here and there, but not overall in the end where it counts the most.
2.75 Stars
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