Wildlife - Review

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