Wildlife

A sense of trep­i­da­tion always hov­ers when a young actor announces their inten­tion to chance their hand behind the cam­era rather than in front of it. If Wildlife is any­thing to go by, Paul Dano might be a case of an actor suc­cess­ful­ly tran­si­tion­ing to direc­tor with­out any trace of self-indul­gence. His debut fea­ture (which he adapt­ed with wife Zoe Kazan from Richard Ford’s 1990 nov­el of the same name) is an engross­ing por­trait of famil­ial frac­ture in 1960s Mon­tana, with a remark­able per­for­mance from the incom­pa­ra­ble Carey Mulligan.

The sto­ry unfurls from Joe Brinson’s (Ed Oxen­bould) point of view, a teenag­er uproot­ed from Wash­ing­ton due his par­ents’ finan­cial prob­lems, but opti­mistic about their new life. His moth­er Jeanette (Mul­li­gan) is less enthu­si­as­tic, though ini­tial­ly keeps qui­et as her hus­band Jer­ry (Jake Gyl­len­haal) finds work as a groundskeep­er at a local coun­try club. When this fails, he decides to take a more dan­ger­ous job away from home fight­ing the for­est res which rage in the state parks, and the strain on the fam­i­ly begins to grow.

Mon­ey wor­ries com­pel Jeanette and her son to take jobs of their own – Jeanette as a swim­ming coach at the local YMCA, and Joe as a photographer’s assis­tant. At first these jobs serve as dis­trac­tions from the ele­phant in the room: Jeanette and Jer­ry are falling out of love. Obser­vant Joe notices but doesn’t want to believe it. Ten­sions bub­ble up into shout­ing match­es between his par­ents while Joe watch­es, bewil­dered that the two peo­ple he idolis­es don’t seem able to see the good in each oth­er any­more. Jerry’s absence haunts them, and des­per­ate to find the affec­tion and secu­ri­ty so long lack­ing from her mar­riage, the gre­gar­i­ous Jeanette enters a flir­ta­tion with the pro­pri­etor of a local car deal­er­ship, much to Joe’s dismay.

The weight of his par­ents’ decay­ing mar­riage falls to their qui­et son, who proves a keen observ­er of human behav­iour. Mul­li­gan, again prov­ing what a tal­ent­ed actor she is, inhab­its Jeanette with a wide-eyed vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty masked with pret­ty dress­es and flir­ta­tious quips – a no-non­sense iter­a­tion of Blanche DuBois or any one of Ten­nessee Williams’ long-suf­fer­ing hero­ines. Gyl­len­haal, mean­while, is a proud, shriek­ing mess of a man, and Oxen­bould wise­ly a qui­et wit­ness to his frac­tur­ing par­ents rather than a com­pet­ing pres­ence, hold­ing his own against the sub­lime Mul­li­gan. It’s these accom­plished actors that make this such a com­pelling fea­ture, ele­vat­ing famil­iar sub­ject mat­ter through sheer force of performance.

Although the glacial pace of Wildlife might irk more impa­tient view­ers and Joe him­self fails to be as com­pelling a pres­ence as either one of his par­ents, there’s no doubt­ing Mul­li­gan and Gyllenhaal’s mag­net­ism. Dano soul­ful­ly cap­tures the slow-motion moment at which a child realis­es their erst­while infal­li­ble par­ents are actu­al­ly flawed human beings, just like every­one else. It’s cer­tain­ly a som­bre affair, but against the back­drop of a trou­bled post-war mid­dle Amer­i­ca in which des­per­ate fam­i­lies scram­ble after the elu­sive Amer­i­can Dream, per­haps that’s exact­ly what it needs to be.