- Actor Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood, Little Miss Sunshine) directs (his debut) and co-writes Wildlife.
- Opens with a static camera of a Montana ranch (the entire film shot mostly on location in the pacific northwest) with father and son playing catch with the football
shot on location in Montana and the Pacific Northwest
- It looks like the early 1960’s, Dano has an eye for details- period clothing, cars, advertising, wallpaper
Very observational – a great scene of Carey Mulligan’s Jeanette helping her son with his homework while her husband (Jake Gyllenhaal) finishes a beer and opens another
the destruction of a marriage through the observational eyes of the child
Dano and Gyllenhaal worked together in Prisoners (2013)- this is part of a really incredible stretch of films for Gyllenhaal– he made eight archiveable films from 2013-2019
- The film is well acted, veteran Bill Camp is very good in support as well. One highlight is Mulligan’s uncomfortable laugh at the 10-minute mark when Gyllenhaal’s character tells her about getting fired from his job
- Most scenes are static camera with no shot reverse shot for reactions—Dano does cheat a few times and moves the camera for big moments- like when the son sees Mulligan with another man, or the reveal at the bus stop
At the 11-minute mark, a nice fade edit as Gyllenhaal’s character watches the sunset—this film is about the collapse of a man, a family—writing like “I got this hum inside my head, I need to do something about it” and right alongside that you have “you too old to give your old man a kiss?”
A gorgeous cinematic painting at 46-minutes – Minas diner, another of Bill Camp’s dining room at 57-minutes
- A grueling first-hand look at his mother (Mulligan) seducing a man other than his father
Dano clearly talented as a director- keen eye, the final image of the family posing together at the photography studio—the two beautiful actors look worn, bloodshot eyes
- Recommend but not in the top 10 of 2018
I really loved this film. I think it unfortunately got lost amidst a year as strong as 2018, but I thought it was a surprisingly poignant directorial debut. It was also quite devastating to watch. I thought it was beautifully shot and generally speaking there are several wonderful static shots, the highlight clearly being the way the camera captures the colours. It’s not expressionistic, but on the other hand very natural. I really like the ones you chose, with the sunset and the moving car, as we’re tracking it from behind, they really show Dano kept an eye out for interesting and yet natural colour compositions. It’s very carefully written, very well thought out and just raw, real. It is an emotional experience more than anything and a study on a marriage and a family falling apart. The humanity of the approach, the tenderness and understanding that is present for these characters and their flaws, as well as the elements of realism, they all echo a bit of Kenneth Lonergan (albeit not from a directorial, as much as from a writing point of view – Lonergan himself echoes a bit of Mike Leigh). The scene where they visit the forest fire, is very telling of how well written the film is. Not much, if anything is said. The fire is not even shown for anything more than 30 seconds or so, and yet it makes such an impact because we get to experience the influence it has on the central characters. That’s the film’s focus, people and how their relationships come undone essentially due to their own shortcomings, but what I think is important is how the actual disintegration is set off by exterior circumstances (Gyllenhaal getting fired, the forest fire – same word, interestingly). It is just so realistic, even if the approach itself doesn’t reach the heights of realism achieved by other auteurs. I find Wildlife significant, if not original, because it did successfully what many other films (to me at least) failed to accomplish. For example, I thought it was similar to Revolutionary Road, but way better written – think of all the crazy parade of emotion and rage going on in the famous RR fight scene (which personally seems a little over the top, writing wise, and working as a showcase for some impressive acting more than to the service of the story), and how it contrasts with the way emotion is externalised in Wildlife. Mulligan even gets to laugh at an inappropriate moment, much like Winslet in RR, but it is written in a way that feels very honest and real. Whereas RR is just not subtle enough to be believable. We get the shouting and all the brilliant acting (half the film’s worth) but we don’t get the quietness, the emptiness. We get it theoretically speaking, but it’s never conveyed in a cinematic way. And Wildlife does just that, which is why I consider it a better, similarly themed film. Gyllenhaal and Mulligan are wonderful in here. There is not a moment wasted, and the smallest nuances are true to their characters and the dynamic of their relationship. Gyllenhaal powerfully underplays his Jerry and Mulligan walks a fine line, showing us the recklessness and uncaring nature of her Jeanette, her destructive tendencies, but we still get the sense that this is a real person in front of us. She is not evil, she’s overly honest, callous and unlikeable, but by the end, we come to understand her. It’s a wonderful showcase for Mulligan’s talents. Of course, Gyllenhaal’s subtlety is crucial in properly creating an image of who these people are and how they relate (or not so) to one another. The final frame, the family picture, is simply devastating.
@Georg- well said Georg- and I like the Revolutionary Road comparison. But it sounds like you aren’t a big admirer of that one? Or am I reading you wrong here?
@Drake – well, I guess I’m not a big admirer of Revolutionary Road. It’s not that I dislike it. It’s a solid film. The acting is brilliant, the writing is very good and highly critical of the idolised American suburbia and the American dream in a very real way – through the eyes and hearts of people experiencing it first hand. The “ideal” life gone terribly wrong. So if I’m fair there is much to praise. I just think that it doesn’t all around work as well as American Beauty does. There is something lacking, and I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but I’ll do my best. Revolutionary Road feels hollow, in that it goes big and actor-ly in several areas but there is not much artistry to it. It doesn’t go out of its way to achieve visual beauty (though there are indeed some great shots – it actually reminded me of Scenes from a Marriage mise en scene at some moments, great use of lighting here and there and several shots through a crowd), but that’s not always a huge issue. Unlike American Beauty, it also lacks great, well edited sequences. In American Beauty you have the steadily flowing camera movement to show how the perspective changes (particularly in the ending), or you have the use of techniques like zooming, slow motion, the “video within video” thing to show subjectivity – surrealistic to a degree. Generally speaking, there is a variety to its approach that fits the ensemble (sort of) of characters and, not to mention, the narrative rolls much better. In Wildlife, you have wonderful use of natural colour, great photography, more realistic dialogue, several times the camera is used to communicate the child’s perspective and, what I mentioned above, the silence and emptiness. Because less is said and more is shown, it is more effectively conveyed – its feeling, the numbness, the disassociation. So Revolutionary Road doesn’t convey the emptiness as much as one would expect. We hear those people describe it and we see them feel it, but we don’t feel it ourselves. There are some moments of searing insight, but that’s it. It goes there, it touches upon it, and then it leaves it be. I think I wanted more, considering that’s what the film is about, and I like the way that Wildlife is built around communicating that feeling. Marriage Story (more different as a film, but the fight scenes are often compared – give me Marriage Story any day, on that front) features much realer and more personal writing than Revolutionary Road does. All of Baumbach’s writing is piercingly poignant and his approach echoes 1990’s indies, like the place where Woody Allen meets Linklater or something along those lines. So in a way, I guess the reason I don’t admire Revolutionary Road is that, in my opinion, it feels like it could do more. Better/more interesting filmmaking approach or less stagey dialogue? I don’t know. I don’t have an issue with well written dialogue, that feels sharp or kind of like poetry or prose (it sometimes is the ultimate artistic choice that really elevates a film), but if your goal is realism, shouldn’t your dialogue reflect that? It’s not like Revolutionary Road plays out like a Tarantino or a Wes Anderson or a Lanthimos film, or it is written by Sorkin or the Coens or Bergman, so that there is a particular idiosyncratic choice. Or that it’s written by say Edward Albee, so we get a Virginia Woolf kind of situation (it feels like they tried to go there). It’s just conventional Hollywood dialogue and it bugs me a little, because I feel like it prevents it from reaching a level of relatability and effectiveness that it could easily get to. I could get past it, if there was some kind of originality or great visual merit to its direction, but I don’t really find there is. Or there are elements of it, but not much dedication to it. It kind of pales in comparison to those other films I mentioned and it seems very conventional/Hollywood-like to really work for me. I guess I was expecting a bit more. By no means do I consider it a bad film though. As I said it is solid and DiCaprio and Winslet are on fire in it. It is the perfect vehicle for their chemistry and their individual strengths. I just think there is a lot of untouched potential.
@Georg- thanks for sharing here- as always I enjoy reading your thoughts.
@Malith- thank you again for the assistance cleaning up these pages