Review: Wildlife

A survival story of a different kind, actor Paul Dano's modest but magnificent directorial debut, Wildlife, observes a family in crisis. Adapted from Richard Ford's novel by Dano and his wife, actress Zoe Kazan, the film also serves as a sterling showcase for Carey Mulligan, who has arguably not had a role this richly textured and complex since her breakout performance in 2009's An Education.

"Some of us get washed away, and some of us float to the top," Mulligan's Jeanne Brinson observes at one point, and the crux of Wildlife depicts how an ordinary family reacts to the realities that crack their seemingly perfect facade. Set in a small Minnesota town in the early 1960s, an era that straddled the suburban fantasia of the 1950s and the eruptive chaos of the 1970s, the film focuses on Jeanne, her husband Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal), and their fourteen-year-old son Joe (Ed Oxenbould). Jerry works at a golf course - we see him getting on with the wealthy customers as he shines their shoes - but he's soon let go. "I'm too well-liked. They don't want to see small people like us get ahead," he tells his son.

It soon becomes evident that Jerry isn't the type to take a knock like this too well. "He's been out of work before and he always finds his way," Jeanne says to Joe, who worries that they may have to move yet again. The bite behind her words belies her exasperation, which soon grows when Jerry, out of pride, refuses to take back his job when his employers offer it to him. His masculinity takes a further hit when Jeanne gets a job giving swimming lessons at the YMCA. To quell the hum in his head, Jerry decides to take a low-paying job to help fight the wildfires that are spreading around the city.

Jerry's disappearance sparks a change - some might even say, an awakening - within Jeanne, whose emotional nakedness startles the young Joe, who clings to the hope that the broken pieces of his family can be put back together. "I feel like I need to wake up, but I don't know what from, or to," Jeanne tells Joe, who can only watch from the sidelines as her restlessness and desperation leads her to flirt with Mr. Miller (Bill Camp), a wealthy older man who represents the stability that she's never had with Jerry. She has no compunction about parading around her affair in front of Joe, but one can feel there's a method to her madness. It's a life lesson for Joe, who comes to realise that his parents are human beings filled with flaws and foibles, and who have needs and desires outside of the roles they play for him.

Dano and Kazan understand that there are no villains here, only people trying to find their way, and both Mulligan and Gyllenhaal beautifully convey their characters' conflicts. Mulligan especially does something that can only be described as transformative with Jeanne, who appears as a solid and grounded woman in the beginning and then frail yet fierce once Jerry abandons the family. Oxenbould is a find - he makes observation and passivity into a living, breathing, almost suspenseful thing. Dano handles the material with skill, sensitivity but also a ruthlessness that exposes his characters in all their glorious imperfection without losing empathy for their plight.

Wildlife

Directed by: Paul Dano

Written by: Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan; based on the novel by Richard Ford

Starring: Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal, Bill Camp, Ed Oxenbould