WILDLIFE (2018)

Though reasonably prolific and a Pulitzer Prize winner, acclaimed novelist Richard Ford had never been adapted for film (or any dramatic medium?) till this 2018 film from actor Paul Dano.  And, in one fell swoop, his well observed directing debut (written with actress/wife Zoe Kazan*) lets us know exactly why.  Ford touches all the bases of ‘50s/’60s dysfunctional family drama, but stays clear of the third rail, offering only a reasonable facsimile of the real thing.  It’s 1960 Montana and new to town couple Carey Mulligan & Jake Gyllenhaal, along with 13-yr-old son Ed Oxenbould, can’t pick up the local cues.  Fired for little cause from his golf club job, prideful Gyllenhaal joins a firefighting brigade that takes him away till first snow; Mulligan drifts into modest jobs, immodest drinking, emotional detachment and a creepy affair with an older married businessman.  While Oxenbould, quite good here, is stuck in the middle, hoping for Dad’s return, horrified at Mom’s physical & moral dissipation and barely hanging on at school.  Just the sort of slowburn melodrama Nick Ray, Elia Kazan or Doug Sirk would turn the heat up on, or that Todd Haynes might rethink thru a modern prism on the past.  Dano’s response (or is it Ford’s?) is to becalm troubled surfaces, but let them bubble up overnight.  No-knead melodrama.  Not an uninteresting idea that!  But you'd need a lot more control of pace & acting to make it work.  Is Mulligan meant to be so unsympathetic?  Does Gyllenhaal’s hair-trigger temper and immaturity pre-date marriage/fatherhood?  And what to make of Oxenbould’s complete lack of resemblance to either parent.  A spiritual adoption?  Kudos to cinematographer  Diego García and whomever did location scouting (a townscape shot with a train barrelling thru out back; best five seconds in the pic).  Dano hasn’t tried to direct again (the film hardly got past the fest circuit), but he should.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *See Kazan’s Grandpa Elia handle ths sort of thing in EAST OF EDEN/’55.*  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/east-of-eden-1955.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *It’d be fun (and instructive) to see/hear WILDLIFE refitted with the sort of wildly out of fashion big chromatic score Leonard Rosenman wrote for EAST OF EDEN.