Wildlife **** (2018, Jake Gyllenhaal, Carey Mulligan, Ed Oxenbould, Bill Camp) – Movie Review

Actor Paul Dano’s directorial debut is Wildlife (2018), in which a misfit teenage boy called Joe Brinson (Ed Oxenbould) witnesses his parents’ marriage falling apart after his frustrated father Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) loses his job as a golf caddy and decides to take a life-threatening job as a forest fire-fighter, prompting the boy’s exasperated mother Jeanette (Carey Mulligan) to find another man, the rich, older, married Warren Miller (Bill Camp).

Here we are in Montana again, with the mountains and the misfits. Wildlife has the slight disadvantage of feeling like a story we have heard many times before, but, no matter, Dano brings it up fresh and new.

Gyllenhaal and Mulligan are brilliant, as expected, but the film is mostly about the boy, and Oxenbould is startlingly good, in his weird, wise way. Dano ensures that it is a classy film, classy as drama and classy looking too, thanks to eye-catching compositions in the cinematography by Diego García and painstaking work on the production design by Akin McKenzie.

The screenplay by Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan is based on the book by Richard Ford. It feels like everyone worked long and hard and lovingly on crafting the story and the movie too. As actor, Dano has specialised in oddball characters, so you imagine he sympathises with the misfit teenage boy, a role he himself could have played a few years ago.

Good though Mulligan is, and she is very good, the film takes a dip midway when Gyllenhaal disappears to fight fires, but it is back on track when he reappears to find his wife straying and leaving. His character’s bursts of rage and anger are quite scary. You aren’t really expecting this from the nice Gyllenhaal.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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