Family troubles provide breakout role
Directorial debut is a bleak but artful coming-of-age story
Wildlife
(out of 4) Starring Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ed Oxenbould and Bill Camp. Written by Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan. Opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. 104 minutes. STC A timid teenager stands and watches in fear and awe as a wildfire rages above him across a mountain range.
It’s a visual metaphor for what’s happening in subtler human ways in Wildlife, a bleak but artful coming-of-age drama, based on the acclaimed novel by Richard Ford.
Set in the small-town Montana of1960, this auspicious feature-film directing debut by the actor Paul Dano is finally receiving a Toronto theatrical run, following its premiere at Sundance last January and screenings at TIFF last September.
The awestruck adolescent is Joe, played with assured stoicism by The Visit’s Ed Oxenbould, the picture’s mildest yet strongest asset. At 14, he seems old beyond his years, with a receding hairline and worries of the kind more usually associated with adulthood.
In the modest bungalow of his parents Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Jeanette (Carey Mulligan), Joe fusses with things like fixing a broken toilet, while his so-called authority figures set about discovering themselves, rearranging their own lives and others.
Jerry and Jeannette are like flame and water together, which suit the elemental pursuits that attract them.
He’s a rookie firefighter who’d rather be saving forests than spending time at home; she’s a swimming instructor with a roving eye.
When Jerry leaves town on an extended mission to fight wildfires threatening the state, Jea- nette finds comfort and diversion in the self-entitled attentions of wealthy local businessman Warren Miller (Bill Camp). Wonder if she’s seen Butterfield 8, the affair-gonewrong pic which is playing at her local bijou?
It’s a combustible combination, one that poor Joe is obliged to bear witness to as a Midwestern version of the biblical Job.
He finds little solace at school, where he’s a reluctant member of the football team and a middling friend to a girl who likes him. He just wants his family to stay together, any way it can.
Wildlife’s production design and minimalist score drive home the loneliness of Joe’s existence. JFK is on the TV proclaiming “I believe we can get this country moving again” but time seems to stand still in this town.
The cars are of homey 1950s vintage. The menus offer meat loaf and chicken, with potatoes, carrots and peas. The future, however, looks as rough and uncertain as the mountain range just beyond the horizon.
Jeanette tells Joe at one point how he got his name.
“We chose it because it was plain. You could be anyone with that name,” she says.
But few could play a character so ordinary with as much empathy as Oxenbould brings to the role.
He’s one to watch, here and in the future.