PHEW WHAT A SCORCHER AS CAREY GOES WILD!
Carey Mulligan is not afraid of a sizzling scene or two. So, when actor turned director Paul Dano rang to ask if she’d consider being in a film he and his partner Zoe Kazan had adapted from a richard Ford novel, he figured he’d hear back in a few days, once she’d read the script. ‘She called back the next morning, probably not 12 hours later,’ Dano said incredulously. ‘She trusts her instincts and her gut,’ he added when we met for afternoon tea at the Lambs Club in New york to chat about his scorching film Wildlife, set against a backdrop of a raging wildfire. It’s about a couple, Jeanette and Jerry Brinson (Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal) going through marital turmoil while their 14-year-old son tries to figure out what’s going on. ‘He knows there’s something wrong,’ said Dano. ‘ Family is some of the greatest love in our life — and it can be the greatest struggle in our life, right?’ he added, describing how Ford’s novel spoke to him. He said it’s possible to look at a family snapshot, or a painting by Norman rockwell or edward Hopper and realise ‘we just don’t know the lives of others’. Mulligan’s character is brittle, and not always likeable, but she infuses Jeanette with blazing honesty. ‘ I wasn’t looking to condemn them,’ Dano said. He added that people who’ve caught the film ( at the Sundance, Cannes, Toronto and London film festivals) have one of two reactions to the couple. ‘It’s either: “Well that guy left her in a strange town, alone with her son.” Or: “That Jeanette! Is she sleeping around?” ’ He was excited, he said, to see Mulligan play someone so ‘messy’. The Oscarnominated actress captures, magnificently, the level of desperation Jeanette reaches when Jerry flees the family’s rented home in Montana ( rent they can barely afford) to fight forest fires miles away. It’s one of the best screen performances this year, and Mulligan’s going to be in the award season mix with fellow Brits Olivia Colman and rachel Weisz for The Favourite; Keira Knightley for Collette; and Saoirse ronan for Mary Queen Of Scots.
Wildlife is set in the Sixties, and Jerry’s a sort of hail fellow well met kind of chap who can’t catch a break. Dano and I both say ‘Willy Loman’ at the same time. ‘Jeanette got married at a young age, had a kid at a young age, and followed the husband around — and he’s either chasing the next thing or running away.’
The fire-fighting scenes, to my mind, are a metaphor for the state america’s in now: dangerously divisive. ablaze, even. Dano wanted to cast Jeanette first, and he knew who to call. He’s known Mulligan for years, ever since she and Kazan were in Ian rickson’s royal Court production of The Seagull on Broadway a decade ago.
‘Zoe was Masha and Carey was Nina. They shared a dressing room and became friends — and I became friends with Carey,’ Dano told me.
He met Gyllenhaal at Mulligan’s wedding to musician and singer Marcus Mumford. ‘They were all friends, and then Jake and I ended up working together on a film called Prisoners.’ (They also appeared in Bong Joon-Ho’s Netflix fantasy film Okja but didn’t have any scenes together.)
He
told me about the first day of filming on Wildlife. He was standing behind the camera, watching Carey and ed Oxenbould, her screen son, do a scene in a diner, while a fire raged in the background.
‘Carey has such a great facility for language — probably comes from doing theatre — and as she’s talking, I realise the words sound so good in her mouth.
‘I stood there thinking: “yes, I have a movie!” ’ said Dano, who has acted in everything from Little Miss Sunshine to There Will Be Blood and War & Peace on BBC television.
He’ll soon be seen, on american TV screens, in an eightpart real-life prison drama escape at Dannemora.
Meanwhile, he’s enjoying travelling with Wildlife. The film opened well in the U.S. last week and arrives at cinemas here on November 9.