Wildlife

2018 family drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A kid watches his parents' marriage fall apart.

Jake Gyllenhaal has a tendency to choose very interesting projects for himself. I'm not sure this directorial debut from Paul Dano is one of them. There's nothing really wrong with it, but it's a fairly vanilla family drama with too-obvious symbolism. Its real strength is in the trio of performances, all three which manage to excel more in what is not said or not done with the characters than what is. While that symbolism might be a little too obvious, the character development is sneaky and effective.

Gyllenhaal is always good, and here, he's a picture of regret, ennui, boredom, restlessness, and unrealized potential. It's a physical performance from a character wearing fatigue like a woolen sweater. Carey Mulligan is even better as his wife, a woman impossible to pin down. She's got the same regret, ennui, boredom, restlessness, and unrealized potential as her husband, but rather than fatigue, she's adorned in all these contradictions. She wears contradictions like cosmetics. I'm not sure what young actor Ed Oxenbould is wearing. Oh, wait. I do know. He's wearing those hilarious novelty glasses with the springy eyes because he spends most of the movie in a kind of stupor as he watches his parents make baffling decision after baffling decision. We see the disintegration of his parents' relationship through his eyes mostly, so luckily, his eyes are gigantic.

Dano's direction is confident, allowing the characters and the performances creating them to tell the story. It makes sense since he's, you know, an actor himself.

I suppose the final shot could have been seen coming a mile away, but I didn't see it coming and therefore liked it. You have to appreciate that the movie ends by allowing the three actors who have used their faces so effectively to use their faces effectively one last time.