Wildlife

Name: Wildlife
Genre: Drama
Released: October 19, 2018
Duration: 105 min
Rating: 80
Cast: Bill Camp, Blaine Maye, Carey Mulligan, Cate Jones, Darryl Cox

2018

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 79 Ratings

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7.4

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7.4	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 79 Ratings

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Wildlife (60 Second Trailer)

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Movie Details & Credits

IFC Films | Release Date: October 19, 2018 | Not Rated

Starring: Bill Camp, Blaine Maye, Carey Mulligan, Cate Jones, Darryl Cox, Ed Oxenbould, Jake Gyllenhaal, JR Hatchett, Kami King, Kaye Brownlee-France, Lexi Anastasia, Mollie Milligan, Sara Moore, Travis W Bruyer, Zoe Margaret Colletti

Summary: 14-year-old Joe is the only child of Jeanette and Jerry—a housewife and a golf pro—in a small town in 1960s Montana. Nearby, an uncontrolled forest fire rages close to the Canadian border, and when Jerry loses his job—and his sense of purpose—he decides to join the cause of fighting the fire, leaving his wife and son to fend for themselves.14-year-old Joe is the only child of Jeanette and Jerry—a housewife and a golf pro—in a small town in 1960s Montana. Nearby, an uncontrolled forest fire rages close to the Canadian border, and when Jerry loses his job—and his sense of purpose—he decides to join the cause of fighting the fire, leaving his wife and son to fend for themselves. Suddenly forced into the role of an adult, Joe witnesses his mother’s struggle as she tries to keep her head above water.… Expand

Director: Paul Dano

Genre(s): Drama

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 105 min

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

100

Lindsey Bahr

Oct 18, 2018

Wildlife isn’t just a great first film, it’s a great film. Read full review

The Film Stage Jordan Raup

In capturing the crumbling of a family and the scars left behind, Paul Dano has made a fascinatingly complex portrait of the fracturing of American ideals. Read full review

Moira Macdonald

Oct 31, 2018

Diego Garcia’s cinematography plays a key role, showing us lavender sunsets, endless plains and fire spreading down a hill like melting butter. Amid this beauty, Dano’s direction is restrained, letting us focus on the pain in Mulligan’s darting eyes. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

Dano, it’s immediately clear, is a natural-born filmmaker, with an eye for elegant spare compositions that refrain from being too showy; they rarely get in the way of the story he’s telling. The tale itself is resonant and absorbing, though in a highly deliberate way. Read full review

The Telegraph Tim Robey

Oct 17, 2018

It’s Dano’s handling of the actors, unsurprisingly, which shows the most confidence. Read full review

Joe Morgenstern

Oct 18, 2018

An affecting coming-of-age drama based on a superb book and directed by an exceptional actor in his directorial debut. Read full review

Johnny Oleksinski

Oct 18, 2018

Gyllenhaal and Mulligan are in fine form here, but too much of the screenplay, written by Dano and Zoe Kazan, doesn’t ring true. Read full review

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User Reviews

Belous

Nov 12, 2018

Uncertain. It is the only word that comes to my mind as I try to describe this movie using one word. But it is uncertain not in a bad way, it is uncertain in a very positive way. This flick makes you think deeply about things during its runtime. After moving to the other city not everythingUncertain. It is the only word that comes to my mind as I try to describe this movie using one word. But it is uncertain not in a bad way, it is uncertain in a very positive way. This flick makes you think deeply about things during its runtime. After moving to the other city not everything for the Brinsons goes smoothly as they would want it. They face the job loss of the head of the family, Jerry, and at the same time his wife, Jannet, finds a new love interest. But the one who suffers most of all is their fourteen year old son Joe. The future of the heroes is very uncertain and this feeling transcends beyond the screen. There is no “black” or “white”, only “grey”. No winners, no losers, only the hurt ones. No wrong, no right, only raw wild humanity.
From a technical point of view I can point out to three things: the acting, the camera work and the soundtrack. Acting of the main actors makes you believe in what you see and feel the emotions of the characters. And here the acting meets the camera work. The movie is full of close ups of characters’ faces, even in the scenes with two or more of them. That gives you a closer look at their eyes and facial expressions which creates tension and depressing atmosphere in some moments. It is one of the camera work methods, another one is the movement of the camera. At first, it doesn’t move at all, there are mainly still shots, but closer to the end the camera starts to shake, letting us know about the unstable situation in the family. I don’t want to say much about the music, it is simply there, creating a very beautiful and sometimes very eloquent background.
It is very difficult to make conclusions about the “uncertainty” of this film. Everything is good about it, you don’t want to nitpick about it, but also you don’t want to talk much about it. It is one of those movies that you recommend to your friends and close ones, and will surely re-watch it yourself one day, but you don’t have any desire to speak up about it. On the other hand, it is the film that you would definitely want to discuss with someone, as the movie doesn’t sort things out by itself, it is left up to the viewer.… Expand

5 of 5 users found this helpful50

GrantD243

Jan 16, 2019

Paul Dano's directorial debut is downright fantastic. It's beautifully shot and tells an unremarkable, but extremely relatable, tale about a family living in the 1960s. Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan acted their butts off in this one.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

GinaK

Nov 7, 2018

An incredible film by Paul Dano, who, as director, creates a unique atmosphere that enfolds and ensnares the viewer. Although his characters are ordinary and very human, they are also fascinating. Carey Mulligan is incredibly good as a frustrated woman coping with her husband’s absence. EdAn incredible film by Paul Dano, who, as director, creates a unique atmosphere that enfolds and ensnares the viewer. Although his characters are ordinary and very human, they are also fascinating. Carey Mulligan is incredibly good as a frustrated woman coping with her husband’s absence. Ed Oxenbould is also excellent as her young son who is both confused and hurt by his parent’s behavior. Jake Gyllenhaal disappears for most of the film, yet he is always a presence.… Expand

2 of 2 users found this helpful20

Bertaut1

Nov 15, 2018

Old-fashioned filmmaking with a progressive theme

The directorial debut of actor Paul Dano, Wildlife is based on the 1990 novel by Richard Ford, and is written for the screen by Dano and Zoe Kazan. Looking at the implosion of a family, although Wildlife is a piece of remarkably nostalgicOld-fashioned filmmaking with a progressive theme

The directorial debut of actor Paul Dano, Wildlife is based on the 1990 novel by Richard Ford, and is written for the screen by Dano and Zoe Kazan. Looking at the implosion of a family, although Wildlife is a piece of remarkably nostalgic filmmaking, it tells a somewhat progressive story, demonstrating the uncertainty with which second-wave feminism initially manifested itself at grassroots level. Although it's essentially a character study, the film also suggests the 1950s way of life, built around the perfect nuclear family wherein a wife must be subservient to her husband, is about to change.

Set in Great Falls, Montana in 1960, the film tells the story of the peripatetic Brinson family; Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal), Jeannette (Carey Mulligan), and 14-year-old Joe (Ed Oxenbould). When Jerry loses his job and takes off in a misguided attempt to reaffirm his masculinity by fighting a forest fire, something is awoken in Jeanette, who, for the first time, admits to herself that she has become deeply unhappy. Overnight, her behaviour changes dramatically, as she rebels against her domesticity, determined to forge a new identity. Importantly, the film is set three years prior to Betty Friedan's ground-breaking The Feminine Mystique (1963), which redefined the parameters of all gender-based topics. Initially, Jeanette is depicted as a quintessential 1950s wife and mother; she cooks, cleans, washes the clothes, does the dishes, sees that Joe attend to his homework, and when Jerry loses his job, it is Jeanette who goes out looking for work for both of them. She knows that her role in this patriarchal society is to hold the family together, but it's a role that's nothing like she thought it would be. Although she and Jerry seem to love one another, or they certainly used to, she feels trapped by her domestic situation. Making a conscious decision to stop performing the role delegated by men, just as many of the female population of the western hemisphere would be asking over the next ten years, she wants to know, "is this all there is?" In this sense, she recalls Nora Helmer from Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879) or any number of Tennessee Williams heroines - a woman who wakes up to find she has become deeply unhappy despite attaining everything she once wanted.

Dano's directorial work is subtle yet sophisticated. For example, on occasion he has characters walk off-screen to speak, whilst keeping the camera trained on Joe as he tries to listen, with the dialogue barely perceptible from just off the edge of the frame. As well as being an excellent use of off-screen space, something you don't see too often, this technique ties us rigidly to Joe's POV early on. Another very nice piece of direction is an early montage cutting between Jeanette riding her bike, Jerry driving the car, and Joe riding the bus, in which each character is facing a different direction, each in isolation from the others. It's basic cinematic shorthand, showing instead of telling, but it's very well done.

The acting, as you would expect, is universally superb. On paper, Jeanette and Warren Miller (a superb Bill Camp), an older man who becomes romantically interested in her, are very much the villains of the piece, but Mulligan and Camp's performances are so full of warmth that you can't look at them as antagonists. When she starts drunkenly dancing with Joe at Miller's house, the scene is deeply uncomfortable, but Mulligan's performance is such that we don't condemn her, at least, not completely. She never allows the audience to lose sight of the fact that although she is behaving rather poorly, she is a prisoner reacting against her confinement.

Of course, there are a few problems. Essentially a tale of marital angst, the narrative is not especially original - we've seen this story before, and for all the craft on display, Dano never really manages to say anything new Additionally, his measured direction is also too good in places - everything is so ordered, neat, and trim, that at times, the milieu doesn't seem lived-in, but more an abstract concept of what the period was like.

On the one hand, Wildlife is about how society was changing in 1960, and on the other, about how that change manifests itself within the Brinson family. Yes, it's another "death of the American dream" story in a long line of such films, but here, the focus is, for the most part, on character rather than theme, with Jeanette functioning in kind of a synecdochical manner; our specific entry point, she is the individual that facilitates an examination of the masses. And yes, Dano may take his eye off the ball a couple of times, with a somewhat too picture-postcard perfection, but all in all, this is an excellent directorial debut.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

fredericwood

Oct 31, 2018

It's a good debut movie. But it's also boring...rather mundane about the extramarital affair. The excellent acting of the young actor who played the son really saved this movie

2 of 4 users found this helpful22

JLuis_001

Jan 7, 2019

This is a film that plays it safe. Never bets on anything risky, neither in the theme nor in the performances.
This is a drama completely in order, as I said safe and certainly maybe quite correct which causes some predictability once the story begins to develop, however the quality isThis is a film that plays it safe. Never bets on anything risky, neither in the theme nor in the performances.
This is a drama completely in order, as I said safe and certainly maybe quite correct which causes some predictability once the story begins to develop, however the quality is elementary when talking about this film, because Paul Dano manages to make a pretty solid work and full of quality in his first film as a director.

I repeat, it never risks anything but that's not a negative thing, I only mention it because the film feels and is evidently made with that tone. However, it's a pretty elegant and very well done drama.
The narrative rhythm is not always the best, but the script and the main characters are excellent. Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan have no complaints from me.

In a way making a small comparison, Wildlife reminds me of Revolutionary Road. A marriage that crumbles before our eyes, however Wildlife is not anywhere near as dark, pessimistic and depressing as Sam Mendes film but they would definitely made a hell of a couple in a double feature.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Mauro_Lanari

Sep 22, 2019

(Mauro Lanari)
"Don't believe the hype", the correct mantra of our time
Paul Dano assembles any flaw of an indie work: the pauperism, the fresco of Yankee existence reduced to a serial copy of "American Gothic", the subjection to the French cinema (like the first Spike Lee or the(Mauro Lanari)
"Don't believe the hype", the correct mantra of our time
Paul Dano assembles any flaw of an indie work: the pauperism, the fresco of Yankee existence reduced to a serial copy of "American Gothic", the subjection to the French cinema (like the first Spike Lee or the mumblecore), especially towards the poetics of Truffaut's debut (with a camera-car that follows the escape of the young protagonist harassed by his family) and the fixed and empty shots of Bresson. Again, better the originals.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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