Wildlife

Wildlife - The Disintegration of a Family

 What is the symptom of the failure of a family? Is there a cause for this phenomenon that affects so many of us? What is the reason for the behavior of adults? What is the effect of this on the children? In Wildlife we are invited to witness the disintegration of a family in the early '60s from the point of view of the child of the family and what he has to go through in order to fend for himself in such a tense environment.  This is a beautiful coming-of-age story like none other I have seen before, and it's dealt with such sensitivity by first-time-director Paul Dano, in one of the most impressive debut features of the past few years. With stunning, softly lit cinematography that both reflects so well the time period and makes the film feel modern and up-to-date and an incredible score, this is definitely a fascinating and intriguing masterpiece with some of the most interesting characters ever written. This is a reflection on what is a family and what would cause it to break down, with deep compassion for every single person in it.

 The first thing we see as the screen lights up is a father playing with his teenage son in the front lawn of their house. This man is Jerry Brinson – played incredibly by Jake Gyllenhaal, in a small yet impactful role – and the teenager son is Joe Brinson – the break-out star of this film, Ed Oxenbould, in a quiet yet expressive performance. The mother – played in such an astonishing and complex performance by Carrie Mulligan – is probably inside the house, preparing dinner – in fact, that is what the next scene suggests, as they are shown eating together, as a family. In these first few scenes, we are shown what is a perfect and traditional family life, with a clear placement of what is the role of the father and what is the role of the mother. This is most clearly represented in a particular shot where we see Jeanette is helping her son doing his homework and Jerry, in the background, seating in this sofa drinking beer and listening to the football match in the radio.

 This family is presented to us as a normal working-class family like any other. However, there is already from the start something in the atmosphere - a kind of tense electricity – in the Brinson household. This is metaphorically represented by the smoke that we see far away in the mountains of Montana from a big forest wildfire. This smoke represents the impending doom that afflicts this family. In a lecture done by a Forest Guard, we see Joe taking notes. A friend tells him: “You don’t have to take notes, it’s the same as the bomb drills, if the fire gets too close it will be too late.” This reflects what will happen to this family or any possible family. There is no use in making preparations. When the all-consuming toxic fire of separation arrives and engulfs the foundations of the family, there is nothing that can stop it.

 And then, one day, the first spark of the fire is ignited. Jerry is fired from his job in a golf club. Jeanette has to go look for a job to make up for the money not being made, and so the delicate balance in the traditional relationships present in this family suffers an upheaval. It’s Jeanette, and even Joe, that have to find work, as Jerry falls into a depression. The traditional male figure that we saw present in that shot is lost and shrivels. From the moment this happens, any tension that existed contained under the surface of this marriage slowly starts to come out and burst out. Fights start to erupt between Jean and Jerry and the pillars of their marriage start to slowly erode in front of our eyes. This shows how fragile traditional marriage and family really is. They are symbols of stability in our society, yet the stable ground they stand on is everything but that.

 It is important to remember that this film is told from the point of view of Joe. Because of this, we see everything from the point of this confused teenager, condemned to simply be a passive onlooker on the dissolution of his family, just like we are. It is impossible not to feel sympathetic with him as he has to deal with the complex traumas and torments of adults around him that should be more mature than that, but simply aren’t – perhaps because, like perfection, maturity is just an unrealistic ideal.

 Everyone has to deal with their torments their own way, and what we see in this film is just that. Jerry and Jeanette have two very different ways of dealing with their ghosts. Jerry decides to volunteer and abandon his family in order to fight his own demons – which is represented by the fire. Jean is heavily upset by his decision, considering it a stupid and cowardly act. He also abandons his son to deal with his mother’s behavior. One thing is important to point out – even though his actions may be questionable, I do not believe that they are cowardly actions, he is simply doing what he must do in order to stay sane. As the forest guard said, wildfires can be a renovating force in the forest, making it possible for new things to grow.

 However, Jeanette doesn’t have that male privilege of leaving to fight her own demons, embodied by a dangerous wildfire. She has to stay home because that’s what is expected of her. She doesn’t have the choice to leave and abandon her son. And so, she has to turn that fight inwards to herself, ending up doing questionable actions that may harm others, especially her son. “Tomorrow something will happen to make things feel different”, she says to herself in a fake hope.

 It is easy to accuse her of being wicked, of being a bad mother. But I do not believe that that is true. I think marriage, family, and life are more complex than that. Jeanette is an incredibly interesting character, probably the most interesting character of the year, given even more depth by the electric performance of the incredible Carey Mulligan, and I would like to spend some time talking about her.

 Through most of the film, we are placed in the position of the son, as we study this complex and tormented woman and try to understand her actions. She slowly reveals small bits of her real self, not her “mother self”, and that is something that may be terrifying, as we see that terror in the son’s expression. “It’s probably nice to know your parents were once not your parents”, she says. But is it? We tend to create god-like fictionalizations of our parents. To every child, their parents can do anything and have every good quality you can think of. And so, isn’t it a little terrifying to know that your parents aren’t those fictional characters? That they are just people, like any other, that have suffered and have deep character flaws?

 The biggest revelations start to happen in a trip that Joe and his mother make to go to see the wildfires that are being fought by his father. Jean shows them to him so that he could see with his own eyes what his father abandoned them to – to show him the demons he must fight. Later, the veil of the role of motherhood falls a bit more in a diner they stop by when going back. In a particular impactful moment, Jeanette reveals her age. “I’m 34… Does that seem like the wrong age?”, she says. This is an incredibly powerful moment. By revealing her age, Jeanette, in a way, is revealing her true disappointing self to her son. She is not the super-heroine he thought she was, and she can’t be that. She can’t hold the entire world in her hands and do everything as he thought she could. Not only that, but her frustrations as a woman are revealed to us. She is an extremely frustrated woman that has probably felt stuck in this marriage and in her performance as a happy mother and wife. With her husband leaving, this construction that she has built around herself starts to break down and dissipate, making her having to assert herself as an independent woman. “I feel like I need to wake up, but I don’t know what from… or to”, she vents to her son later when they are back from their trip. Her character reflects what was felt by many women of her time, as the post-WW2 was marked by a newly gained independence of women, mostly because of the abandonment of the families by the men that went to fight in the wars (in fact, there is a scene where wildfires are compared to war, making this parallelism between fire and war).

 And because of this, she has to do an extremely immoral and questionable action, which is to cheat on her husband. She starts to have an affair with Mr. Miller, an older and wealthier man. Joe starts to discover his mother’s lies when one morning he goes to the place that Jeanette said she was working and finds that she’s not there. In that day, Miller invites them for dinner, however the real intentions are others – as it is suggested that Jeannette is prostituting herself. This reflects the lengths that women have to go to in order to gain independence in a male-dominated society as they have to put themselves on the mercy of more powerful men. And, as it’s shown through her behavior, Jean hates that she has to do this. But, does she have any choice? Perhaps. But, like all of us, she is entitled to make mistakes and wrong choices – because we aren’t free if we aren’t able to make the wrong choice. “I wish I was dead”, she says one night after Joe catches her with Miller, “If you got a better plan for me, tell me, I’ll try it… Maybe it will be better than this.”

 “I don’t have one”, says Joe. One thing that is constantly questioned in this film is the way that adults dump their frustrations on their children. All throughout the film, Jeanette uses her son as her confidant. But is this a correct thing to do? Should we do that to our children? Shouldn’t we just let them be children and leave our adult problems to other adults? Yes, but sometimes it’s not that easy. Sometimes the children are the only ones there. Jeanette doesn’t have anyone else to talk to – she only has Joe. He is the only person in her life. But the role of being a child confidant is not an easy one and it takes its toll. As Jean spirals more and more out of control, Joe becomes more and more lonely and distant from his own childhood – represented by his school and his best friend, from which he grows more and more apart. Children of broken marriages tend to be more mature than children of intact marriages as a consequence. This is incredibly portrayed by Ed Oxenbould, who acts wise beyond his years.

In a moment of desperation, Joe almost leaves town. However, just as the bus out of town is arriving, he notices the first snows – a sign of the return of his of his father, the male figure, the one who is going to bring back stability and order. However, too much damage has already been done and the columns that support this family have already crumbled. In an incredibly tense and painful scene, Joe witnesses his parents burst into a fight when Jeanette announces that she is going to move out, in a scene that represents the irreversible schism between the two.

 Afterwards, Jerry and Joe go to a local bar and Joe reveals Jeanette’s affair. In a moment of blind rage, Jerry buys a can of gasoline and lights Miller’s house on fire. At this moment Jerry indulges in a purely irrational and immature act, and Joe runs away into the night. He might have run forever and ever, for he was desperate to be a child again. But that couldn’t happen. And so, he returns home to his parents and asks bluntly, “What’s going to happen to us?” This moment reflects the inability of adults to keep things under control. Even though they create the illusion that they do. It’s a moment of disillusionment. Nobody is really in control of anything or really knows what the extent of their actions is. And so, it falls to the children to ask the adults: “What’s going to happen to us?”

 After this, we see the lives of these characters some months later. We see a completely different family. Joe has decided to stay with his father after his parents got separated, and Jerry has become a successful single father that owns a store. Jeanette has moved to Portland, Oregon, and is trying to figure herself out as an independent woman. One day, she comes to visit them for a weekend, and Joe takes his parents to the photo store to take a picture with them. In this incredibly poignant and beautiful last scene, Joe tries to recreate a long-lost happiness – the happiness of a family together. In the picture that he takes, he captures a happy moment together, though fabricated, that will last forever even though the family has been torn apart. It’s a sweet memory to hold on to during hard cold nights. However, this moment is all the more emotional because of the drama that we saw unfolding in the screen and the expressions of guilt and pain in the faces of both Jeanette and Jerry. It’s truly a heart-breaking ending that will cast itself permanently in your mind and make you sob uncontrollably.

 One final question that I would like to raise: Was Jeanette’s and Jerry’s marriage’s downfall caused by him being fired and going to fight the wildfires? Or was it already happening? Wildlife reflects the tragedy that the traditional family has been facing in the 20^th and the 21^st centuries as it fails to adapt to modernity and the change in gender roles in our society. I don’t have any clear answer to this question, and I don’t think there is one because this is too complex of a question for there to be clear answers. Maybe the ideal traditional family was already cracked in its inception, and it just needed a reason to tear itself apart. And maybe we can build something new – a new family – from the ashes of the disintegration of this family.