Directorial debuts tend to be wild, shaggy, and filled with a vigorous energy that makes you overlook youthful missteps. So, to that end, you’d never guess in a million years that “Wildlife” (2018) was the directorial debut of actor/writer/filmmaker Paul Dano (“There Will Be Blood,” “Prisoners,” “Little Miss Sunshine“). Directorial debuts don’t come more assured, poised, and composed than “Wildlife,” an immaculately crafted, subtle, and heart-aching portrait of a family unraveling that’s as emotional as it is, gorgeously composed (we put it on our list of The 25 Best Films Of 2018 You Didn’t See, it was overlooked at the time, but also, simply one of the best films of that year too). Set in the early 1960s in Montana, and based on the book of the same name by Richard Ford, “Wildlife” centers on the Brinson family, the matriarch Jeanette (Carey Mulligan), the father Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) and their teenage son, Joe (Ed Oxenbould) and the inciting incident that creates a crack in what turns out to be a fragile foundation.
Often felt from Joe’s perspective, though fluid in its POV, “Wildlife” tends to focus on the teenage boy dealing with his mother’s emotionally complicated, resentful response when his father temporarily abandons them to take a menial and dangerous job putting out wildfires in a remote part of Montana.
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Co-written by Dano and his creative and life partner Zoe Kazan, “Wildlife” is quiet, restrained, and introspective. Still, Dano draws you in with a rich emotional intelligence in the scripting, inviting stillness and an observational camera that captures some absolutely incredible performances, including the young Oxenbould, who handles himself well alongside the heavyweights of Mulligan and Gyllenhaal. As Jeannette becomes more and more dissatisfied, disenchanted, and feeling abandoned, she lashes out—seemingly testing the waters of her identity, toying with reinvention, and grappling with what life might be like beyond just motherhood. Joe, trying to hold his family together, quietly takes it all in, doing his best to survive the upheaval as the ghost of his father still lingers over their family.
“Wildlife” seems classical or straightforward, but Dano likens it to sushi—something that appears to be simple on the outside, but is delicate and complex when tasted. That modus operandi serves the movie well, it’s deceptively straightforward but features so much emotional complexity, layers, and texture about human longing, desire, and the distress of confusion. Dano, who describes the picture as about “the mysteries of parents,” as seen through the eyes of a young boy, jumped on the phone with us recently to talk about the film as it makes its DVD/Blu-Ray debut on the Criterion Collection this week. He spoke about his love for Asian cinema and its influence on the movie, working with great directors like Kelly Reichardt, Steve McQueen, Paul Thomas Anderson, and more, and finding his way into this outwardly simple, but intricate family drama.
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Given what constitutes a movie these days, “Wildlife” is a fairly unusual choice to make a movie out of and the degree of difficulty on it, the nuance to all the restraint is really high, I think.
Well, I’ve wanted to make films for a long time—I’ve probably had some stops and starts with an idea, some scenes, some images and they just kind of never, really just coalesced into anything in my twenties. But I think it was something I’d been pining for, for a long time. In terms of the difficulty, yeah, this is not something you discover on the day. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I also loved it and worked a long time on it. It had to be calibrated and a lot of thought was put into composition.
But, I’d read some books thinking some could turn into a film, and eventually, I discovered that’s not the right way to enter a book. So, I liked Richard Ford’s writing—strong, somehow poetic, even though it’s sort of bare-bones, spartan. I wanted something like his prose in [the short story] Rock Springs, which was simple, but I loved. I was in a bookstore, I pick up Wildlife, and I read the opening sentence and it was immediately like, “Oh, this one of the best opening paragraphs I’ve ever read.” I took it home and by page 20, I was like, “Jesus,” I knew—it really struck me on a deeply personal note. I think my experience, growing up, rather than rebelling I was someone who wanted to keep things together. I wasn’t running out the door and, saying, “fuck you,” when there were problems at home. I was trying to solve, slash, help things, kind of in the middle.
Kind of like the kid in the book.
Yeah. That just felt really true to me, in particular, to who I am. Yet, also, the book met me at an aesthetic place. I have a particular affinity for—like I told my crew often like, think about sushi. It looks really simple, but it’s actually complex, and that feeling in art is always something that I’ve really connected to. I thought as a filmmaker, maybe that’s who I am, potentially.
So, not only did the estranged family ring true to me, but Richard’s prose also evoked things and met that feeling of things I wanted to aspire to creatively. Where something can—where the small is so big, the finer details, and that’s always been true for me in life as well. On a first read, the Jeanette character, she was such a mystery. And it felt like it was about the mystery of who our parents are—that was the first key. I even wanted our score to sound like that, as abstract as that is. But going back to the book several times, I also realized, “Oh no, it’s really my relationship to Joe.”
That’s interesting because I think the same thing happens as an audience member. I think you can see it from his perspective and his. I keep getting different reflections, each time and yet it’s also just the difficulties of family.
Yeah. Ultimately, it’s a family portrait. I think as a writer, with each draft, it’s your responsibility to look at the story from different character perspectives, to see what you can learn, but without ever abandoning what feels right. There’s also some interesting texture in the story about Jerry the father. Their life revolves around him and then he’s just gone, right? Families were so centered around the father figure back then, and it felt interesting to have somebody like Jake Gyllenhaal play that character and then just leave the film for a long time.
Tell me about writing this, co-writing with your partner Zoe Kazan.
I wrote a first draft, which wasn’t in screenplay format. When I gave it to Zoe, she did not consider a first draft [laughs]. We had a moment [laughs]. She was like, “I see what you’re trying to do, let me help,” and I was like, “yes, please.” And then it just became drafts and passes. We never wrote together or in the same room, but we’d obviously talk about each draft a lot. It became a really healthy way for us to work and the best way to approach this thing that just went on for a few years. There would always be six months away from it because of work. So, you know, Stephen King— he says, put it in a drawer for six weeks in a sealed envelope and come back to it. We had that built into our lives a little bit, so it would just evolve. Meaning, if I had made the film within the first year of trying to write it, I probably would have imposed more cinematic aesthetics onto it. With three, four years of gestating, it was allowed to be itself. It was an interesting learning for me, this kind of shedding of ideas.
I like the idea of your aesthetic taste, the deceptively simple, fortuitously aligning up with the emotional content of the story. Can you talk about your cinematic influences?
Certainly, my love of like Asian cinema is a huge influence, and how to take that and use it in an American story. Because, this isn’t going to be an [Yasujirō] Ozu film— some guy lighting a house on fire—you’d skip that event in one of his films. But seeing “Early Summer” for the first time in my early twenties. I didn’t even know that you could make a film like that, that stillness. It opened something up for me. The way you don’t overstate the camera, you use time and pacing in a way where things take on a different meaning. American films often push in on the kid for the close-up when he’s sad. Asian cinema lets the character, and by proxy, go through things a little bit more on their own without overselling feelings which gives you take on all kinds of feelings. And that’s more true to life in my experience.
I’m a huge Edward Yang fan, and [Hirokazu] Kore-eda. I mean, I equally love [Shohei] Imamura and [Seijun] Suzuki, both of whom have more kick and fun to them, but, the simpler style is just sort of a home base for me. But also, old American stuff, “The Grapes Of Wrath,” a John Cassavetes film, whatever. You see a lot of things you admire and you see what you can learn from those guys. I’m grateful to the Criterion Collection, beyond releasing “Wildlife,” because I think that’s the number one place where I learned how to direct. I obviously had a big advantage having been on film sets for years—I know how I wanted my sets to feel, the way I wanted to work with a crew and actors. But where you put the camera and the cut and why, all that just comes from watching movies and special features.
I mean, “All That Jazz” is definitely one of my favorite films, so is [Robert Bresson’s] “A Man Escaped.” The other night I was watching these Jackie Chan films on the Criterion Channel and the special features are awesome. I’m just like, Oh shit. That’s cool.