Wildlife

Year 13, Day 3 - 1/3/21 - Movie #3,703

BEFORE: I'm not sure, from the description this one sort of feels like it might belong in the February romance section - which can also include films about complicated relationship issues - instead of here.  But I've already worked out my February chain, and there's no obvious way for me to fit this one into that, so I'm going to sort of burn it off here. 

Jake Gyllenhaal carries over from "Okja". 

THE PLOT: A teenage boy must deal with his mother's complicated response after his father temporarily abandons them to take a menial and dangerous job. 

AFTER: Yeah, this one's sort of a slow burner.  Complicated relationship issues abound when a family living in Montana in 1960 goes through a rough patch.  Everything is (relatively?) idyllic until the father loses his job working at a golf club.  I thought perhaps he was the groundskeeper, but the Wikipedia plot summary says he was a golf pro.  Did his performance suffer?  We're not really sure because the audience doesn't get to hear the conversation with his boss when he's let go.  But perhaps within my misunderstanding lies the first takeaway - golf pros come and go, but the club will ALWAYS need a groundskeeper.  So in some way it's safer to have the lesser job and perform menial labor, right?  I mean, if worst comes to worst the world is always going to need people to sweep floors, cut grass, rake leaves and shovel snow. 

He receives a phone call to return to his job - I'm not sure if management reconsidered, or made some kind of mistake, or the club members raised a fuss after he was gone.  But it doesn't matter, he chooses not to return to his position and instead decides to take a dollar-an-hour job fighting wildfires.  Naturally this puts a strain on his family, because this requires him to be away from them for several months, planning to return only after the snowy season starts. It kind of feels like he's trying to beat the system a bit here, taking a job that he knows he can handle, and though it's hard work, he believes it will be only for a limited time.  Only, what if it doesn't snow that year?  I guess it almost always snows in Montana during the winter.

His wife, however, decides to act as if he's abandoned her and his teenage son.  I suppose this is something of a coping mechanism, perhaps to deal with the fact that her husband's life is in jeopardy, to prepare herself for the worst she starts acting as if he's already gone and not coming back.  She takes a job teaching swimming lessons, and forms a burgeoning relationship with one of her students, an older man who owns a car dealership and several other businesses. Technically he's married, only his wife has left him for parts unknown.  

We see much of what develops through the eyes of the teen son, Joe, who has to cope with his mother developing an independent nature and re-discovering her sexuality, and this is a difficult situation to say the least.  Nobody really wants to think of their own mother as a sexual being, despite what Freud theorized, and Joe also has a front row seat to view events that he believes will cause the end of his parents' marriage.  I'd like to learn where this story came from, because it feels so personal that it must have been written by someone who experienced this situation, or something very similar. Ah, it's based on a 1990 novel by Richard Ford, only that doesn't tell me much.  This film was directed by Paul Dano (who appeared yesterday in "Okja") and he co-wrote the screenplay with his girlfriend, Zoe Kazan, but I'm not gaining much insight from that either. 

What I am feeling is some empathy with the father character, who makes that difficult decision to take a low-paying job, doing hard labor, and spend time apart from his family.  I'm under-employed myself right now, and while months ago I was combing through ads for full-time positions at CBS or Discovery Networks, by December I was applying for part-time holiday work at Barnes & Noble and the Lego Store.  I'm guessing this holiday season was a rough one for retail, because I never got one call back from any of my many applications.  Or maybe they're all looking for college-age part-timers and not an old worn-out trooper like me.  Anyway, the extra money I tucked away from my unemployment checks is all gone, and I'm starting to have to dip into savings again.  So I'm about at the stage where I'll take any part-time job, even menial labor, just to have a bit more spending money.  I'd apply at movie theaters, only the NYC theaters still haven't made plans to re-open.  There's a sign up at my local comic-book store looking for part-time workers, and I'm seriously considering it.  Who knows more about comic books than me?  Plus, how different could that be from working at a Comic-Con booth?  I have lots of experience with that.

It's a difficult choice, not only because it would be hard work and maybe long hours, but I'd also be out there in the world more, and right now that means potential exposure to COVID.  I think that's been holding me back - plus I'm trying to have some standards, taking a job at a fast food restaurant or at a coffee place kind of feels like giving up.  But i should remember that people are always going to need people to sweep floors, I'm just trying to not let it come to that. 

The father here felt an urgency to go fight wildfires - if I take that as a metaphor, the world is burning right now because of the pandemic.  Part of me thinks I should be out there doing something positive, like working as a contact tracer or volunteering at a food bank.  But again, that would put me at risk myself, so my solution so far has just been to hunker down at home four days a week and ride this out, hoping that my savings account can last a few more months and that the infection rates will start to go down sometime soon.  But then the news broke that even with the vaccine, Americans are getting vaccinated so slowly that at this rate it would take ten years to get it to 80% of the population so we can develop herd immunity.  That's unacceptable, I can't hide out at home for another year, let alone ten.  I've already gone stir crazy and grown frustrated with myself. 

Also starring Carey Mulligan (last seen in "Brothers"), Ed Oxenbould, Bill Camp (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Zoe Margaret Colletti, Darryl Cox (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Travis Bruyer, Mollie Milligan (last seen in "Super"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 family portraits