Going into the film, I had the impression that it was going to be about forest fires. Much like everyone, it’s difficult to not bring personal experiences into art when consuming them. Maybe an image will strike you as moving on the right day and never leave your soul. Maybe the opposite happens and one blasphemous experience can cause an actor to never look the same way again. There’s so much that makes art one of the greatest assets that humanity has, able to convey so much in a single image. What looks like something vanilla to one may unlock a deeper struggle inside of themselves.
For me, Wildlife (2018) was a difficult proposition for one reason. As the preview video played on Netflix, I listened to Carey Mulligan give this speech about how the ashes of a recently past fire destroyed the surroundings. There’s this idea that everything that stood on that scorched earth can never be brought back. Before even getting into the deeper symbolism, I was hesitant about this idea because I’ve grown increasingly anxious about fires. Part of the reason I love Manchester by the Sea (2016) is that it played into a very personal fear that I’ve always had. Fire as a construct is difficult to control and could spread faster than anyone could ever expect.
Having grown up in California, most of my adult life has featured annual “fire seasons.” Following a long period of droughts, there has been a nonstop concern every Fall that acres upon acres will go up in flames. I watch the news and discover these brave souls driving through fires to safety that look like they’re straight out of hell. San Francisco’s skyline was orange in 2020. Things got out of hand, and the idea that it started months earlier than normal and eviscerated a larger quotient of land only plays into my fear that it will one day reach my doorstep and I will have nowhere to go. So far I’ve only had to deal with ashes pouring from the sky, which even then the smell has a psychological impact on my day that isn’t pleasant.
In some respects, this isn’t crucial to appreciate Wildlife. Fire is more a piece of symbolism than something important to the plot. Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jerry Brinson is a firefighter sent to control one off in the distance. From town, the smoke can be seen. Compared to my own paranoia, it is quaint. It’s in part because the story focuses on the aftermath, where the burning fields now lay in ruin, tearing apart what was once there. You long to have that beauty back, to something comforting. As much as this doesn’t end in a literal fire tornado, it’s one whose indications all stem from the anxiety that a fire has on our senses, lingering in the distance. Maybe things will be fine. Maybe this will be the time when a freak accident sends the flames barreling down the street.
Once understanding that director Paul Dano’s real fire is Jeanette (Mulligan), it becomes clear what he’s going for. Gyllenhaal is absent for most of the story while Jeanette goes about her journey on a much different path. For her, the idea of family was set on fire years ago, her disaffection for being a great mother and wife begin to fall apart as son Joe (Ed Oxenbould) stares on. Their conversations become more candid, Jeanette’s perspective growing more melancholic as she fears growing older, more irrelevant. She can’t handle the life that she lives and opens up a bit too much to her son while dining out, believing that this raw honesty will somehow make him respect her more. After all, he is a teenager and can handle hearing these things.
The way that the film treats Jeanette and Joe’s story is fascinating for the simple fact that there’s not a whole lot of acknowledgment that Jerry will live or die. While there are those calls of concern, he becomes secondary, barely present in the family’s life. The closest that he becomes is when Jeanette shows Joe those blazing fields. While the fire is climbing up the nearby trees, it’s more a comment on the warmth, the sensation that overwhelms the senses. Does it comfort him? Jerry spends so much of the film sacrificing that it becomes clear that he’s maybe too loving of a quality home life.
The fire is destructive. Even as Jerry is surrounded by the flames, it’s unlikely that he feels the heat of his marriage about to crumble in the hands of a relationship with Warren Miller (Bill Camp). It’s the obstacle that would keep Jerry from moving to the next town to put out a fire, to have some form of stability. Jeanette holds the match waiting to drop it. Who cares if the world is destroyed? She thinks that she’s happier with Warren who has five businesses and a private plane. It doesn’t seem likely that he would have to work a day in his life again and still be fine. Jeanette fawns over him, feeling like from the ashes of a scorched earth marriage she can come back stronger, happier.
It’s to Mulligan’s credit that she provides a role that feels aimless, finding her exuberance only shining through when she believes that she’s found a new love. It’s a chance to return to youthful vitality and start anew. Even as Joe serves as a third wheel, she tries to deny the life she has in favor of something wilder, out of control, spreading throughout the town. It’s tragic, but one that has enough vulnerability inside to create some ambiguity. Is this all her fault? Is it some form of mental illness? Dano keeps it ambiguous enough where even if the marriage is ultimately at odds with itself, there’s no reason to totally discredit Jerry. If anything, he seems stable by how he symbolically tries to tame the flames of their marriage by putting out the fires of this town.
While this would be fine on its own, what I think gives the film an exceptional conclusion is how Dano paints the antithesis of a fire. Whereas most will be focused on what was lost, few will take time to actually preserve its memory. For Joe, who works at a photography business, he is used to the idea of capturing moments, allowing for a portal in a past that may be gone, destroyed either by natural disasters or emotional distress. Even then, it all captures a vision of something that’s once again interpretive. For Joe, it’s a chance to discover something hopeful in his family, who don’t get better as the story moves further along.
It is why ending the whole story with the family awkwardly sitting in a studio about to take that picture is ultimately the best way this story could go. Their fire may destroy so much more, especially if Jerry doesn’t keep control over the spreading heat. However, for Joe, it’s a chance to see his family as something greater: normal. This preserves a time when they were together, allowing him to see how they really were, seeing memories of a time when they could’ve been happy. In a broader sense, it's the one rare opportunity when his father isn’t out in the fields risking his life. Maybe the next mission will end horribly. It’s a good idea to take precautions while one can.
Having lived through 2020 and having weeks at a time where I’ve thought a lot about death, a film like Wildlife feels deceptively simple. There is no harrowing set-piece where a fire burns the town to a crisp. If you were anyone else in the town, there’s a good chance that this conflict would be a minor inconvenience. At worst you’d see Jeanette dressed up in her desperation dress and think she was acting a bit delusional. Nobody stops her, if just because it’s not their fire. It can spread wherever it likes. Meanwhile, Joe is helpless, born without the skill to stop her if just because of her rank seniority.
I’ve longed to have more photographs of moments, of people that I desperately want to see when this pandemic ends. I understand the emotional weight that these two poles of emotion ultimately carry because I’ve felt that in the past year. Some days are harder to have any hope that trying to tame the proverbial fire in your life is worth it, as if the love that’s actually there is absent. Are we insane for rejecting it? Dano really knows how to build characters from this, allowing them to grow through observation before breaking. The fact that they do this all in different ways only speaks to the attention and care to make these characters feel real.
At the end of the day, is Wildlife showing the audience a fire or a photograph? Maybe it’s a bit of both, capturing a moment that is sure to linger in everyone’s minds as they enter the next phase of their lives, allowing everything to be scorched to the ground. All that will exist is that heat wafting through the fields, creating a sensory memory that will hopefully only sting a little. For those other days, Joe has the photograph of what his family was, a gateway to the past. It’s imperfect, but it may be better than what lies ahead. So long as he preserves it, there is some good in everyone, remind him of what a family could be. We all could do with holding onto a piece of the past if just to remember the good that was there. Like art, it may mean something different to everyone, but hopefully it will still be meaningful.
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