Wakefield

Bryan Cranston plays a husband and father who experiences an existential crisis one night on his way home from work, and decides the best response is to hide in the attic above the garage. For months. Without telling anyone. Spy on his wife (Jennifer Garner) and their two daughters. Rummage through garbage cans. Again, for months.

I think he might be a psychopath, because everything revolves around him and what he feels, without seemingly any awareness of the fact he did this to himself. He complains to himself about their going on their annual vacation to the Cape, while he is impoverished. But he's the one who decided to live in a damn attic and shit in a bucket!

I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to feel for this guy. Am I supposed to feel contempt for a man so selfish who tries to cloak it in some nobility? Pity, for a guy who was so dissatisfied with the life he had he decided to step off-stage? There's a point he seems to have an epiphany about how much of the unhappiness in his life was self-inflicted by his own weaknesses. But in no time at all, he's right back to the same self-aggrandizing internal narration. Framing his decision to stay away - which is really because he's afraid of the response he'll receive and resuming his old responsibilities - as self great sacrifice on his part for the sake of his family.

The movie is a hair under and 1 hour and 50 minutes. I'd say it's 20 minutes too long, because that was the point where I officially hit my limit with his bullshit. At that point I wanted the farce to end in any fashion that took away his agency. His wife catches him rooting through the trash. Those scrap-hunting Russians run him over in their truck. He gets West Nile while being devoured alive by mosquitoes when he sleeps near the lake. Whatever. Catch him in the act, like those scenes with someone trying to escape prison and getting frozen in the spotlight, and then watch him try to squirm his way out.

I don't know if I would recommend it. Probably not.