Wildlife

A husband (Jake Gyllenhaal) who deals with failure by running from it physically. A wife (Carey Mulligan) who deals with that by running from it emotionally. And their 14-year old son (Ed Oxenbould) is left to just deal with it.

That's basically the movie. Jerry loses his job, and decides to go help fight a wildfire. Jeanette takes a part-time job, but then starts wooing one of her swim class students, an older, successful car dealership owner. Joe is left trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Jeanette seems like she keeps looking to him for the emotional support she wants from Jerry, but Joe doesn't understand enough to offer it. Or maybe she just wants his approval of what she's doing.

She just talks to Joe in a very odd way sometimes. Like she's looking at him, but seeing something entirely different from the reality. Jerry maybe, even though Joe doesn't look a damn thing like his father. It's definitely clear that once Jerry is gone, she has wordlessly decided Joe is in Jerry's role in the house. He's on his own as far as getting to school, or getting food, or anything really. Mulligan's playing someone who decided that if her husband can just abandon all responsibilities, then so can she. Second adolescence. It's just that she's still there for Joe to see.

Oxenbould has this cautious, confused expression most of the time. He's used to the family moving around on Jerry's whims and frustrations, and I think he's trying to figure out why things are different this time. I think he's also used to his parents trying to use him to live out their lives, and that's why he kind of silently bears up to all this. The movie makes these hesitant steps of him developing a friendship with a girl in his class named Ruth, but we only see bits and pieces. I don't know if it's under-developed because it's supposed to be, a friendship that gets sacrificed on the altar of Joe trying to be the adult, or if the writers and director just kind of fucked that part up.

Gyllenhaal carries this hunched over, exhausted air constantly. We never see him while he's out fighting the fires, so there's no telling if he found something he needed out there. He's still awkward and quick to anger when he comes back, quick to point fingers at other people to deflect attention from his failures.

The main thing the movie did was make me grateful my parents managed the gradual dissolution of their marriage during my teen years as well as they did. Which is saying something, considering how hard they tried to demonstrate how to live in two different houses, while actually occupying the same house.