Writer-director Bill Pohlad’s Dreamin’ Wild movingly dramatizes the real-life story of Donnie (Casey Affleck) and Joe Emerson (Walton Goggins), two unassuming, blue-collar brothers from Fruitland, Washington, and their winding road to success. In 1979, the teenaged Emersons recorded the titular album in a studio built by their supportive father, Don Sr. (Beau Bridges). It was quickly forgotten, but in the early 2010s, after the rediscovery of the LP in an antique store, the brothers become underground cult heroes.
Pohlad is uninterested in turning the film into a checklist of the escalating milestones and setbacks in the Emerson brothers’ history, as evidenced by the fact that we mostly get a sense of these events via offhand comments and off-screen background chatter. And yet, we still get a profound sense of how those events shape the experiences of the Emerson brothers.
That much is clear from a number of wonderfully crafted moments, most notably an early scene in which Matt Sullivan (Chris Messina), owner of a boutique record label, visits the Emerson family and expresses his desire to reissue the brothers’ album. As Sullivan and the Emersons are heard off screen discussing the cult following that the album has attracted, the camera focuses at length on a silent Donnie growing visibly uncomfortable as he takes in the news.
While it’s initially unclear why Donnie feels that way, Pohlad’s screenplay steadily reveals the various causes via its conspicuously non-chronological structure. Throughout this elegiac but easygoing work, events from the present are intercut with those from the past, when Donnie (Noah Jupe) and Joe (Jack Dylan Grazer) first recorded their album.
This approach isn’t new for Pohlad, as his Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy also utilized intertwining storylines from separate eras in the career of the Beach Boy. But where that film’s crosscutting between past and present and use of different actors to portray Wilson appeared like a self-consciously gimmicky attempt to elevate an otherwise generic, straightforward recap of Wilson’s life, the filmmaker has a better feel for narrative structuring in Dreamin’ Wild.
Pohlad isn’t trying to feed audiences the simple logic of cause and effect, as he and his actors truly grapple with the interplay between the past and present throughout the film. The way that Donnie was occasionally demanding and controlling around Joe during their younger years informs and offers context on the mindset of the former as an adult. In this sense, Pohlad ruminatively articulates that the rediscovery of the Emersons’ LP also means that Donnie’s unresolved feelings, like regret over his past actions, resurface along with it.
The elegantly underplayed performances also ensure that Dreamin’ Wild never succumbs to melodrama, especially in a couple of late scenes where the characters give voice to long-repressed feelings. While the film’s dialogue makes clear how characters are moving toward epiphanies and admissions of guilt, the performances by Affleck, Bridges, and Goggins make that journey feel affecting and deeply restrained, adding an extra layer of poignancy to the film.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
