"Marriage is like a walled city, people outside the city want to come in, people in the city want to go out" is a phrase we are all familiar with. But in real life, it is easy to "go into the city", but it is difficult to "go out of the city", because there is still a product born in the siege of marriage, that is, children. The film "Wild Life" is from the perspective of a child, to show a story of a siege collapsing in silence.
At the beginning of the movie, we see a typical American family, the father works actively and hard, the son studies seriously, and the mother is full-time at home to teach her husband and son, which is very happy and happy. Then the father lost his job, but even so, the mother did not feel the slightest irritation, but encouraged the father to find a job.
However, the picture of happiness stops there, and the next thing we see is how the family breaks down step by step in peace, and finally falls apart in silence.
The movie "Wild Life" is not "wild" at all, and the whole movie is particularly calm against the background of the beauty of Montana, but this is also a metaphor for the family in the film, which seems to be calm and beautiful, but there is a crazy fire burning.
The family in this movie, Jerry as a husband and Janet as a mother, seem to be affectionate and loving, but in fact, from Janet's dialogue with the school teacher, we can vaguely hear the potential contradictions of this family. Husbands continue to move from state to state in order to live comfortably, and wives can only choose to obey and follow their husbands again and again.
We all know that running a family is actually the same as doing business, which requires constant mutual tolerance and compromise between two people, but when this situation becomes a person in the family who blindly compromises with the other person, then the foundation that supports the family will be shaken, and in most cases, the family will eventually break down.
When the film shows the breakdown of Jerry's family, it is not shown through the perspective of the water and fire between Jerry and Janet, but through the perspective of the third party in the family, the child Joe.
As a 14-year-old boy, from his point of view of the things between his parents, it is always a confused attitude, he does not understand why his father insists on becoming a firefighter, do not understand why his mother is so close to another man, he will only ask over and over again: "Do you still love daddy?" In fact, this confusion in the eyes of children reflects the confusion in the hearts of parents.
The film, with its slow pace, restrained cameras, warm tones, and delicate performances, dramatically represents the disintegration of an ordinary family. Together with Joe, we witnessed the breakdown of a family, and in the end, knowing that everything was irreparable, Joe still pulled his parents together and took a family portrait.
From the expressions of the three people in the final family portrait, we can see that the parents have actually abandoned the family in their hearts, and only the children are still trying to protect this "home" with an illusion.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > viewing path: interactive platform - home - on-demand theater line</h1>