- Dreamin’ Wild
- Directed by Bill Pohlad
- Written by Bill Pohlad (based on the essay Fruitland, by Steven Kurutz)
- Starring Casey Affleck, Zooey Deschanel, Walton Goggins and Noah Jupe
- Classification PG; 110 minutes
- Opens Aug. 25
In a 2021 Daily Beast opinion piece about Casey Affleck and a pair of old, settled sexual harassment lawsuits against him, writer Cheyenne Roundtree argued that the actor had been given free passage on the road to redemption. “Affleck,” she wrote, “has been allowed to come across as an insightful, brooding artist on a journey of self-discovery and on the precipice of reclaiming his delayed stardom.”
Two years later, he stars in Dreamin’ Wild, a sombre, sentimental bio-drama about second chances. Affleck plays real-life musician Donnie Emerson, portrayed as an insightful, brooding artist on a journey of self-discovery and on the precipice of attaining his delayed stardom.
Not only does art imitate life, it tells ironic jokes.
Dreamin’ Wild is written, directed and produced by Bill Pohlad, who previously directed the 2014 Brian Wilson biopic, Love & Mercy. Here he has based his screenplay on Steven Kurutz’s essay about two farm-raised teenage brothers (Donnie and Joe Emerson) who released the funky rock album Dreamin’ Wild in 1979 to absolutely no acclaim.
Possibly the self-released LP was passed over as soon as radio programmers looked at the album cover: two boys from rural Washington dressed in flagrantly wing-collared white jumpsuits – the outrageous love children of Marie Osmond and Elvis.
Nearly 30 years later, however, the chance discovery of a copy of Dreamin’ Wild in an antique store by a record collector eventually led to the “lost” album’s re-release by the revivalist label Light in the Attic Records in 2012.
That feelgood story of a long dormant musical dream finally realized was enough to earn major press attention, but is it enough for a feature-length film? Probably not, which is why writer-director Pohlad piled on the melodrama and leaned into clichés.
The Emerson family is portrayed as simple farm folk sheltered from modernity. They do not watch television and have no internet. When told online music magazine Pitchfork had awarded the reissued album an eight-out-of-10 rating – the reviewer called it a “godlike symphony to teenhood” – the father wonders, “Is that good?”
The father, played by Beau Bridges, was no aw-shucks rube in real life, though. He arranged for the building of a modern recording studio for his boys on the grounds of the farm.
He also literally bet the farm on their music – and lost. Unable to pay off the loans that financed the musical pipe dreams of his sons, the family lost more than 1,500 of the farm’s 1,700 acres to the bank. That sacrifice weighs heavily on the conscience of Donnie, the melodically gifted half of the sibling duo, played by Affleck as an unshaven, guilt-ridden man who wears flannel like a coat of emotional armour.
He is jaded. When approached by a record label man (Chris Messina) about the relaunching of his and his brother’s music career, he wants to know, “What’s that gonna cost us?” Told it will not cost him a cent, he is suspect: “We’ve been promised things before, and we were left holding the bag.”
It is a typical role for Affleck, who won an Academy Award as an irritable loner in 2016′s Manchester by the Sea. Memorably, he was the awkward coward in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford opposite Brad Pitt’s extroverted outlaw.
Dreamin’ Wild as a whole is subdued, sleepily told with help of seventies flashbacks. Noah Jupe (Ford v Ferrari and Honey Boy) plays teenage Donnie. An ebullient dreamer in his youth, he is morose as an adult.
The character of his older brother, the trying but untalented drummer Joe, is capably handled by Walton Goggins. The script does not pay serious attention to him.
And while the film’s star is obviously Affleck, the soul is the veteran Bridges, so often in the shadow of his more successful actor brother Jeff Bridges. Beau would understand the plight of Affleck, brother of Ben/Batman. Stardom is a funny thing; its timelines are unpredictable.
Brad Wheeler