We watched a very strange movie called Wakefield on Friday, based on a story by E. L. Doctorow. It stars Bryan Cranston and Jennifer Garner as a couple with issues. Cranston is a Manhattan lawyer who is delayed getting home after work one day, chases a raccoon into the detached garage facing their house, and ends up deciding to spend the night in the attic, from which he can surveil his family, which also includes teenage twins who don’t have much use for dear old dad any more.
When morning comes, he realizes how difficult it will be to explain his decision to camp out in the garage, so he decides to stay there longer. And longer, and longer. Days stretch into weeks stretch into months, as his situation becomes more and more untenable in terms of explaining his behavior. He becomes in effect homeless, looking somewhat like Tom Hanks from Cast Away and behaving like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. He eats food he finds in the trash, battles with Russians over the choicer bits of things people throw away, befriends a couple of special needs children who live across the fence from them, and basically checks out from society. Is it a nervous breakdown? I guess you could make that argument. The more we learn about Wakefield, the less we like him. We learn how unfair he was to his best friend and how duplicitous and controlling he was toward the woman who would become his wife. Only Cranston can make us go along for the ride, because this is another version of Walter White. I envisioned him claiming a fugue state and showing up naked in a convenience store to work his way out of his dilemma. How do you resolve such a situation? Will your family rejoice at his return after so long or will they hate him for what he put them through? An interesting question, isn’t it. The answer, alas…
On Saturday night, we listened to the Blue Grooves playing a free concert at the waterway park and then saw Wonder Woman, which is every bit as good as everyone is saying. There is the origin story part of the movie, featuring Robin Penn Wright as a fearsome Amazon general, and then there’s the part of the film where Gal Gadot’s character truly becomes Wonder Woman, and then there’s the final conflict. All well handled, though I might like fewer Matrix-y conflict scenes in favor of more natural (as natural as superheroes and demigods can be) battles. A good turn for David Thewlis, currently chewing up the scenery in Fargo. The movie works well for us in part because it has zero reliance on any other part of the D.C. universe. Even if you didn’t know who Bruce Wayne was, it works. And the fact that it’s set against the backdrop of a conflict everyone knows and more-or-less understands is so much the better.
Alas, I have fewer kind words to say about Season 3 of Bloodline (Netflix original). This is a Florida family drama that hinges on an incident from the childhood of the Rayburn children in which they were coerced into lying to the police (and everyone else) about how brother Danny was injured on the day their sister drowned. That lie, which they have to continue to live, is poison to the family, and it culminates in a Biblical reckoning at the end of Season 1. The truth is that the Rayburns are not nice people, external appearances notwithstanding. Danny took a dark path, Kevin is a lazy screw-up, and John is so tightly wound that he has never been able to enjoy any of the good things in his life. Sister Meg has gotten away from the toxic environment on occasion, but she keeps getting sucked back in.
So it’s not the easiest of shows to watch, as the Rayburns continue to do self-destructive and damaging things and then have to pile lie upon lie to cover up. The murder that ended season 2 propels Season 3 up to a point, but then, nine episodes in out of ten, they decide to pretend the show is Twin Peaks. A solid hour of baffling storytelling. They make poor use of some of the supporting cast (John’s wife, for example). Not to mention the fact that there’s this character played by John Leguizamo who wanders around like the purveyor of doom, making gloomy predictions and dire threats, only to have the character expunged from the story without anything coming of it. Mystifying. I would have been happy if the final season had ended with the rather jarring incident at the end of episode 8, although it would have been a shame to miss Sissy Spacek’s show-stopping rant in the final episode. And then there’s that ending. Hmmmm. Shame, really. Good actors doing good work, poorly served by the story.
