ED OXENBOULD UNPACKS FAMILY DRAMA IN 'WILDLIFE'

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The poster of the new film Wildlife pictures a disgruntled couple sitting for an awkward family photograph. With their hands folded and eyes glaring at one another, it’s clear the two are suffering from marital problems. What’s not so apparent is the point of view of Joe, their teenage son played by Ed Oxenbould, who we learn later is taking the photograph. While it’s not uncommon for leading roles to be left off the film poster, this absence feels intentional: The story of Wildlife, based on the novel by Richard Ford, traces a nuclear family falling apart through the eyes of a young, innocent boy who is clueless to the complications of married life. Set in Sixties Montana, the film follows a father (Jake Gyllenhaal) losing his job and a mother (Carey Mulligan) trying to support him the best she can, knowing very well she may have made a mistake both in marrying him and marrying so young.

Joe is the unobserved observer, saying little that divulges his actual thoughts and feelings. But his wordless reactions and ponderous expressions betray his innocence, now rare to find among internet-obsessed teenagers in the age of interconnectivity. That doesn’t mean the story isn’t relevant to 2018. Joe’s parents suffer from what many baby boomers perhaps had to deal with: being forced to forge an identity in coupledom, within the confines of picket fences and heteronormativity. Be that as it may, Joe gets entwined with his parents’ yelling matches and exhibitions of bravado at an age far too young to pass judgment on their parenting, let alone pick a side based on logic. Joe often looks at his mother, then his father, then back at his mother, disarmed and without the vocabulary to make sense of it all.

However, Oxenbould’s own coming-of-age story couldn’t be more opposite to Joe’s. The young actor grew up on film sets, with parents who’ve always been in the industry. “I’ve been acting since I was eleven,” says the Australian. “My upbringing was very different to Joe’s slow kind of life—I’ve got a very lucky one.” Oxenbould, now seventeen years old, got his start playing Julian Assange as a nine-year-old boy in the Australian short film “Julian,” a role that landed him a nomination for Best Young Actor at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards in 2013. The next year, he starred in the title role in the Disney film Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day alongside Steve Carrell and Jennifer Garner.

Oxenbould, who speaks with a commanding tone mature beyond his years, seems unlikely to play the role of naïve American. But after watching the film, you get the sense Paul Dano, the actor-turned-director of Wildlife, cast Oxenbould for his thoughtfulness and collaborative nature. (Oxenbould is, after all, much closer in age than Dano to Joe.)

Subtle yet intense, Wildlife is also the directorial debut of Dano, who co-wrote the film with his longtime partner Zoe Kazan. “It was definitely a different dynamic, especially for Paul because he started acting when he was about my age now,” says Oxenbould. “You can tell he was trying to figure out what his seventeen-year-old self would’ve liked to hear. We had formed a great bond where we knew exactly what the other was talking about.”

The actor-to-actor language is especially clear in their creative process. Before filming, the actors essentially played house in Montana, fast-forwarding family time into just a few long days of immersive emotional upheaval. “We had notebooks and pens and we wrote down our personal experiences and then talked about them,” recalls Oxenbould. “It was really different than anything I had experienced and it was a little bit shocking telling secrets to people I had just met, but it really got us comfortable around each other.”

The concepts of “normal” and “average” perhaps fall into the unknown for both Oxenbould and Dano, whose own experiences are far from Joe’s, making the subject of family ripe for investigating as actors as well as directors. But if there’s anything the making of this film (Dano’s passion project, if you will) proves, it’s that family can be formed from strangers given enough time, space, and a willingness to unlock enough intimacy that people listen to what’s not being said. Therein lies the everlasting, universal appeal of movies about family dramas. In the context of today’s trauma, which is often lived out openly and publicly, it’s humbling to see a film slow down and distill that turmoil at a nuclear level. As for Oxenbould? It appears he has found family among Hollywood’s most independent storytellers. “I think eventually I’d like to do what Paul did, which was write a film about a book he really loves with his partner and make this incredibly beautiful film,” he says. “I think that seems like the ideal thing to do.”

Wildlife is out now.