Dreamin’ Wild: Real-Life Story of Belated Musical Success Finds Focus with Family
By Karen Gordon
Rating: B-
Dreamin’ Wild is the kind of story that would be unbelievable if it wasn’t true.
In 1979, teen brothers Donnie and Joe Emerson recorded and self-produced an album of pop songs written by Donnie, in the state-of-the-art studio their father built for them on the family’s farm in Fruitland, Washington. They released Dreamin’ Wild on their own label. It went nowhere.
Flash forward to 2008. A collector discovers the record in a bin in an antique shop and begins to rave about it. Buzz begets buzz and Matt Sullivan of Light in The Attic records tracks the Emersons down, making a deal to release the record. After almost 30 years, it takes off.
Dreamin’ Wild, the movie, looks at the effect this had on the family, Donnie in particular. It’s a quiet, thoughtful movie that aims to be sensitive to the family, while plumbing some of the darker feelings that this late success wrought.
That thoughtfulness is both an asset and a liability. It makes the film more complex, but it also slows it down and flattens it. Part of that is the film's structure which uses flashbacks to give us the full story.
We meet the teenage Donnie (Noah Jupe) working on writing his songs, and his brother Joe (Jack Dylan Grazer) playing drums. They are supported by their father Don Sr. (Beau Bridges), a modest man with no sense of the larger world of the music business, but who sees and admires his sons’ focus and commitment. He believes his boys have talent.
By the time we meet the grown-up family in 2008, Donnie (Casey Affleck) has married his high school sweetheart Nancy (Zooey Deschanel) and the two have a family. They run a small, struggling recording studio and play music at restaurants and clubs in the area by night. Joe (Walton Goggins) is a quiet man who built a house on the family’s property and works on the farm. The drum kit is still set up, but we get the sense that it's more of a relic.
None of the Emersons are quite prepared for what happens when the Light in the Attic exec (Chris Messing) tracks them down and wants to meet. He fills them in on what is happening with their music and offers to reissue the album.
The movie is written and directed by industry veteran Bill Pohlad (based on a New York Times article by Steven Kurutz). Pohlad has a remarkable list of credits as a producer and executive producer. He’s worked on acclaimed movies including 12 Years a Slave, Brokeback Mountain, Tree of Life; movies that deal with the complexities of relationships, and both the dark and the lighter sides of human nature.
These things also interest him as a director. Dreamin’ Wild is the third movie he’s directed and the first both written and directed. Although the framework of the story here is positive — a story of a redemption and the validation of the family’s belief in Donnie’s inherent talent — Pohlad has built something more complex, focusing on the funk that settles on Donnie.
What other people seem to be able to accept and celebrate drives Donnie into a well of more complicated feelings. It’s a more interesting way to go: working out what this late success means to someone who probably had given in to the idea that they were never going to achieve their big dream.
The bitterness that Donnie has been holding in starts to come up again, along with shame and guilt for what his passion cost the family. At times, the movie slips into sentimentality.
What helps mightily is the cast. Affleck is brooding, but he’s the kind of actor who is good at playing characters who are holding back a tide of inner turmoil. Goggins makes the almost inarticulate Joe a gentle, undemanding human. And the rest of the cast adds to the sense that this is very much a family prepared to ride out anything bad.
Pohlad has the actors do the singing in the film, but then ends it with the real Donnie, Nancy, and Joe performing. There are times when this might add a layer of corniness to the film but it works here. Donnie has a terrific voice. He’s the real deal. And hearing him sing ends the movie on a sweet note.
Dreamin’ Wild. Written and directed by Bill Pohlad. Starring Casey Affleck, Walton Goggins, Noah Jupe, Jack Dylan Grazer, Zooey Deschanel, and Beau Bridges. In theatres August 25.