Lightning strikes twice for filmmaker Bill Pohlad in his sophomore feature “Dreamin’ Wild.” The producer-turned-writer-director follows up the promise of his bifurcated Brian Wilson biopic “Love & Mercy” with another moving tale of personal and artistic redemption. His recounting of Donnie and Joe Emerson’s resurgence over three decades after the release of their only album captures not just musicians but also something of the quality of the music itself. Pohlad’s film is a harmonious composition that blends an impressionistic style with humanistic storytelling.
“Dreamin’ Wild” amounts to more than just a rejoinder to stale music biopic conventions, in part because it never so much as nods to the Wikipedia-styled films dominating the landscape. Pohlad deals in people, not legacies or iconographies. He’s rooted in hardscrabble humanity rather than the heightened stakes of hagiography, and this keeps the film from indulging in overblown stakes or personalities.
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Pohlad neither assumes nor constantly shouts the greatness of his subjects throughout “Dreamin’ Wild.” He teases out the eclectic stylings of the brothers’ titular 1979 album and lets the music exert its gravitational pull. The hardest people to convince of the Emersons’ brilliance may be the brothers themselves, who are incredulous when reissue label owner Matt Sullivan (Chris Messina) shows up at their family farm in Washington state.
The Emerson brothers cannot believe that their only album has finally found its rightful audience over thirty years later, especially because their teenage dreams of a career in the industry have long since set sail. Donnie (Casey Affleck) now deploys his melodic skills as a wedding singer and recording studio operator with his wife, Nancy (Zooey Deschanel). Joe (Walton Goggins) traded in musical instruments altogether for farm tools. After such extended disappointment, the journey to even accept that they are worthy of love – much less receive it – is a long one.
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With record sales and reviews alike indicating a wider resonance for their music, the brothers decide to tentatively prepare for a reunion concert and potential new recordings. Picking up where they left off is not so simple, though not for the traditional reasons musical groups fizzle. Where the Emersons diverge fundamentally is their path forward. Joe, who’s become pious in lamentation for lost love and opportunities, sees the group’s rebirth as a chance to reclaim an Edenic past. But Donnie, the brother with more natural talent who tried to strike out on his own, wants to use the second chance to take another shot at the music career he didn’t get to have.
Pohlad captures this tension between competing visions not just thematically but also visually. The evocative, widely varying imagery and montages of “Dreamin’ Wild” drift lyrically across time. The present-day incarnations of Donnie and Joe intermingle among their younger selves, portrayed respectively by Noah Jupe and Jack Dylan Grazer, with increasing frequency and literalness. The film’s manifestation of memory is much like music, cutting across time and through the characters’ emotional defenses. The remembrance proves an especially poignant force for Donnie, who has let his recollection of the past fade slightly rather than forgetting it altogether.
Guilt, rather than genius, binds the Emersons together as they plot their improbable reemergence. The comeback tests them, reviving old rivalries as it exposes new fissures. But “Dreamin’ Wild” does not bog itself down in the conflicts so much that it loses sight of the miracle of their resurgence in the first place. Pohlad’s film is one of gracefulness, extolling the virtues of resilience and faith above all else. These traits of the Emersons are as intrinsic and important to the artist process as confidence and craft.
While Pohlad might beatify the Emersons, the performances never yield to any simplistic sense of sainthood. Affleck, in particular, stands out as the film’s most interior character; his Donnie plays like a much less openly tormented riff on his Oscar-winning turn in “Manchester by the Sea.” But for everyone in “Dreamin’ Wild,” the light rather than the darkness feels like the entry point into the characters. It’s a balm for the soul without ever veering into cheesiness.
The film’s final turn reveals Pohlad’s hand as something of an advocate for the Emersons rather than a mere passive chronicler of their second act. “Dreamin’ Wild” genuflects before its subjects and cedes its platform to allow them a chance to finish the story on their own terms. But abandoning some misplaced sense of put-on impartiality serves the film well, allowing Pohlad’s tale of redemption and release to speak directly to its spiritual and sentimental undercurrents. It’s a soothing, sincere tune that puts a pep in the step and a song in the soul. [B+]
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