The story of a man who traveled somewhere in order to find out who he really was all along.
It truly breaks my heart at the way Wakefield has been treated. The film was greeted with a warm reception on the festival circuit, with critics praising the script, stars, and virtually every other aspect of writer/director Robin Swicord’s stunning drama. Yet the film was saddled with a curious May release where it was all but forgotten about after its trailer debut before coming out months later on home video. I’m almost certain that Wakefield will likewise be nothing but a memory come awards season, although the list of accolades it deserves is endless. What’s even sadder is that there will be loads more audiences who will go on unaware that Wakefield offers up one of life’s ultimate universal questions and answers it in one of the most stunning ways possible.
For 50-year old Howard Wakefield (Bryan Cranston), life as successful New York businessman has left him feeling empty. Despite a life many would envy, Howard finds himself suffocating from the maddening aspects of his day-to-day. One evening when approaching his home, Howard decides to instead to go into the upstairs attic above the garage, where he spends months observing his wife Diana (Jennifer Garner) as she tries to manage a life without him while he contemplates the man he was really meant to be.
On the one hand, Wakefield is about a man questioning the life he made and the marriage he is partly responsible for. The pondering begins almost instantly as Wakefield opens with such a beautiful look and feel, illustrating the monotony of daily city working life and how it has worn Howard down. Not long after, the film focuses on Howard and Diana’s relationship and presents a telling portrait of a marriage that has come to an impasse. Yet this is a marriage that still has love within it, despite what it has taken out of both individuals. Even though we somewhat understand Howard’s impulse to escape, there is something sadistic about the way he is enjoying seeing Diana worry about his disappearance, which is broken by how taken aback he finds himself getting at the sight of her. In watching Diana from afar, Howard gets to discover her as a person all over again and begins to know her in a way he never had before through the longing strolls she takes in their backyard and the worried looks she displays from the kitchen window when she thinks no one is looking.
Eventually, the glee Howard displays at watching everyone react to his vanishing act is less of a sadistic turn as much as it is a reaction to all the rage, anger, and despair that came from living the kind of life he had. Yet at the same time, Howard can’t help but mourn what he’s missing, no matter how much he tries to fight it. As the film goes deeper, Wakefield becomes a tale about a man questioning his very existence on earth. Although this is fundamentally a story about a mid-life crisis, it is one that dares to ask: If this kind of existence is no longer enough all of a sudden, then in the end, what kind is? Wakefield proves itself to be an excellent comment on self-evaluation. We see this as Howard recalls his lost potential resulting from a feeling that the life he lived, and mostly enjoyed, was never truly deserved. “Who hasn’t had the impulse to put their life on hold for a moment; just vanish completely,” he asks himself at one point, referring to not just abandoning his day to day, but the person he let himself become. “I never left my family,” Howard states later on. “I left myself.” In spite of all of this, there’s a steadfast sense of fight within the film’s main character, which drives his initial decision, the strength to continue it, and the film’s ultimate outcome.
Both of the film’s leads are explosive in their scenes together as each one brings their characters’ complicated, compromised marriage to life. Alone, both Cranston and Garner essentially find themselves as solo acts with both turning in forceful performances through their characters’ respective journeys and struggles. It’s a testament to their own strengths as actors that they can command attention in scenes with no one else around. Wakefield may not be their greatest work by any means, but it definitely features some of their most accomplished.
On many levels, Wakefield functions as a more deep and thoughtful take on It’s a Wonderful Life, retaining many of the classic’s themes and exploring them with such affection and passion. With source material coming from the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne and E.L. Doctrow, the film has such an incredibly literary feel to it which is bolstered through its cinematography, music, and especially in Cranston’s perfect narration. There’s a slight surreal dreaminess that’s achieved by stunning visuals intercut with flashbacks, all of which speak to the state of Howard’s mind, and the many images, memories, and fantasies he’s simultaneously experiencing. Best of all is how Wakefield succeeds by being endlessly contemplative without once coming off as standard or predictable. Some will no doubt find the film’s ending to feel like a bit of a cop out, but Wakefield is not about the ending, but rather the journey getting there as well as the experience of it all and how it touches those who see it.
Wakefield is now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Shout! Factory.
