Thanks to a seemingly non-existent publicity machine, the only moviegoers aware of Bill Pohlad’s terrific real-life drama Dreamin’ Wild may come down to a fairly narrow demographic: fans of Donnie and Joe Emerson’s 1979 private press album of the same name, and vinyl junkies on the mailing list for Light in the Attic, the record label that reissued the album. That’s too bad. Despite its narrow-casted subject matter, this story of thwarted aspirations and family sacrifice, bolstered by a gut-wrenching performance from Casey Affleck, is elevated from its highly specific niche to a universal appeal.
Initially set a little more than a decade ago, the film introduces us to middle-aged Donnie Emerson (Affleck) as a working musician in the Pacific Northwest. He plays the modest bar circuit, performing half-hearted cover songs with his wife Nancy (Zooey Deschanel). Donnie and his wife also operate a recording studio—of course, one that struggles to find clients. Donnie’s brother Joe (Walton Goggins) lives on the family farm with their father Don Sr. (Beau Bridges).
Donnie sometimes dreams of his teenage ambitions: those days in the ‘70s when the young aspiring rock star (Noah Jupe) and his less-talented brother (Jack Dylan Grazer) recorded original songs in the impressive home studio their father built for them. Don Sr. believed in his sons so much he risked financial ruin to back an album, Dreamin’ Wild, which was self-released in 1979 and forgotten for decades. One fateful day in 2012, an unexpected visitor showed up at the Emerson farm: Matt Sullivan (Chris Messina), who runs Light in the Attic Records.
It’s the kind of story you’d read about in, say, Pitchfork, whose enthusiastic review of the Dreamin’ Wild reissue in 2012 helped to rescue the Emersons from obscurity. But Dreamin’ Wild the movie isn’t just a true rock ‘n’ roll legend, it’s a moving story about family and America. And its success doesn’t rely on a viewer’s familiarity with the Emersons’ music. It just requires an openness to Affleck, who plumbs an emotional core so potent it will leave you in tears at least twice.
Casting Affleck and Bridges was a brilliant concept: both actors have brothers who have achieved a level of success beyond theirs, so they both seem like also-rans, a perfect resonance for a story of lost dreams. Affleck’s performance is particularly heartbreaking. When the Light in the Attic comes to tell the Emersons how much their music has meant to the world, Affleck speaks volumes without saying a word, his face subtly showing the strain of decades of disappointment and guilt that he didn’t live up to his father’s expectations.
Pohlad revisits some of the same musical roads he travelled with the Brian Wilson biopic Love and Mercy, which similarly observed a thwarted dream at two stages in his life. The difference is that Dreamin’ Wild is better integrated. For all its dabbling in seemingly cliched tropes like a starlit rural setting and the romance of the American highway, Pohlad and his cast hit the right notes at almost every moment. The family dynamic among the Emersons, their deep faith, the father’s sacrifice: it’s all the stuff of myth, and the cast brings all of this this unlikely story to life.
Even more, it’s to the filmmakers credit that not once does Dreamin’ Wild condescend to its flawed, private press source. In yet another harrowing emotional subplot, Donnie himself acknowledges his brother’s limitations as a musician-limitations that may be clear even to fans of the album. But as Donnie eventually recognizes, it’s that imperfection, that humanity, that makes their music—and the film— so personal and magical.
Dreamin’ Wild charts the kind of American dream that might have been the vision of Jonathan Demme, and maybe it’s perfectly apt that the movie has been released with so little fanfare. It’s just like what happened with Donnie and Joe. Let’s hope the film finds its audience.
Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions
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