Venice 2022: Dreamin’ Wild Review

Formula is meant to be broken. Not just the creation of music and its subsequent impact, but the profiling of it and experimentation in adapting the highs and lows of an artist. Dreamin’ Wild marks itself as a touching and intimate portrayal of Donnie Emerson, whose hit album Dreamin’ Wild didn’t mark itself out for success until it was three decades past its sell-by date. The unique style found in Love and Mercy is taken to once more by director Bill Pohlad, whose work here instigates a conversation on how success is judged not by merit but by pride and memory. If we are to repeat ourselves and the associations we have with moments, then we are doomed to never grow or move on. Pohlad discloses that in his discovery of great musicians, buried away in the farmlands of Washington, America. 

Music history can only survive if the new generation is at reasonable agreement with that which came before. Casey Affleck and Walton Goggins’ starring roles as Donnie and Joe Emerson understand that popularity does not live or die on quality but on interest. It is what sparked a real interest in the music of two young brothers rattling away tracks and producing their own music on a farm in the late 1970s. Listening to their only album together, Dreamin’ Wild, is as poetic as it is haunting. There lie the memories of young boys, and now they are men, the mixed emotions that come from a shock resurgence of popularity opens the door to the past and close off their expected futures. Goggins and Affleck are remarkable in displaying that, with a tender performance from Beau Bridges tying together the family dramatics.

That drama is presented well in a clash between present-day Affleck’s leading role and that of the past, where Emerson is portrayed by Noah Jupe, who enjoys a musically-charged performance that lingers longer on the people that influenced the album than the music itself. That musical rediscovery is reserved for the strong performance Affleck gives. Emerson is riddled with guilt not just because he failed to succeed but because he feels he failed the family that had such faith in his gift. Pohlad understands not just that music is a deeply emotional piece that can shape our understanding of our own lives, but that it can be an electric bolt of wild passions and inspiration that does not guarantee success, security or love. It is why pain is provided so often through Affleck’s performance, and why Zooey Deschanel’s supporting role here is so strong.

We never really lose the love we have connected to places or memories. It is why Emerson finds it so tough to get back into the groove of his early music throughout Dreamin’ Wild. It was written for someone else, someone that was lost somewhere down the line. When exactly is unsure, as some of the details Pohlad provides are blurry or all but forgotten, as Goggins’ character work often is. But what Pohlad and Affleck by extension are sure of, is that music associated with a time, period or person, is not something that can be undone. These tracks, as beautiful as they are, can now be heard laced with tragedy and discomfort. Dreamin’ Wild is too. A collection of harsh words and the fear of success comes to a head as artists who waited so long for their success are thrown into the spotlight when they had accepted failure was their destiny. Success from failure, followed by a failure to accept success. It is an artist receiving his reward for hard work and realising the consequences of it at the time would have been disastrous, if a little open-ended and mysterious.