Educator and Film Philosopher Chad E. Harris will introduce the film and lead a discussion following the screening on July 18.

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As much as we feel uncertainty about our lives, there are filmmaking conventions that evade that feeling with those of control and stable comfort. With his direction, Paul Dano foregoes that evasion with, yes, a stable hand, but one that allows uncertainty to bear itself out through time and perspective. Based on Richard Ford’s 1990 novel, Wildlife is about a young man in 1960s Montana who, while a wildfire threatens doom in the distance, feels his domestic sense of comfort doomed by his parents’ uncertain marital future—a familiar story (the domestic portion, at least). But in making choices that render the certainty of perspective in storytelling less sure-footed and, thus, the measurement of time less of a predetermined conclusion, Dano and his team make ordinary uncertainty cinematically pleasurable and, consequently, something to savor and ponder. ~ Chad E. Harris

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