Post by StevePulaski on Mar 12, 2017 13:20:17 GMT -5
Wolves (2017)
Directed by: Bart Freundlich
Directed by: Bart Freundlich
From left: Taylor John Smith, Michael Shannon, and Chris Bauer in Wolves.
Rating: ★★★½
Wolves is a melting pot of malleable male masculinity embodied by three different characters in situations that have a domino effect on one another. The main character is Anthony Keller, played by Taylor John Smith, a prep school basketball prodigy who is looking to take his talents to Cornell per a lofty academic scholarship. Scouts are always present at his games and are in awe at his consistency with confidence that he could move all the way up to the NBA. Anthony walks a tight rope of trying to remain healthy and able enough to perform at this incredible level while handling his troublesome homelife, feeling judged or abandoned by his support system with the slightest revelation to the people in the stands that he is indeed human.
His father is Lee Keller, played by the always excellent Michael Shannon, a college professor with a drinking and gambling problem. Lee is in debt to numerous local-area bookies, who stalk him at bars and even his classroom. He is accompanied by his brother Charlie (Chris Bauer), who is usually present to make sure Lee gets himself home after one too many glasses of Stoli on the rocks. Lee values what little authority he has over Anthony in a situation where his wife Jenny (Carla Gugino) is often at the mercy of his addiction but could probably rid her hands of him quite easily. When Lee interrupts dinner to teach Anthony how to properly guard someone in the heat of the moment, Lee takes no blame for fully executing his trick, uppercutting Anthony in the nose to the point where his face begins to swell. Writing circles around the novel he's been working on for years and doing little else besides contradicting himself during his lectures, he's a middle-aged man with almost nothing to show for in life.
Finally, there's a former professional basketball player known as "Socrates," played by John Douglas Thompson, whom Anthony meets one day while playing a competitive game of basketball in the park. Socrates is rumored to be a former player with the Brooklyn Nets but nobody really knows for sure. He plays a competitive, remorseless game. "I ain't helpin' your ass up," he tells Anthony after he falls out of bounds and reaches for Socrates' hand as he approaches. While we don't see Socrates as much as the other characters, we see that he is just as fearful of the rest of them. His prime has already passed and now he's faced with a prodigy, someone he fears will wind up being in the same place he currently is, with little else besides memories and a few moments in the sun. He's as fragile as the rest of them.
Wolves takes the dichotomous narratives of a gritty family drama and crowd-pleasing sports action and weaves them together to create a film that functions well and captivates the viewer. It treads on great acting from very conflicted characters, including a Michael Shannon performance that isn't simply a role of great authority. Here, Shannon plays someone who thinks he has some kind of authority; in his own mind, he's in control. But to any outsider, be it his son, his wife, or the patrons at the bar trying to have a beer while he curses over a college basketball game he bet the house on, he's just as lost and as powerless as the rest of us. Shannon handles his role tremendously, something I never get tired of saying nor seeing.
Even Smith does some commendable work as a teenager with so many expectations and so much hype on his shoulders it's a wonder he can still stand up straight. His father is gambling away all the college money his mother worked so hard to save, but he can't think about that now. He has to worry about staying healthy, improving his own scouting stock, and putting his friends on because he's just that considerate of a person. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Victoria (Zazie Beetz) is trying to forge her own path in the face of her boyfriend's impending college super-stardom, something that worries him just as much as it worries her in terms of how well it's going to work out.
The film was directed by Bart Freundlich, who was on his way to being seen as just another "director for hire" on projects like the Justin Bartha-vehicle The Rebound and Catch That Kid. With Wolves, Freundlich develops an understated visual style for the film in conjunction with Juan Miguel Azpiroz's darker, tone-drenched cinematography. The look of the film can only be described as sad in all its crispness, punctuated only by moments of suspense and triumph when Freundlich shifts to filming the basketball scenes. Even as this divide is present, both visually and narratively, the film doesn't dramatically decrease in stamina and energy when the focus shifts to relationships.
Wolves is careful and balanced, if unsubtle, and superbly acted to match its emotional and narrative gravitas. Its biggest allusion, however, seems to be positioning Anthony before Lee and Socrates, two men who he could unconsciously go on to emulate as time passes. The other option, however, is to be someone complete his own, and even by the end of the film, we're not certain how likely that is for our confident protagonist and for Freundlich to leave us on such a positive yet uncertain note isn't a sign of the film being incomplete but perhaps personal uncertainty as well.
Starring: Taylor John Smith, Michael Shannon, Carla Gugino, Chris Bauer, John Douglas Thompson, and Zazie Beetz. Directed by: Bart Freundlich.