Wakefield (2016)

Directed by: Robin Swicord | 104 minutes | drama | Actors: Bryan Cranston, Jennifer Garner, Beverly D’Angelo, Ian Anthony Dale, Jason O’Mara, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Ellery Sprayberry, Victoria Bruno, Bill Timoney, Isaac Leyva, Monica Lawson, Frederick Keeve, Derek Alvarado, Alexander Zale Cameron Simmons, Eliza Coleman, Hal Dion, Scott St. Blaze, Ken Spassione, Tommy Otis, Angela Taylor-Jones, Carinna Rossignoli

Escape from your daily existence, who doesn’t fantasize about that? Disappear from one moment to the next and decide for yourself whether and when you show yourself again. The main character in the film ‘Wakefield’ (2016) by director Robin Swicord puts his words into action. The good businessman and family man Howard Wakefield (Bryan Cranston) has had an argument with his wife Diana (Jennifer Garner) the night before and decides to go home after a long day at work, but not to step through the front door. Instead, he decides to settle in a junk attic above his garage. This gives him a good view of what is happening in the house and he can keep a close eye on his wife and two teenage daughters. It never occurs to him that his wife and children may start to worry about where he is hanging out. And he doesn’t stick to that one night. He sees concerned Diana calling the police the next day, and only gloats about it. When she finally dares to leave the house, he slips in for a hot shower, collects some food and useful utensils and vows not to step into the house again. Then eat out of the bin…

The premise of ‘Wakefield’ is intriguing; what if you could just put the everyday grind on a break, but you could see from a distance what effect your disappearance has on those left behind? In Bryan Cranston, the film has a protagonist who has experience playing average men who change the course of their lives overnight; Cranston also did that in the role of Walter White in the television series “Breaking Bad”. It is understandable that Walter White is making such a turnaround in view of his personal problems. Howard Wakefield’s transformation, however, comes quite out of the blue. The power failure in the train and the empty battery of his mobile phone may have been signs on the wall, but to stage your own disappearance right away is going a bit far. In addition, Diana – at least, as far as we can judge – is not at all such a terrible person as Howard would have us believe. In fact, his behavior seems to be fueled by the fear of losing his beautiful, much younger wife. That is why he keeps a close eye on her like a true voyeur.

‘Wakefield’ starts off very nicely, thanks also to Howard’s black humor, but after about half an hour it gets bogged down in a lingering registration of the monotonous days of the main character, now transformed into a vagabond, who holds endless monologues with himself, occasionally interspersed with flashbacks in which we discover the devious methods Howard used to take beautiful Diana from the man who was once his best friend (Jason O’Mara). In the present he comes into contact with two mentally handicapped children who live in a kind of care farm down the street; encounters that seem to be meant to make Howard more human, but that fail completely. Because we’re really not going to find him sympathetic, and that’s probably the intention of Swicord, who based the screenplay on a short story by EL Doctorow from 2008. Cranston is a star at playing this kind of sadistic and self-centered bastards in a midlife crisis, but Howard Wakefield is not Walter White, because we can’t place his actions. In ‘Wakefield’ our sympathy goes rather to Diana, whom we are only allowed to watch from a distance and who, except for the flashbacks, we never hear talk. It’s all the more beautiful that Jennifer Garner knows how to give her enough ‘body’, that we think she deserves better than that heartless Howard.

Swicord could have saved the film to some extent with a resounding finale, but there too she miserably misses the mark; the viewer feels cheated. It’s a shame about such an intriguing premise and such decent actors.