Wakefield Can't Come Up With Enough Depth For Its Lead Characters Journey Of Self-Discovery

Life has not been easy for Howard Wakefield (Bryan Cranston), a guy who feels like life has been piling up on him between a dissatisfying job, a fractured relationship with his wife and two daughters who'd rather he didn't exist at all. He's looking for some escape from his existence and he finds the chance for just that when he rediscovers the little attic space in his families garage (which is a separate building from their house). Here, he discovers there's a lot of room in here as well as a window through which he can watch his families comings and goings. Suddenly, an attic used to store seasonal decorations and camping equipment is looking mighty inviting.


Thus, Howard begins his exile from reality itself by shacking up inside this attic space. He removes himself from his job, his family and all other facets of everyday life without warning, to the rest of the world he's just vanished. Now Howard is all alone in this attic, living out his days eating whatever food he can find in his neighborhood's garbage bins and taking in the outside world as solely as a spectator. From here, Wakefield revolves its plot around Howard describing, via voiceover, how he's adapting to the unique living situation he's carved out for himself as well as explain, with accompanying flashbacks, just how his relationships with the ones he's closest to got so poor.

Certain mystery movies struggle because their poorly structured plots make it clear what exactly is going on long before the lead characters have, meaning the suspense is gone and the viewer is left just waiting for the protagonists to play catch up on crucial plot details. A similar plot malfunction hinders Wakefield, as Robin Swicord's screenplay turns its eye onto the plight of Howard Wakefield and how he transforms as a person during the course of his self-imposed exile to his families garage. The problem is that the flaws in his character are obvious from the get-go (Howard is self-absorbed and has a martyr complex) yet the film treats Howard discovering these are shortcomings in his own being as massively profound discoveries.

The fact that Swicord's screenplay has Howard coming to terms with these flaws play out in heavy-handed internal monologues accompanied by a sweeping orchestral score and  the occasional piece of heightened imagery (notably, Howard standing in the middle of water being sprayed by nearby sprinklers) makes it seem like Wakefield is channeling the vibe of a late period Terrence Malick movie, but there's just not enough substance in Howard's character arc to justify the sonorous presentation. that leans heavily on Cranston's voiceover work that, despite Cranston having a great voice that feels perfectly suited for the artform of voice acting, feels overused by the end of the movie.

Just letting some pieces of imagery stand on their own would have had a lot more impact than constantly having Cranston explain what's going on inside his characters head. Swicard's screenplay aims for the profound in its dialogue, but the constant use of this internal monologue ends up feeling more heavy-handed than meditative. At least the screenplay does have some notably well-written pieces of dialogue while Swicard, who also directs this project, turns out to be skilled at getting a good lead performance out of her reliable lead actor, Bryan Cranston, who's no stranger to playing normal suburban fathers who go off the deep end in the name of upending a tranquil existence for selfish reasons!

Jennifer Garner, as Howard Wakefield's wife, doesn't get a whole lot to do, but it's nice to see Garner in a drama again after being trapped in that Nine Lives fiasco last year and she elicits some memorable moments from the role she's been tasked with while the standout supporting performances are handily Pippa Bennett-Warner and Isaac Leyva as two patients of Howard's next door neighbor doctor. The cast is uniformly good as a whole and Cranston fares well in depicting the physical mannerisms of Howard becoming more and more assimilated to a primal way of living, but it's a shame Wakefield's script couldn't gather up some more profundity to accompany its overwrought presentation.