Richard Crouse

“Dreamin’ Wild,” a new film based on real-life musicians Donnie and Joe Emerson, is a movie that examines failure and success, and the toll each takes on the recipients.

Growing up on a 1,600-acre farm in Fruitland, Washington, population 751, Donnie and Joe (played as teens by Noah Jupe and Jack Dylan Grazer) dreamt of becoming professional musicians. At age 15 and 17, respectively, they took a tentative step toward their goal, recording an album of Donnie’s songs in a makeshift studio on the back 40. Soulful, introspective and melodic, their soft-rock album “Dreamin’ Wild” was released to no fanfare and even less acclaim.

Cut to thirty years later. Donnie (now played by Casey Affleck) and his wife Nancy (Zooey Deschanel) make ends meet playing weddings while Joe (Walton Goggins) has given up the drums in favor of building houses. The flames of musical success are rekindled, however, when a copy of the album is rescued from a delete bin and falls into the hands of an indie label executive (Chris Messina) who believes in the music and wants to reissue the album.

The belated success—“To twist a Brian Wilson phrase,” raves online music publication Pitchfork, “[the album] is a godlike symphony to teenhood.”—uncorks a deep wellspring of emotion in Donnie. “I feel like this dream is coming true but the wrong people are in it,” he says.

Filled with regret at a musical life left unfulfilled, at the life-changing amount of money his father lost investing in his music and the toll his decisions made on Joe, he bubbles over with guilt and shame. “Seems like a lot of things were easier when I was a teenager,” he says.

“Dreamin’ Wild” is a slow burn of a movie, like a song that meanders through verse after verse after verse before getting to the chorus. The leisurely approach allows for Affleck’s trademarked sorrowful inner monologue to shine, to do the heavy lifting. His bittersweet performance pits Donnie’s ambitions against his anxieties, a combustible combo that results to one of the film’s highlights, a heartfelt reckoning between Donnie and his father (Beau Bridges). The scene is a quietly eloquent testament, beautifully performed, to music’s ability to bridge generational gaps and it is a highlight in a film that values understated moments.

Pohlad tells the story on a broken timeline, toggling back and forth between Donnie and Joe’s teen years and present day, creating a complete picture of Donnie’s artistic birth and the subsequent turmoil his commitment to music and his dashed dreams has caused over the years.

Anchored by Affleck’s performance, “Dreamin’ Wild’s” portrait of a tortured artist is like the music Donnie performs in the film; thoughtful, gentle and emotionally authentic.