Paulina’s old soul is in love with Cave, Cohen, and Curtis... and all the other boys she’ll never meet. Born in Poland she now dwells in the lakes, plains, and hills of Northern Italy, where she hushes Italian babies to sleep and teaches art to their older fratelli and sorelle. Meanwhile leading us into her kingdom of the senses, “writing about everything that’s left unspoken, and photographing what can’t be put into words”.
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Title: Wildlife
Director: Paul Dano
Year: 2018


Wildlife is the story of an ordinary family in which everyone decides to escape. Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) loses his job, too proud to admit his own mistakes, he leaves his family overnight to fight mountain fires. Jeanette (Carey Mulligan), in the face of another disappointment within her own life, gets involved in an affair with an elderly man. Only temporarily finding her old spirit of a cheerful young girl, now only a shadow appearing on her tired face.

I felt a certain closeness to these heroes because I know only too well how easy it is to run from your problems. When I left my country, I walked away from my family, my friends, and my homeland. I thought that I would find peace. It was easy for me to pack two suitcases containing: three pairs of shoes and six books. As if all my life could be included in these few possessions. How easy it was to abandon all those good souls, those who raised me, those who were always close by when I needed them. I thought that this escape would stop me choking at night, and yet here I am now, still waking up from this nightmare in which I cannot breathe.

Like Jerry, I cannot take responsibility for my mistakes, ever since I can remember I have always waited for the solution to appear from thin air. I may be 23 years old but I still feel this fear that I will eventually lose my way out. When I had problems at university, I ran into love. I did not lose my head for love, I lost my head for something to run to. If there is a situation in which I am forced to behave like an adult, there are always temporary lies that give me some more time to hide before the bomb of reality explodes.  

Does all this make me a bad person? Can you blame Jeanette, left alone by her husband, for wanting to feel happiness even just for a moment? Don’t we all run away from something into love? Don’t we love to let someone else teach us to love ourselves? Isn’t it easier to survive a future full of empty cities and streets full of shopping trolleys with someone who will take us by the hand? And what about Jerry? Is it so difficult for us to put ourselves in his situation? A man, stuck with a life he did not want to lead, who is overwhelmed by being the head of the family and decides to find another role. This role pushed on to him by our society with the concept that "all men must be heroes”.

There is one scene in the film, Jeanette and Jerry are sitting in a photography studio, waiting for their son to take their picture, they look at each other and there is a sadness in their eyes. I feel this sadness, it's the sadness that you have failed, that you have lost so much of what is close to you, that you got lost somewhere along the way.

If we do not want the sky to catch us with its blue, we must stop running.