"Wakefield" is a symphony of wrong notes. For one, the star is Bryan Cranston, who always seems to be trying hard to force it in every performance. Here he plays Howard Wakefield, a prominent lawyer spiked with bile, who comes to his lovely suburban home after work and suffers one doozy of a midlife crisis. Rather than greeting his lovely wife (Jennifer Garner) and two teen daughters, he hides in the attic of the sizable detached garage. Spying on his family from a small window, he feels less and less attached, prolonging his absence to banish them from his life and escape from theirs.
As time drags forward, the bewildered Wakefield women move from anxiety to grief and then acceptance. Wakefield arranges a basic toilet system, develops a Rip Van Winkle beard and dresses like a hobo, prowling the town's garbage cans, which are always packed with cast-off gourmet foods. (I'm not exaggerating.)
Adapted by writer/director Robin Swicord from an E.L. Doctorow short story, the film is narrated scene by scene, like an audio book. Wakefield savors his voyeuristic glimpses of his wife undressed in the bedroom they once shared. He resents what he sees as his daughters' insufficient appreciation of all he accomplished and provided. He enjoys having run away from life's responsibilities, the freedom-sapping trap of his home's back door a total distance of 30 feet away.
You don't often see this type of character as the focus of a movie, and there is a very good reason for that.
Acting solo in most of the film, Cranston cranks his performance up to 11, enamored of his own work and incapable of hitting the brakes. And yet he never brings his character's conflicting motives to life. He comes off as agonizingly showy and more than a little unbelievable.
Garner does better. She embodies her character with a fine blend of fragility and force. Adding a twist where she runs off with the girls, leaves the clod behind and has her own adventures would have made a much more entertaining movie.
