Mark Reviews Movies: WANDER

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 3, 2020

People often believe in conspiracies to make sense, not only of a messy and seemingly random world, but also of their own lives. The truth of that is present in Wander, a movie that's far more engaging as the character study of a conspiracy-obsessed man than it is as a mystery and thriller. Screenwriter Tim Doiron, unfortunately, doesn't see it that way.

Arthur (Aaron Eckhart), the main character, begins as a sad and tragic figure—a man still grieving the destruction of his family after a seemingly random car accident. Since then, he has gone from a life as a successful police detective to one as private investigator, whose real passion is theorizing about assorted conspiracies on a podcast. The man is in physical pain, popping pain pill after pain pill, and emotional distress, keeping notes of encouragement around his camper to get him through the day.

Doiron and director April Mullen don't waste too much time getting to the central mystery, about a woman whose death in the small town of Wander points to some sinister and hidden forces at work. It is intriguing, though, how the filmmakers keep that mystery within the frame of Arthur trying to reconcile his personal pain with some grand scheme, orchestrated by people who aren't just out there to do bad things. They're out there, somewhere, with the distinct motive of doing bad things to him.

He's important. His life matters more than almost anyone else in the world. It's egotism, yes, but it's also a coping mechanism for everything that has gone wrong. It's either that or the world is just a series of random, meaningless tragedies. His obsessions give him purpose and, in a twisted way, some consolation.

Mullen accomplishes a fine balancing act as the mystery begins, keeping the story focused on Arthur's compulsion to find meaning, while Doiron's script dolls out exposition regarding the death of the woman and what it might mean in some bigger picture. The movie opens with that death and, perhaps, gives away a bit too much information.

We see her running from a car crash just outside the limits of Wander, and before she can get out of town, her chest starts beeping before it explodes—like a gunshot but from the inside out. The local Sheriff (played by Raymond Cruz) and Elsa (Katheryn Winnick), a mysterious woman in a cowboy hat, arrive to clean up the evidence. There's definitely a conspiracy afoot, which is just enough to give Arthur's apparent paranoia some credence.

While running his nighttime podcast with friend and fellow conspiracy enthusiast Jimmy (Tommy Lee Jones), Arthur receives a call from the woman's mother, who wants him to investigate her daughter's death. Jimmy vouches for the mother, and despite the concerns of his friend and lawyer Shelley (Heather Graham), Arthur heads to Wander and receives a passively aggressive greeting from the Sheriff.

We follow Arthur's investigation, weaving from the morgue to following some people following him and, like the clichéd walls of his motel room littered with photos and connecting lines of string, winding through the remaining rubble at the crime scene and through the halls of a secret cellar. While that unfolds, the filmmakers also play a game with time and memory. Arthur recalls the investigation of a man, back when he was a cop, who died in a similar manner as the woman, as well as the collision that followed, killing his daughter and leaving his wife in a catatonic state.

On a more plot-driven level, Arthur either suffers from blackouts or suffers from some kind of delayed memory recall. There are forced mysteries within his investigation, as a scene will begin, only for Mullen to cut away to the aftermath. It keeps us in the dark, in a way that matches Arthur's own uncertainty about how he fits into some supposedly vast conspiracy, but it's also clearly a form of game-playing on the filmmakers' part.

It's a way of obfuscating the truth—not from Arthur, but from the audience. Ultimately, the goal of such narrative trickery isn't sympathy with or empathy for this man, but it is to add layer upon unnecessary layer of mystery to the bigger one. The end result, of course, is that the filmmakers are trying to hide a major twist, which becomes apparent as soon as notice the gaps in time, that's really only covering up for a second twist, which mostly undermines every reason Arthur is such an initially fascinating character.

The truth of Wander, in other words, isn't something about this man. It's a trick played on us, for the transparent purpose of fooling the audience for as long as possible and more often than this slim narrative can uphold. Mullen and Doiron's first instincts—that this story is about a man coping with tragedy by trying to find meaning where there might not be any—are correct. They don't trust that feeling, to the movie's detriment.

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