Dreamin’ Wild

Opportunities for fame and fortune don’t always come when it’s convenient or even welcome. Dreamin’ Wild might be rooted in specifics, but it’s essentially a tribute to all the musicians who are overlooked and underappreciated, and may never get a second chance.

This bittersweet biopic from director Bill Pohlad (Love and Mercy) is deliberately paced yet rewards patience with a richly textured portrait of fragile family dynamics, creative processes, and the harsh realities of the music business.

As the film opens, Donnie Emerson (Casey Affleck) makes a living with his wife (Zooey Deschanel) as a nightclub singer. He’s long since given up his dreams of stardom alongside his older brother, Joe (Walton Goggins), who still lives adjacent to the family farm in eastern Washington.

On the verge of estrangement, they’re brought back together by a visit from a producer (Chris Messina) who shares that a bluesy folk album they made as teenagers in a homemade log-cabin studio 30 years ago has been rediscovered and hailed online as a lost masterpiece. Suddenly, there is talk about interviews and touring and rediscovering their adolescent glory.

The circumstances bring memories and regrets from the past inevitably into the present. Getting back together brings out the best and the worst in the siblings, especially Donnie, who is left to grapple with his own tormented perspectives on ego, jealousy, faith, and perfection.

Some details are provided during flashback sequences, when Donnie (Noah Jupe) and drummer Joe (Jack Dylan Grazer) share their ambitions with their cautiously supportive father (Beau Bridges), only to have fate intervene.

Affleck’s deeply felt performance balances passion and vulnerability while capturing a soft-spoken man reluctant to embrace and revisit his younger years, fearing the demons it might unleash.

Pohlad’s powerfully intimate screenplay — based on a 2012 New York Times article by Steven Kurutz — plays out like a folk ballad, appropriately enough, finding its rhythm in its quieter, character-driven moments of reflection.

In adapting the true-life source material, the film hits some predictable notes along its road to redemption and reconciliation, and overcomes some sentimental tendencies in the final act.

Still, if nothing else, Dreamin’ Wild gives the uninitiated a chance to discover the Emersons and their music — better late than never.

Rated PG, 110 minutes.