Two films opening Friday are about people lost in the wilderness. “Wild” is the one not based on the Bible.
It is about a woman, grieving the death of her mother and battling self-destructive behavior, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in search of herself.
“Walk the Line” Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon, plays Cheryl Strayed – she chose her new last name after her divorce – who lost the thread of her life.
After the death of her mother, played by Laura Dern, she self medicated with random sex and heroin before reaching that place where her options were change or die.
An arduous hike along the isolated trail for eleven hundred miles over a three month period, promised some of both.
But her real journey is an interior one. She trudges along with only the voice in her head for company and regretting every life decision she ever made.
How she chose to hike this trail is unclear, as are certain other specifics, in a pastiche of events from the past and from her one-foot-in-front of the other journey, as Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” bubbles beneath the surface.
Oddly, this tale of female empowerment is being told by males.
Jean-Marc Vallee, who directed “The Dallas Buyers Club,” is like a landscape artist finding haunting beauty – a lighted tent in a dark desert at night – along the way. Screenwriter Nick Hornby wrote “About a Boy,” but also “An Education” based on another female-centric memoir.
“Wild” is in the tradition of solo adventure films, like “Never Cry Wolf,” “Into the Wild” even “127 Hours” and “The Straight Story,” but is less about what happens to Strayed than how she feels about it. As a woman alone on the road her encounters with strangers are fraught with risk but are mostly reassuring and heartfelt.
A weathered and road weary Witherspoon portrays the intangible qualities of change and catharsis as surely as a larva becomes a butterfly.
All trips begin with a single step. Hers is in a motel room where she wrestles with a knapsack filled with things better left behind and so heavy she cannot lift it. Finally managing to stand upright carrying it is her first victory.
By journey’s end it contains only what she needs.
Three stars
With Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Michael Huisman, Keene McRae, Kevin Rankin, Cliff De Young, Gaby Hoffman, W. Earl Brown. Produced by Reese Witherspoon, Brauna Papandrea, Bill Pohlad. Rated R; sexual content, nudity, drug use, language. Approximate running time: 115 minutes.
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