Director Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club) is back for another awards season with part travelogue, part grief memoir, Wild. The film stars Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed (seems highly coincidental, but that is her real last name), who undertakes the personal challenge of hiking solo, 1,100 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. Through flashbacks, Wild also tells of the events leading up to Cheryl’s hike. The focus is on her downward spiral after the death of her mother from cancer. Cheryl’s methods of coping with the debilitating grief included cheating on her husband with a number of strangers, and using heroin.
Wild’s creation can largely be attributed to Witherspoon, who read Strayed’s memoir on which the film is based, ‘Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail’, and immediately contacted Strayed to purchase the film rights. She gathered together a capable team including Vallée and British screenwriter Nick Hornby (About a Boy, An Education, High Fidelity) in order to make the film the way she envisioned it.
As producer and lead actress, Witherspoon does an exceptional job. There are times when it’s tricky to believe that she’s coming down from a heroin stupor, or having sex with men in an alleyway, but it’s likely that’s due to my own bias rather than her acting. She’s definitely tough and defiant as Cheryl, but she’s also incredibly infuriating. Especially in the first leg of the Trail, weighed down by her burdensome monster of a backpack (a metaphor for her emotional baggage, right guys?), which she’s filled with so many unnecessary items. Even more frustrating, she’s also filled it with completely necessary items that she hasn’t yet tested out or doesn’t know how to use and so, renders them useless because of her ignorance. However, this is all real and raw and honest. We’re not meant to love her, or even like her all that much. She’s just telling us her story and we’re going along for the walk.
The other really appealing thing about the character of Cheryl is that she is a free woman. Rarely do we get to see this kind of character in Hollywood cinema – a woman who is on her own, not looking for love or even chasing a career. Just a woman who is challenging herself to achieve something extraordinary, and hoping to reach a level of self-acceptance that she’s not had for a long time.
Wild’s drama often arises out of gender politics. Along the trail, Cheryl meets many people – mostly men – some of whom are helpful and generous, and others who are threatening and predatory. Cheryl visibly wrestles with her own prejudices when she accepts a ride from a middle-aged man driving a pick-up, and is reminded to stay on her guard when she offers help to two hunters searching for water. As a woman who spent months backpacking on my own in my early twenties, I took bittersweet comfort in being able to relate to that conflict between wanting to keep faith in the good of humankind and wanting to live to see the next day.
Laura Dern is perfect as the effervescent, hippie mother, Bobbi in the film. Her blonde curls bounce about as she chops carrots in the kitchen, staunchly optimistic despite the impending doom that is her children’s father, and the violence that he inflicts upon Cheryl, her brother and Bobbi. We like Bobbi so much that it kicks in the guts that much harder when we see her deteriorate. Gaby Hoffman is reliably cool and engaging as Cheryl’s best friend Aimee. I wanted to see lots more of her.
Wild adds to a canon of solo-journey-in-the-great-outdoors films such as Into the Wild, 127 Hours and most recently (and most similarly) Tracks. It doesn’t feel like a tired concept, however, and the imagery and stylish, snappy editing of Cheryl’s thoughts and memories is executed brilliantly. There could be a little less narration perhaps, especially towards the end when things get a little too cheesy, but it’s not insufferable. On the whole, Wild’s strong feminist values, which never feel man-hating or didactic, are the film’s strongest point and a welcome gift to this year’s Oscars line-up.
Review Score FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE).
Wild is in cinemas through 20th Century Fox from January 22, 2015.
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