Chris Knipp
12-06-2014, 12:53 PM
Jean-Marc Vallée: Wild (2014)
http://www.chrisknipp.com/newpictures/w.jpg
REESE WITHERSPOON IN WILD
Hiking as therapy
After last year's Dallas Buyers Club, Jean-Marc Vallée returns with a less complicated redemption story in Wild, again based on an actual person. This time a young woman, Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) goes on a thousand-mile hike up the Pacific Crest Trail. She is alone, with her memories, or, in this case, her flashbacks. These flit in and out, showing her mother, divorced husband, brother, heroin addiction, raw sex. Her life was a mess. Is she atoning, working out her anger, empowering herself as a woman, cleaning out her system? Something of each. The trouble with this movie is that it plunges into the hike, then has to backtrack to depict Cheryl's life without reducing the hike to a mere metaphor. The picture of the hike, the people met on the trail, the trail itself, is realistic, but not all that eventful. Wild was adapted by About a Boy auther Nick Hornby from Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.
The hike itself seems a foolhardy enterprise. Cheryl is no great outdoor person and no great hiker. An opening scene shows Cheryl up high over a gorge, but at a low point in her project, taking off a shoe to show badly damaged toes, then losing the shoe, and part of her gear to the gorge. Back to the start of her hike, dropped off at a motel, she has so much gear in her pack she can hardly stand up. And she might drop out early on. This is no deep commitment with no turning back like that of Chris McCandless in Into the Wild (note the "into": this is just the vague "wild"). The real test is to stick with the hike even though she can drop out at many points. Obviously Cheryl Strayed (née Nyland) made a wiser choice than the idealistic, foolish McCandress: she's still alive, and she, not Jon Krakauer, got to write the bestseller. Without having read it, one might think it's like a sort of Eat, Pray, Love without the eating, praying, or loving. Though there is the violent flashback sex and a one night stand with a handsome bearded hunk met in Oregon, near the end of the trail.
Notably, as a blonde woman out on her own unprotected, Cheryl is not only pursued by memories of her ditsy, inexplicably happy mother (Laura Dern), divorced from an abusive drunk, husband and father but in the present by justifiable fears of predatory men experienced several times. First there is a farmer, when she has run out of food and appeals for help. He turns out to be harmless. The two young randy male hikers may be much more dangerous. The guys in a camp she stops at are just teasing her. But both her past and the realities are pursuing her. The handsome hunk seems a dream come true -- for an evening, after a rough Jerry Garcia memorial concert (well staged).
Cheryl finishes the journey (though the film leaves her before crossing a bridge) and we tote up what we have learned. That Reese Witherspoon can play a wider range of roles than we might have thought, and make them believable, and that Laura Dern can be really annoying. That it's best to get an old hand to pare down the contents of one's backpack before embarking on a long hike. That preparing hot food requires the proper fuel. That REI has even more accommodating customer policies than one thought, and the PCT has way-stations where one can receive packages and letters.
Vallée seems, in the view of some, anyway, to be on a roll with these two redemption tales; he has gotten good lead actors for them. But is he really moving up to Hollywood A Lister status? His messy, episodic French-language 2005 debut C.R.A.Z.Y. was engaging, but he really has failed to impress much as a filmmaker since. His Young Victoria was a very ho-hum effort. Dallas Buyers Club had a colorful central character and a vivid performance by Matthew McConaughey. It wan'st his most winning and complex role, though, and the movie didn't go anywhere special, was not distinctive filmmaking. In the case of Wild, there is a feeling that, good though Witherspoon may be, the real Cheryl is and was a tougher bird, making both her physical exploit and her spotty past more solid than they come across on screen. This movie pales in comparison with the Jon Krakauer book and Sean Penn film of Into the Wild, a richer tale more impressively told in both forms. As outdoor hike challenges go, not much can compete with Aron Ralston's experience retold in Danny Boyle's 127 Hours . And even this year there was another long movie foot-journey (almost twice as long a one) by a young woman, John Curran's Tracks. It's gotten as good or better reviews, but I missed that one. To be honest, a little camping and hiking go a long way with me.
Wild, 115 mins., debuted at Telluride (and Toronto). After many festivals it opened in the US 3 Dec. (NYC) and 5 Dec. (limited). Watched for this review at a public screening at Landmark's California Theater in Berkeley, where I had to abandon an earlier show because of a woman's loud running commentary. Later I was told the police came to take her away.
http://www.chrisknipp.com/newpictures/w.jpg
REESE WITHERSPOON IN WILD
Hiking as therapy
After last year's Dallas Buyers Club, Jean-Marc Vallée returns with a less complicated redemption story in Wild, again based on an actual person. This time a young woman, Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) goes on a thousand-mile hike up the Pacific Crest Trail. She is alone, with her memories, or, in this case, her flashbacks. These flit in and out, showing her mother, divorced husband, brother, heroin addiction, raw sex. Her life was a mess. Is she atoning, working out her anger, empowering herself as a woman, cleaning out her system? Something of each. The trouble with this movie is that it plunges into the hike, then has to backtrack to depict Cheryl's life without reducing the hike to a mere metaphor. The picture of the hike, the people met on the trail, the trail itself, is realistic, but not all that eventful. Wild was adapted by About a Boy auther Nick Hornby from Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.
The hike itself seems a foolhardy enterprise. Cheryl is no great outdoor person and no great hiker. An opening scene shows Cheryl up high over a gorge, but at a low point in her project, taking off a shoe to show badly damaged toes, then losing the shoe, and part of her gear to the gorge. Back to the start of her hike, dropped off at a motel, she has so much gear in her pack she can hardly stand up. And she might drop out early on. This is no deep commitment with no turning back like that of Chris McCandless in Into the Wild (note the "into": this is just the vague "wild"). The real test is to stick with the hike even though she can drop out at many points. Obviously Cheryl Strayed (née Nyland) made a wiser choice than the idealistic, foolish McCandress: she's still alive, and she, not Jon Krakauer, got to write the bestseller. Without having read it, one might think it's like a sort of Eat, Pray, Love without the eating, praying, or loving. Though there is the violent flashback sex and a one night stand with a handsome bearded hunk met in Oregon, near the end of the trail.
Notably, as a blonde woman out on her own unprotected, Cheryl is not only pursued by memories of her ditsy, inexplicably happy mother (Laura Dern), divorced from an abusive drunk, husband and father but in the present by justifiable fears of predatory men experienced several times. First there is a farmer, when she has run out of food and appeals for help. He turns out to be harmless. The two young randy male hikers may be much more dangerous. The guys in a camp she stops at are just teasing her. But both her past and the realities are pursuing her. The handsome hunk seems a dream come true -- for an evening, after a rough Jerry Garcia memorial concert (well staged).
Cheryl finishes the journey (though the film leaves her before crossing a bridge) and we tote up what we have learned. That Reese Witherspoon can play a wider range of roles than we might have thought, and make them believable, and that Laura Dern can be really annoying. That it's best to get an old hand to pare down the contents of one's backpack before embarking on a long hike. That preparing hot food requires the proper fuel. That REI has even more accommodating customer policies than one thought, and the PCT has way-stations where one can receive packages and letters.
Vallée seems, in the view of some, anyway, to be on a roll with these two redemption tales; he has gotten good lead actors for them. But is he really moving up to Hollywood A Lister status? His messy, episodic French-language 2005 debut C.R.A.Z.Y. was engaging, but he really has failed to impress much as a filmmaker since. His Young Victoria was a very ho-hum effort. Dallas Buyers Club had a colorful central character and a vivid performance by Matthew McConaughey. It wan'st his most winning and complex role, though, and the movie didn't go anywhere special, was not distinctive filmmaking. In the case of Wild, there is a feeling that, good though Witherspoon may be, the real Cheryl is and was a tougher bird, making both her physical exploit and her spotty past more solid than they come across on screen. This movie pales in comparison with the Jon Krakauer book and Sean Penn film of Into the Wild, a richer tale more impressively told in both forms. As outdoor hike challenges go, not much can compete with Aron Ralston's experience retold in Danny Boyle's 127 Hours . And even this year there was another long movie foot-journey (almost twice as long a one) by a young woman, John Curran's Tracks. It's gotten as good or better reviews, but I missed that one. To be honest, a little camping and hiking go a long way with me.
Wild, 115 mins., debuted at Telluride (and Toronto). After many festivals it opened in the US 3 Dec. (NYC) and 5 Dec. (limited). Watched for this review at a public screening at Landmark's California Theater in Berkeley, where I had to abandon an earlier show because of a woman's loud running commentary. Later I was told the police came to take her away.