Wild
Directed by: Jean-Marc Vallée
Written by: Nick Hornby - Based on the Memoir "Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail" by Cheryl Strayed
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Michiel Huisman, Gaby Hoffman, Kevin Rankin, W. Earl Brown, Mo McRae, Keene McRae
Biography/Drama - 115 Minutes Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Dec 2014
Written by: Nick Hornby - Based on the Memoir "Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail" by Cheryl Strayed
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Michiel Huisman, Gaby Hoffman, Kevin Rankin, W. Earl Brown, Mo McRae, Keene McRae
Biography/Drama - 115 Minutes Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Dec 2014
Every long duration hiker has his or her own reason for choosing the loneliness and wilderness. In Wild, Reese Witherspoon has a few demons to kick and decides pushing herself through the deserts and forests of the American west will be her chicken soup for the soul. Based on the 2012 bestselling and Oprah book club selection memoir “Wild: From Lost and Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,” Jean-Marc Vallée’s Wild is half introspective woman on foot and half flashbacks exploring her personal motivations for being out there. Our protagonist’s multiple poor life choices fail to produce a bountiful level of empathy for her situation, yet Wild is frequently an engrossing and enjoyable experience.
Cheryl Strayed (Witherspoon) dove into a downward spiral after the death of her mother, Bobbi (Laura Dern, 2014's When the Game Stands Tall). Serial infidelity and heroin are the most visible manifestations of Cheryl’s depression. She even changes her last name to Strayed to emphasize her fall from grace. Bobbi comes across as a small town girl who fell into an early bad marriage ensuring her kids grew up with memories of mom’s battered and bruised face and a lack of financial security. Bobbi wanted her children to do better than she did which makes for effective later scenes when Cheryl comments how much more sophisticated and well-read she is than her mother.
Cheryl Strayed (Witherspoon) dove into a downward spiral after the death of her mother, Bobbi (Laura Dern, 2014's When the Game Stands Tall). Serial infidelity and heroin are the most visible manifestations of Cheryl’s depression. She even changes her last name to Strayed to emphasize her fall from grace. Bobbi comes across as a small town girl who fell into an early bad marriage ensuring her kids grew up with memories of mom’s battered and bruised face and a lack of financial security. Bobbi wanted her children to do better than she did which makes for effective later scenes when Cheryl comments how much more sophisticated and well-read she is than her mother.
All of the books and street smarts on Earth fail to prepare Cheryl for the outdoors. Her pack is too heavy, her boots are too small, and every man she comes across on the trail, and even in towns, are potential rapists. Seeking redemption, Cheryl not only comes to terms with her physical situation, which she manages over time, she comes to terms in her head concerning her mistreatment of her ex-husband and with her grief over her mother. 1,000 miles is a long way in the car, let alone on foot, and Nick Hornby’s script paces itself where Cheryl’s trail struggles mirror her flashback struggles.
Along for the ride are some musical passengers to keep Cheryl company. Simon and Garfunkel’s El Condor Pasa (If I Could) pops up frequently in different scenes, sometimes scratchy and in the background and finally full on at the finale. Cheryl sings some Springsteen as she crosses a dangerous bridge. She encounters an impromptu folk festival in Oregon celebrating the life of recently deceased Jerry Garcia. Since this was pre-iPod 1995, Cheryl did not carry any tunes along with her so the bits and pieces we pick up hanging out in the fuzzy background are coming from inside her head.
Adapting the memoir for the screen, novelist Nick Hornby shuffled Strayed’s narrative into a non-linear structure meant to gradually unfold for the audience. At the start, we do not know anything about Cheryl or why this clearly amateur hiker undertakes a monumental journey. Information about Cheryl’s relationships with her husband and mother arrive segmented providing a sense of mystery, a challenging feat considering self-discovery memoirs commonly follow a chronological pattern. Hornby, an acclaimed novelist (High Fidelity, About a Boy) and even memoirist himself (Fever Pitch), once again proves his mettle in adapting a memoir for the screen. His 2009 screenplay for An Education, a more effective film than Wild, earned Hornby an Oscar nomination. It is worth noting both screenplays follow female leads who attain new perspectives and a certain amount of wisdom after completing their respective ordeals.
Director Jean-Marc Vallée echoes his previous work as well. 2013’s Dallas Buyers Club charted the metamorphosis of a man from self-centered philanderer to crusader on behalf of a shunned segment of society. Vallée morphs Cheryl from a grieving, drug-abusing adulteress into a confident woman who has reveled in the dark side but chose the light. The dark side of a woman travelling alone in the woods is an omnipresent, unsettling feeling of sexual menace forever lurking around the next tree. Cheryl runs into two hunters who make far too many uncomfortable rape jokes and even men Cheryl meets in the daylight in the middle of towns must be up to no good.
Cheryl Strayed did not run off to the wilderness escaping from materialism and consumerism as Chris McCandless did in 2010’s Into the Wild. She is not hiking for anyone’s memory as Martin Sheen’s Tom did in The Way. Nor did she start north from the desert in a ‘just to see if I can do it’ manner that Robyn Davidson employed in her walk across the Australian outback in Tracks. Cheryl was not obligated to provide any explanation for her choice to get away from it all. She chose to chronicle her adventures spurring an unexpected bestseller and invites the world in to watch her ups and downs, her triumphs and her mistakes. Cheryl had a lot of warts in the 1990s and she unashamedly opens them up for judgment.
As a film, Wild does not set the audience up to pass a verdict on Cheryl as good or bad, but as a young woman attempting to figure it all out. It is just as well she learned what she needed to learn in middle of nowhere California and Oregon rather than in self-help seminars or on the therapist’s couch. It also makes a better view for the audience.
As a film, Wild does not set the audience up to pass a verdict on Cheryl as good or bad, but as a young woman attempting to figure it all out. It is just as well she learned what she needed to learn in middle of nowhere California and Oregon rather than in self-help seminars or on the therapist’s couch. It also makes a better view for the audience.
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