Directed by:
Jean-Marc ValléeScreenplay:
Nick HornbyCinematography:
Yves BélangerCast:
Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Michiel Huisman, Gaby Hoffmann, Kevin Rankin, W. Earl Brown, Mo McRae, Ted Rooney, Cheryl Strayed (more)Plots(1)
In WILD, director Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club), Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line) and Academy Award nominated screenwriter Nick Hornby (An Education) bring bestselling author Cheryl Strayed's extraordinary adventure to the screen. After years of reckless behavior, a heroin addiction and the destruction of her marriage, Strayed makes a rash decision. Haunted by memories of her mother Bobbi (Academy Award nominee Laura Dern) and with absolutely no experience, she sets out to hike more than a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail all on her own. WILD powerfully reveals her terrors and pleasures --as she forges ahead on a journey that maddens, strengthens, and ultimately heals her. (Fox Searchlight Pictures US)
(more)Videos (18)
Reviews (13)
When you cheat and take drugs, you become a prostitute... What is surprising is that the Wild is also good in terms of the intimate and chamber line "lonesome Witherspoon - inhospitable nature - endless purifying walk - the eternal self-question of the heroine". On the contrary, on this level, it does the job really well. To the extent that it makes you want to take a bag pack, go on a solitary hike and at the same time clear your head. The only drawback are the unnatural flashbacks, which at first can do with only hints/flashes in a nice way, but the closer Cheryl's journey comes to an end, the more literal and didactic they are. But what it only takes is one alpaca and everything what should be said becomes instantly clear.
()
Reese Witherspoon delivered quite a respectable performance in this movie. Already in the beginning, she showed how easily a chipped nail can be torn from a toe which went through a two-hundred-kilometer hike on a trek across the Rocky Mountains with an elevation gain of least thirty kilometers. After a moment, however, a totally typical story began to unravel. It shows us Reese who is going through purgatory, at first without showing the reason, and we’ll only get to know the reason gradually, from the glimpses of her memories. It took me some time to attune to her, and about a halfway into the movie everything was clear to me. And from that moment I started to really enjoy the movie. Too bad that the ending was too open. I like open endings in movies like this but in this case it kind of faded away into nothing. The Way (2010) is much better in this respect. Anyhow, Reese’s performance was really great – I’d say even greater that the elevation gain she had to tackle during the movie.
()
I found the Emilio Estevez’s recent, similarly conceived The Way, in which a father embarks on a journey to find his dead son, more to my liking. It had more interesting interactions between the characters whom the protagonist encountered on his journey. Wild contains a few cool scenes, has a pleasant outdoor atmosphere and Reese Witherspoon holds the movie together. But the flashbacks depicting her relationships with the people from her past do not drive the film forward as much as they should. In comparison, Aron Ralston’s life in flashbacks in 127 Hours was much more powerful and, together with the situation the protagonist had to get out of, managed to completely captivate me. However, Wild still remains a good film worthy of three and a half stars.
()
Better than Into the Wild, it works much better with the dosing of information and always has something to reveal. Reese is great and you never lose interest in her character, though many of the scenes are not precisely the most memorable (but many are enriched by “El Condor Pasa”). For me it’s also valuable as an educational documentary – I realised that I would go on a long nature trip only with a bunch of armed friends and accompanied by a car carrying beer, a coolbox and a grill. That would be proper wilderness. 75%
()
A conventional travel drama about the search for oneself, which Jean-Marc Vallée is able to enrich with interesting flashbacks, most of the time. They develop several themed storylines that focus on the magnetic Reese Witherspoon. Her transformation from a frightened novice who isn’t able to lift her own backpack to queen of the PCT is so impressively experienced, so much so that one also forgets balancing on the edge of kitsch, a bit of amateurish symbolism and a stretched last third. Not that Hornby's "book-like" screenplay helps with its pronounced durability and depth, but as a pleasant spiritual trip through a beautiful landscape for one evening, it's absolutely okay.
()
Ads