You can watch my youtube review HERE!!!
In 1995 a young woman decided to walk more than a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail as a way of healing life's hurts. This young woman is Cheryl Strayed and she recounted that journey in her memoir which would become the basis of the film Wild. Wild is the latest film from Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club) produced by and starring Reese Witherspoon with Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Gaby Hoffmann and Keene McRae in supporting roles.
When we first meet Cheryl Strayed we find her at an unknown point in her journey; she takes out one of her toe nails and loses a shoe down a mountain, life hasn't exactly gone her way. We then flash back to the start of the journey where she was recently divorced and still hasn't gotten over the loss of her mother before that; life hasn't exactly gone her way. With Wild we explore someone who has been beaten down by life and herself with a lot of this is shown (quite well may I add) through flashbacks which inform greatly on our protagonist's current circumstance and the battles in her mind.
Reese Witherspoon gives an incredibly layered and broken performance aided by fantastic editing that brings Vallee's vision together perfectly. The cuts between the action and flashbacks work to make Witherspoon's performance even stronger basically putting the Kuleshov Effect to good use. There's a very interesting article on the film's editing on Film School Rejects so I'll attach the link HERE! Laura Dern is also fantastic, filling her character with a warmth and sincerity that is incredibly infectious.
There's a great advantage to this film being set in the wild (pun slightly intended) and that is the gorgeous locations caught even more gorgeously by Yves Belanger. Belanger has stated that around 95% was shot with natural lighting only really using film lighting for several interiors; this was a technique Belanger and Vallee used for Dallas Buyers Club though though more for economic reasons than the creative reasoning behind this film. But like I said it looks gorgeous with some of that praise going to the natural beauty of the locations.
As things go I have to say this was one of the most emotionally engaging films of 2014 with several moments of beautiful honesty, but with the lack of a narrative driving the story the pacing is rather slow. This does hinder the emotional experience at times and also the fact that our protagonist is an incredibly flawed character who kind of dug her own hole but in the end we're all flawed, some just more than others. As emotionally affecting as Wild is it didn't completely grab me and blow me away, I'd definitely call it a pretty great film but not an amazing one.
4 out of 5 stars.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
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