Wild, Review: On your hike to happiness, leave everything behind

Personal to the point of being alien, Wild is a well-intentioned film that picks incidents from a true story, brings the occasional tear to the eye, yet remains foggy and distant.

Haunted by memories of her mother Bobbi who succumbed to cancer at a relatively young age, Cheryl gets into reckless behavior, a heroin addiction, several casual sexual relations and a divorce. Then, in what seems a hurried and unconsidered decision, she drops both her maiden and married surnames, adopts Strayed instead (she feels it best suits her personality) and with absolutely no experience, sets out from Minneapolis to hike more than a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, all on her own.

It is written by Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, About A Boy, A Long Way Down), based on Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. Cheryl had already edited out some portions of her life when she published the book, and changed the names of some of the characters. Some years ago, the publisher’s agent sent the book to Reese Witherspoon’s agent, and Reese liked it enough to produce it, seeing an opportunity to give herself a new image as Cheryl.

She saw Montréal-based Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée's 2005 French film C.R.A.Z.Y., about a sexually confused teenager in 1970s Montreal, and The Young Victoria, (2009), as well as footage from Dallas Buyers Club, which was then being shot. Reese was impressed with his work and he was chosen to direct Wild. As expected, Wild is made in the Vallée style of filmmaking--performer-friendly, relying on natural light, hand-held cameras and skeletal crews. And yes, Vallée insists that Dallas Buyers Club was an exception.

Incidentally, Vallée lost his mother to cancer in 2010, so that brings a touch of personal experience twice over to Wild. 2010. "My mom was like Bobbi, so positive," he said. "The book was so emotional. Who says, 'My mother was the love of my life' (Cheryl’s words)? Who says that? The love of your life is a soul mate." Maybe that is the problem. We find the treatment very much like the tear-jerkers made in India, both in the South and in Mumbai, during the period 1952-72. The never-say-die mother and the mother-daughter bonding is so emotion-charged that you cannot but let your eyes melt when their world collapses in a matter of weeks.

Nothing positive seems to happen to the main characters, till Cheryl embarks on the journey of self-discovery and finds only nice things happening to her and around her. Her only scary moments are her fears of animals and lizards, one occasion, when she misjudges a good Samaritan, and another, when she is unsure about the intentions of two fellow hikers. In avoiding clichés and tropes, Vallée has lost the stylised power-house narration that made Dallas Buyer’s Club so powerful, so striking.

A case is made for hiking in the USA, being a safe, well-organised and pleasurable activity, if you overlook blistered toes and bruised shoulders that are an occupational hazard. Narrated in several flash-backs, it paints people as they are, without scraping the surface or giving them strong motivations for their conduct. Several shots of Cheryl reaching specific spots, taking in the ambience and pitching her tent are repetitive. As are her encounters with a wide assortment of homo sapiens. Yes, they are different people, and the locations are different, nevertheless, there is predictability about their arrival on the scene. Her initial packing scene is extremely well shot.

Vallée set some ground rules for Witherspoon to get the look he wanted: She couldn't wear make-up, had to cover the mirrors in her trailer and wasn't allowed to lighten the load in the comically massive backpack worn by her character. To be fair, all these have contributed to the ambience of the film. This is not the Witherspoon we know, and the role is a brave move. Unfortunately, what we see is not revolutionary either. Laura Dern, as Bobbi, is over the top (can’t fault her for going with the character), and suitably gaunt, when shown to be terminally ill. Thomas Sadoski makes a commendable Paul, Cheryl’s ex-husband who still loves her a lot. Keene McRae plays Cheryl’s troubled brother Leif, and generates the requisite bad vibes. As Jonathan, with whom Cheryl has a fling towards the last stages of her 94-day journey, Michiel Huisman acquits himself well, as does Cliff De Young, the hikers’ ‘trouble-shooter’. Gaby Hoffman has a small, well-enacted role as the woman who tries to knock some sanity into Cheryl.

Cinematographer Yves Bélanger (Dallas Buyers Club) has a great time capturing the great outdoors. Some tricky shots, like the shoe thrown from the mountain, some shots in the snow and a couple involving water, are particularly ingenious. Vallée edits his own films under the pseudonym ‘John Mac McMurphy’, a partial reference to Jack Nicholson's character in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Wild has been edited by John Mac McMurphy and Martin Pensa (both were nominated for an Oscar for editing Dallas Buyers Club). I don’t see an Oscar coming their way for Wild. Music score is pleasant.

It comes as a surprise that the film grows on you. What was often heavy going begins to unravel a bit a whole 24 hours after you have come out of the cinema hall. To be fair, when you are watching a film about a woman covering 1,000 miles in 94 days, you cannot expect it to move at jet-speed, in a 120-minute film-span.

Rating: **1/2

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2PPRFKB9fg