Wild (2014) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / March 21, 2015

Wild is a film where you know what to expect. As soon as you read about the dramatic, road trippy nature of the film, you already know it’s really more about the protagonist’s tragic past than the trip itself. You already know past and present will meet in more ways than one and that by journey’s end, the main character will have dealt with her issues somewhat. As such, the film contains zero structural surprises, but the journey is still quite entertaining.

            The film opens with Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) arriving at one of the many hills that dot America’s landscape along the PCT route. She takes off her boot to find that her big toe nail has gone loose. As she tries to, well, take care’ of it, her boot falls off the cliff. In her anger, she tosses the other boot right along with it, producing a hearty “fuck you, bitch”. As she screams at the top of her lungs, the film produces a flurry of images from her past that have brought her to where she’s now, screaming in the middle of nowhere. As she travels, we get a constantly growing idea of what her past was like, how past experiences have defined her, her curious relationship with her mother (Laura Dern), etc. She also meets a lot of other people along the way, some of them travelers, others not so much.

            Despite the lack of surprises, structurally speaking, the film’s still an entertaining ride. Only occasionally does the film feel long, although that’s inevitable in a film about an 1100 mile journey. The biggest pleasure is how the film steadily gives away more hints about Cheryl’s past in the form of flashbacks and how you get to decode some of it of early on. The only downside is that some of the symbolism can be heavy-handed, like when a dead character suddenly stands before Cheryl or when blood drips on her face when she remembers a bloody part of her life. I guess the film’s trying to make up for what is essentially a slow film, but a bit more subtlety would’ve been preferred. On the other hand, the way the film treats memory is quite interesting. I like how Cheryl tends to remember bits and pieces instead of the entire memory and how a memory can be triggered in a very Proustian way, through smell and so on.

            I suppose a film like this, which offers no real answers, might make some ask, “what’s the ever-loving point?” Maybe there is no point. Maybe coming to grips with the past isn’t something that fits within the 2-hour confines of a single film, but lasts a lifetime. All I know is I enjoyed watching Cheryl make her journey and trying to come to grips with her past.