Critics rating:  2.5 Stars

Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski

Direction: Jean-Marc Vallée

Produced: Bruna Papandrea, Bill Pohlad, Reese Witherspoon

Written:  Nick Hornby

Genre: Biography

Duration: 115 Mins.

There is something to be said about long hikes over picturesque and unforgiving landscape. They arebereft of human presence with the barren desolation springing forth fertile ground for introspection. It is a balm for the soul, just the sort of salvation Christopher McCandless was seeking in his ill-fated trek through the Alaskan wilderness in 1992. If his biopic Into the Wild served as a cautionary tale to reckless adventurers, Wild strives for a more uplifting climactic pay-off which does not hit the subdued high note the makers were intending.

Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) begins her journey three years after the death of McCandless, in 1995, being only two years older than him as she dares to plod along the Pacific Crest Trail in search of the person she used to be before her mother died of lung cancer,her divorce and her subsequent descent into heroin addiction. It takes her many years of delinquent behaviour to get to this point in her life. With that begins her peripatetic quest for self-discovery, which in real life led to her memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.

Since Cheryl is the only character who gets the most screen time (aside from Laura Dern, who plays the pleasant, long-suffering mother), you would expect to feel a greater connect with her endeavour. That does not happen. We get instead some sufficient backstory on a troubled and traumatic past, with no insight into how the expedition is affecting her.

 

We get subtle nuances like the protagonist being able to lift her heftyload (literal and metaphoric), initially with a lot of struggle and later with sustained resilience. She acquires the much-needed travel acumen later, after shedding a lot of unneeded baggage (interpret that as you will), getting the right fuel for her stove and staying away from creepy strangers, though it is a miracle that she comes to no massive physical threat. However, Wild sidesteps the stereotypes and shows that help comes from unexpected quarters like the amiable punks and even the occasional leery man.

A lot of interactions between Cheryl and her fellow hikers seem under developed. There does not seem an exchange of many ideas either between the characters or between the audience and the film. All we have are shots of her walking through poorly exploited topography or tight handheld close-ups of her unblemished face interspersed with flashbacks that sometimes seem a deliberate expositional insertion than a seamless transition.

 

Wild is a meandering narrative without the soul-searching and an abrupt conclusion. It is disappointing outing from director Jean-Marc Vallée after his Oscar-nominated Dallas Buyers Club, but has opened to critical acclaim and Oscar nominations for Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern. If you must watch, do so for the Oscar buzz and if you have a taste for long-winding storylines.