Wild is about pain. It is a story of two journeys that involve plenty of pain. Based on the memoir of the same name, the movie tells the story of Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon), who in 1995 decided to hike the Pacific Crest trail, which runs over a thousand miles from California up North to Washington state. Woefully unprepared for the epic undertaking, Strayed encounters plenty of problems along the way, much of it resulting in very tangible physical pain.
The other pain narrative comes through flashbacks, the movie relating the succession of events that lead to Strayed setting off on this drastic endeavor. At first, the film plays coy with the exact reasons. It only offers up flashes of the past, projecting a mere suggestion of the turmoil that comes to define Strayed's past. But as the film goes on, it explicates these brief flashes, staying longer and longer in the past, often to make pointed parallels between the wilderness of her past, and the literal wilderness she's confronting.
It sometimes feels like Wild is showing its hand a bit too much. In its frequent trips to the past, it loses some of the immediacy of the present. In its eagerness to turn the hike into a grand metaphor, it sometimes misses out on building something more sublime. What the film eventually constructs is still a story worth telling but there are just points where it feels like the movie is elaborating on a point that has already been eloquently made by the brief suggestion of turmoil.
Because this story really is pretty amazing even without exactly knowing the exact circumstances that led Strayed to make the journey. The movie is strongest during the hike, when it works off the inherent drama of seeing this one person taking on a Herculean task. At the start of the journey, Cheryl can barely lift her pack. She is shown in her motel room, stumped by the sheer logistics of getting the monstrous thing on her back. The film's most compelling moments linger on the vulnerability of its main character, tracing the details of her slight physical form, setting it against the wide, dangerous world that she has willingly entered.
The flashbacks tell a more complete story, but a much less elegant one. The hike is a metaphor all of its own, the character's struggle with dangerous both feral and human delivering a powerful dramatic punch. Similarly, Reese Witherspoon is better on the hike, the actress dialing back and focusing on reacting to the demands of the now. In flashbacks, she is given the opportunity to emote. And while the actress is still good in these scenes, it feels a tad artificial in comparison.
This isn't to say that Wild is in any way bad. Even in its worst excesses, the film is really engaging. The performance of Reese Witherspoon alone is worth the price of admission. But the film does lose some of the raw edge that fuels its early scenes. As it explains more of her past, the narrative takes a more familiar shape, playing out the hike as a grand search for redemption. And while that's fine, the story could have lived on the immediacy of her plight alone, on the pain of her feet and the threat of those she meets along the way. In those moments, the film describes the cruelty that she has faced more eloquently than the dozens of extended glimpses into her past. Wild is still very good, but it loses some of its sense of adventure as it clings to a more accessible narrative form.
My Rating:
