Wild

In Wild, Reese Witherspoon gets much darker than some viewers may be used to seeing her. It’s not that she’s never led (or followed, depending on your perspective) a character down a dark path before, but many, including this reviewer, tend to think of her as one of America’s Sweethearts, a label that gets applied to favorite female leads that are simply likeable. The pitfalls of such labels include not being taken seriously, though one would think in Witherspoon’s case she would have shed that with her Oscar win in 2006 for her portrayal of June Carter in Walk the Line. There’s also at least a little bit of a sexist overtone to that label and, in now admitting understanding that, I’ll refrain from its use any further.

The devil in Witherspoon’s character, again a portrayal of a real-life woman, though far less famous, is in the complexity and duality. Cheryl (Witherspoon) is a woman wracked with pain, anger, guilt and a dark history of her own creation based on how she reacted to the situations in her life. The most notable pain stems from her mom, Bobbi (Laura Dern), who displays a near obsessive need to look on the bright side of life (sans Spamalot vocalization) despite her apparent shortcomings as a student, wife, mom and even the death sentence of cancer.

From the opening frame, where Cheryl puts her boot down in front of a massive, beautiful, mountainous expanse, examines her bloodied and ruined big toe nail and declares she’d rather be the hammer than the nail, the motif of pain is unleashed upon the audience. Her primal scream ushers in quick fire images of sex, child abuse, the dictionary definition of the word “strayed” (which is the same as her last name), her dead mother, a horse and a fox before we see the title word “wild” burn against a black screen. Happy trails.

On the cusp of her journey she is met with the disapproval of others – from a hotel desk clerk who is sure she’s trying to hide a significant other for a lower room rate to a man working along the trail that doesn’t seem to understand why she’s doing this hike. One of the greatest strengths of the film is Cheryl’s own uncertainty. She’s simply going, one foot in front of the next, with no real need for anything other than completion. She openly hates this hike and yet demands she must do it – there’s a great lesson in that. Traditional storytelling might have her go through various trials by fire in front of us along her path but instead we look back, with her, at why she’s walking: A heroin addiction, a failed marriage due, at least in part, to her indiscriminate and serial adultery and a relationship with her mom that is, like most, complex.

Director Jean-Marc Vallée and Witherspoon challenge us to care about someone who lacks traditional “rooting interest” except for the fact that she is in motion. The fact that it is enough is perhaps the best note to budding screenwriters: keep moving. The uneven nature of the flashbacks is confusing at times and doesn’t always seem to pay off, but even they still work in the overall sense of helping to illustrate a woman who is so deeply haunted. What’s endearing is she doesn’t ask for pity. Despite her missteps, including bringing the wrong gas to cook her food with which had me remarking aloud, “this is the wrong time to be seeing if your gear works”, she forges on. She needs help and it comes in various forms. This, especially, feels very true to my own experience in the endurance journeys I’ve taken. That she acknowledges her weaknesses, accepts and even seeks help are among her greatest qualities.

One note of sadness lodged in the truthful way it’s portrayed is the amount of sexism that Cheryl deals with. I won’t pretend to understand feminism on any level or what women go through, but I will say it made me sad to see Cheryl marginalized a number of times rather than accepted as an individual, neither to be raised up nor held down, but simply accepted.   

Resonance Rating: 4 out of 5