At first glance, it’s easy to
dismiss Wild, Jean-Marc Vallée’s
adaptation of the 2012 Cheryl Strayed memoir, as schmaltzy inspiration porn – Eat, Pray, Walk, someone on my Twitter
timeline joked derisively. It is, after all, the true-life story of a
not-destitute white woman who embarks on a journey of self-discovery, the kind
of didactic, feel-good confection that awards bodies gobble up like chips,
ostensibly serving little purpose other than to provide its star performer with
an opportunity to do Real Acting and gain some positive PR along the way. Frankly,
as someone who nurses a deep-seated, perhaps irrational bias against biopics
(anything revolving around a specific historical or living figure, really), I
approached Wild with a certain
skepticism, the way many critics seem to regard superhero or Hobbit movies, steeling myself for a
pandering, by-the-numbers crowd-pleaser that I would inevitably forget the
instant I left the theater.
It did not take long, however, for
me to see that my fears were unwarranted. The film opens in medias res, finding
Strayed at an unstipulated point on her 1,100-mile solo hike along the Pacific
Crest Trail, which stretches all the way from the U.S.-Mexico border to Canada.
Quiet reigns as she settles on a rock and removes her shoe to reveal a broken toenail
coated in dried blood, a startlingly gruesome image to encounter at the very
beginning of a movie whose marketing campaign focused predominantly on its
uplifting tone and postcard-pretty scenery (several people at my screening
audibly winced). Strayed then proceeds to accidentally drop the shoe (cue more
gasps), watching in dismay as it tumbles down the mountainside before deciding
to fling her other shoe after it with a fierce, piercing scream. It was that
scream, that fleeting outburst of raw, tempestuous emotion, that assured me
this was going to be different from your standard Oscar-bait, less hesitant to confront
the messy ambiguities of reality.
Wild
unfolds like a spell, patient and hypnotic. Vallée employs his signature
improvisational style to considerably greater effect here than in his previous
outing, 2013’s disjointed yet awards-laden Dallas
Buyers Club, assembling scenes with a nimble, subdued spontaneity that
allows them to breathe and meander. Memories surface in flashes, glimmers of
disembodied sound and fragmented images that flit in and out of consciousness
as if on a whim, circling and spilling into one another, past and present
blended together, gradually crystallizing to form a jumbled yet meaningful
whole; this is a rare instance when flashbacks don’t feel like superfluous,
momentum-stalling detours but rather threads woven inextricably into the fabric
of the narrative. Vallée and screenwriter Nick Hornby also make smart use of
voiceover, which works less to convey exposition than to give shape to the
nonlinear, amorphous plot, as well as music. Comprised primarily of rock and
folk artists such as The Hollies and Simon & Garfunkel, the soundtrack
represents the film’s soul, its lyrical mix of twanging guitars, lively beats
and impassioned crooning evoking both the lonesome sprawl of untamed America
and the restless rhythm of Strayed’s psyche. This juxtaposition between the
grand and individual heightens the intensely personal, subjective nature of the
story; true to its memoir origins, Wild
never attempts to impose any meaning on the heroine’s journey other than what it
means to her.
To say
it transcends populist sentimentality might be a stretch – the movie features a
hearty dose of moralistic aphorisms like “We’re rich in love,” the majority of
which are uttered by Cheryl’s free-spirited mother Bobbi, portrayed by the
luminous, perennially under-appreciated Laura Dern. But even at its most
maudlin, Wild exhibits an earnest
poise that’s difficult to resist. Naturally, much of its success must be credited
to Reese Witherspoon, who serves as not only the film’s star and only performer
with substantial screen time but also its most fervent champion, having
optioned the source material and co-produced it through her nascent company,
Pacific Standard. For one designed to carry a movie and potentially rejuvenate the
actor’s career, Witherspoon’s performance is surprisingly, refreshingly free of
vanity – no gimmicks or showboating, just the simple, sublime feat of bringing
a person to life on screen. She conveys palpable empathy for Strayed, refusing
to shy away from the real-life woman’s complexities and treating her neither as
pitiful nor heroic but as someone with a story worth telling.
But
what makes Wild truly memorable is
its distinctly feminine sensibility. As patronizing as it might seem to praise
a movie just because its main character happens to be a woman, the reality is
that, in an industry that remains aggressively dominated by projects made by,
centered on and aimed at men, anything that defies the norm feels like a blast
of fresh air. Furthermore, just as Thelma
and Louise is much more than Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with women, this is not merely a female
version of Into the Wild. To pretend otherwise,
to assign it some kind of false universality, would be to erase all the little
details and nuances that indicate it belongs specifically to a woman: Strayed’s
instinctively wary reaction to encountering strange men; the compassionate
manner with which her sexuality is handled (cinematographer Yves Bélanger achieves
the near-impossible in framing female nudity without straying into fetishization);
the rejection of the usual perseverance/conqueror narrative in favor of one promoting
redemption through and harmony with nature. So perceptive is the film to
Strayed’s mindset and experiences that if I hadn’t already known otherwise, I
would’ve sworn it was directed or written by women. It inhabits what feminist
literary critic Elaine Showalter called “the wild zone”, a metaphorical space that
provides women a voice and language separate from dominant patriarchal culture,
unknown to men. If men find the wild intimidating, a beast to be tamed, for
women like Strayed, it’s freeing; it’s something of their own.
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