Wild seems to be the type of movie I am drawn to these days. Recently, I’ve been going for heavy dramas, movies about self-discovery, films with acting performances that are Oscar-worthy, and movies based on true stories. Wild had all four of these things, yet it was a dissatisfying movie. It was not a bad movie, but it was severely flawed. And the idea that it could earn so many award nominations this year (though I’m predicting it will earn none) shows just how weak this year has been for movies.
This movie is, more or less, 127 Hours meets Into the Wild meets All Is Lost. I put the first two together well before reading Richard Roeper’s review (he liked it much more than me, giving it an A- by the way), but I have to give him credit for the third tie-in with All Is Lost. But he was spot on while adding this third movie to the equation. This is also why he is the most famous movie critic in America. Ironically, I reference this crew in this article because I’m not sure anyone other than David would enjoy this movie. While 127 Hours and Into the Wild are based on true stories, All Is Lost is not. That is a significant differentiation.
Of the three movies I just listed, it’s most similar to Into the Wild. A down and out middle-aged woman named Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon – Walk the Line, Legally Blonde) has made a mess out of her life and, in an attempt to right herself, decides to take an 1100-mile journey hike through a series of mountain ranges from the Mojave Desert to Washington. And she decides to hike this North Pacific Trail alone with no prior hiking experience. It isn’t overtly stated why she does this, but, similarly to All Is Lost, it is eluded that it is a form of self-prescribed therapy. Instead, it’s a way for her to get away from the person she has become and return to the ideals that made her the person she had been, a person of value and self-worth. But, in my opinion, the person she was at the start of this film wasn’t very different from the person she was by the end. Now there are plenty of flashbacks to suggest that there were periods when she wasn’t the person she wanted to be, but those flashbacks all occurred before her excursion. This would make the viewer wonder if she had already figured things out before this adventure.
Jean-Marc Vallée was rewarded with an Academy Award nomination for Dallas Buyer’s Club in 2013. It’s hard to envision him getting a nomination for Wild. The website I rely on for predictions doesn’t have him as a top 15 candidate. The movie falls apart in two ways. Vallée portrays the story. It’s all over the place.
***Partial Spoiler – Skip the next paragraph if you haven’t seen Into the Wild or 127 Hours and have plans to
Let’s start with the story. In Into the Wild, Christopher McCandless dies after eating a poisonous mushroom. In 127 Hours, Aaron Ralston has to cut his arm off with a Swiss army knife after getting it pinned against a giant boulder. None of those things happen in Wild. Nothing close to those things happen in Wild. Cheryl doesn’t come face to face with any near-death experiences. Does she have experiences along the way? Absolutely. Were any of these experiences embellished for film? I hope not because that would have made her original story even more boring. I honestly felt that there are thousands of better survival/self-discovery memoirs out there that could have been adapted for film. The screenwriting for this movie was done by Nick Hornby, who also wrote the screenplay for An Education.
***End of Partial Spoiler
***Start of Real Spoiler
The second problem is the movie’s direction. I love flashbacks during a film, but this one had about five times too many flashbacks. And they were all over the place. Sometimes Cheryl and her brother were little kids. At other times they were in high school. At other times they were adults. It was challenging to pinpoint what was happening when and how this related to Cheryl in her current situation. Often in the present, she would hear a song or see a sight and be driven back into these memories. And then she would come out of them and be back in the present day, and you would ask yourself, “What just happened?” There wasn’t much order to when one event occurred in relation to another.
Without giving too much away, Cheryl had an excellent relationship with her mother, Bobbi (Laura Dern – Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park II). She admired her mother. Her mother was her hero even when she disagreed with some of her actions. Something occurs to Bobbi, and Cheryl has difficulty coping with it. Now, while we all go through tragedy and try to cope with it in a million different ways, I felt like Cheryl sort of went off the deep end without having that part of her DNA that would have suggested this would have been something she would have done. She went from a straitlaced waitress who was going to college either full-time or part-time to doing stuff that somebody as rational as her would not have done. Now I know this is a true story, and I’m not suggesting this didn’t happen. I’m just saying that we needed more story with that aspect. She didn’t wake up one day and completely ruin everything positive she had going in her life by cheating on her husband with just about anybody who showed her the time of day, nor did she decide she would become a heroin addict. This needed time to develop. This was something that couldn’t be rushed. And this ended up being something that did not materialize. And in turn, it felt rushed.
***End of Real Spoiler
Witherspoon was great, but she’s almost always great. She’ll likely earn a Best Actress Academy Award, but she won’t win. Again, this goes back to the lack of great film performances this year. It has been a growing trend that actors who spend a good portion of the movie on screen by themselves have been rewarded with nominations (Tom Hanks for Castaway, James Franco for 127 Hours, Sandra Bullock for Gravity). However, the trend was rebuffed just last year when Robert Redford (All Is Lost) was denied what would have been just his second Academy Award nomination for acting (his only nomination was way back in 1973 for The Sting). None of the before-mentioned actors won the award, though. I think Franco had the best chance, but Colin Firth delivered a flawless performance in The King’s Speech in 2010, and he would not be denied. This year’s front runner seems to be Julianne Moore for Still Alice (which has yet to come out). Witherspoon might end up falling just short, and I don’t think it will be her felt if she loses as much as it will be Vallée’s for his incoherent and lazy direction. There has also been a buzz about Dern earning a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination. I would have a tough time supporting that. I think this movie deserves a Best Actress award and a Best Adapted Screenplay award. I believe what Hornby developed was probably great, but it didn’t translate under this director.
People who see everything should see this film for Witherspoon alone. I think you’ll be disappointed if you only get to the movies once a month. There are plenty of films out there that are better right now. There aren’t as many as there should be, but there are better ones. May I suggest The Theory of Everything? Wild is not nearly as good as 127 Hours or Into the Wild. It’s on par with All Is Lost, but it isn’t nearly as frustrating or slow. And fortunately, it is based on a true story (unlike All Is Lost).
Plot 7.5/10
Character Development 7.5/10
Character Chemistry 9/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 7.5/10
Directing 7/10
Cinematography 10/10
Sound 8/10 (too much Paul Simon)
Hook and Reel 10/10 (first scene hooks you…you are set up to believe you are in for something special…and, to be honest, it never gets slow or dull…you wonder afterward why there was so much hype)
Universal Relevance 7/10 (there are more meaningful stories out there that should be adapted to film…Witherspoon was great, but she’ll always be great when given the right vehicle)
82.5%
Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie
- Eat Pray Love
- Into the Wild
- Seven Years in Tibet
- 127 Hours
- A Walk in the Woods