Wild

One of the more pleasant surprises of awards season — where studios inundate viewers and critics with what they perceive as their “best efforts” — is Jean-Marc Vallée’s Wild. This is not to say that the film isn’t on the Oscar-bait side, but then so is everything else of note at this time of year. And I won’t deny that this tale of self-discovery has some issues — like at least two more mystical CGI foxes than should be allowed by law. Nor will I pretend that a large part of the movie’s raison d’etre isn’t to reinvent Reese Witherspoon as a daring, edgy actress. But the truth is it kind of does, though not because she takes her clothes off, has indiscriminate sex, does drugs, makes disastrous life choices and is a serial adulteress. No, it’s because she allows herself to be deglamorized. Agreeing to lighten her load by jettisoning her deodorant, she admits, “I stink. I stink all the time, and my armpits are the least of it.” That may be the least glamorous thing ever said by a lead actress in the history of film, and it is only one example.

While I am not against Witherspoon in general, neither can I call myself a fan, and she was my primary concern going into Wild. Yes, it’s partly her trademark perkiness, which is not an issue here at all (nor is it one in the upcoming Inherent Vice). But it’s more the pitch of her voice that tends to grate on me when it reaches a point near what only dogs can hear. That only happens once in Wild — she screams, “Fuck you, bitch!” at a boot that has fallen off a mountain — and it’s at about the two-minute mark, so it’s over and done with quickly. It’s rather like pulling a Band-Aid — or in her character’s case, a toenail — off quickly. After that, she never irritated me. I think it’s because Witherspoon has chosen to reinvent — or at least radically expand — herself in a story that is about reinvention — not only for her character, Cheryl Strayed, but for Cheryl’s mother, Bobbi (Laura Dern). It all feels very personal.

However, this tale of Cheryl Strayed — perhaps ill-advisedly, certainly ill-preparedly — hiking the Pacific Coast Trail in an attempt to rediscover herself (or “the woman my mother thought I was,” as the film has it), is not just a Reese Witherspoon show, even if she is carrying the bulk of it. Credit must be given to Jean-Marc Vallée’s direction and Nick Hornby’s screenplay, which at least feels like it had input from Vallée or was broken down by him — much of the structure and approach resembles Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club from last year. The funny thing is while I think Dallas Buyers Club the better film, I think Wild is both better made and makes more successful and important use of the often very brief flashbacks that are common to both films. Here — where we’re just dropped into the story with no background — these cutaways actually establish Strayed’s past and the events that have led to this journey. In Dallas Buyers Club they mostly just reiterate things we already knew. The fact that we only understand Strayed in bits and pieces — much like Strayed — makes her journey our own.

Wild is also a very well-crafted movie in other respects. It’s interesting that the inevitable target a woman undertaking this trek alone will (with minimal melodrama) become, the idea is first put forth by a low-minded motel desk clerk (Beth Hall), who immediately assumes that a woman alone must be on the make. That this attitude is expressed by another woman makes the moment stand out. Also, the soundtrack is beautifully applied, especially the use of Simon and Garfunkel’s “El Condor Pasa (If I Could)” as a recurring theme that we’re teased with before we hear the song. Frankly, I thought this was a song I’d had a sufficiency of by 1971, but here it feels almost new again — familiar, but just right. Truthfully, “just right” largely describes the whole film to me, even with its occasional missteps. A great movie? Probably not, but a very good one. Rated R for sexual content, nudity, drug use and language.