Four stars. Rated R, for nudity, sexual content, profanity and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.2.15
In June 1995, at the age of 26
and with her life in what could have been an inescapable downward spiral,
Cheryl Strayed impulsively — foolishly, naïvely, absurdly — embarked on a solo
hike along the Pacific Crest Trail.
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| A glimpse backward, at a happier time: Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon, right) watches as her mother, Bobbi (Laura Dern) enjoys a daily ride on the beloved horse that is one of the few precious things in her life. |
The Minneapolis-based liberal
arts scholar — magna cum laude, with a double major in English and women’s
studies — had zero experience with such activities, but she knew one thing: Her
life was in crisis, and she had to do something.
Attempting to regain her soul
while trekking through Nature’s wonderland likely seemed a reasonable plan.
The resulting memoir — Wild:
From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail — was published in the spring of
2012, reaching No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list that July. The book
was selected for Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club, and in fact had been optioned by
Reese Witherspoon’s production company before copies even hit bookstores.
And so here we are, two years and
change later, with director Jean-Marc Vallée’s big-screen adaptation bringing
Witherspoon the best reviews of her career: accolades that are heartily
deserved.
Vallée will be remembered as the
director/editor who just last year guided Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto to
Academy Awards in Dallas Buyers Club. Clearly, Vallée has a gift for
extracting the best from his actors, and he has worked the same magic here: not
merely with Witherspoon, but also — and equally notably — with Laura Dern,
utterly luminescent as Cheryl’s wise and loving mother, Bobbi.
And it wouldn’t surprise me if
both Witherspoon and Dern galloped home with the same two Oscars.
Vallée also is drawn to
fact-based stories involving people in deep spiritual crisis: self-destructive
individuals who — whether through anger, anguish or an epiphany — abruptly
resolve to turn things around, to make a difference. Two decades passed before
scrappy AIDS angel Ron Woodroof’s saga became a film, in Dallas Buyers Club;
I’m intrigued by the similar length of time that passed before Strayed felt
comfortable turning her chronicle into a book (after which, the film couldn’t
have been made faster).
One suspects she needed time to
process everything.
