Review: "Wild"

 I was surprised to appreciate “Wild” a lot more than I thought I would. The tale of a young woman who sets off on a seemingly random 1,000-mile trek by foot to find herself, it looked like the sort of simplistic, life-affirming pap you often see in cinemas this time of year.

But buoyed by a terrific, grounded performance by Reese Witherspoon, “Wild” is anything but maudlin. It’s a tough, gritty look at a woman at their end of her rope, who sets out on an expedition in which the destination doesn’t matter, but testing herself in spirit and body is the true aim.

She happened to choose the Pacific Crest Trail, a grueling path through the Western mountains and deserts, as her personal crucible. But really, it could have been anything.

Her story is less about going somewhere, and more about finding your own path, and getting started along it.

The quality of the filmmakers behind the project should have clued me in. Director Jean-Marc Vallée was nominated for an Oscar last year for “Dallas Buyers Club,” and also helmed the high-toned “The Young Victoria.” Screenwriter Nick Hornby is known for cerebral material such as “An Education” and “About a Boy.”

The film is based on the best-selling book by Cheryl Strayed, who hiked the PCT through California, Oregon and Washington two decades ago while in her mid-20s. Her marriage had just come off the tracks and ended in divorce, due mostly to her philandering. (Thomas Sadoski has a tidy, small role as her long-suffering but sweet husband.)

On top of that, her beloved mother (a glowing Laura Dern) had died of cancer, and Cheryl was getting ever more heavily into hard drugs. Clearly things were headed in a foul direction.

Instead of hitting rock bottom, though, she came across the idea of traveling the PCT, despite being an itinerate hiker herself. We see exactly how inept she was in the early going, as she struggles to shoulder a pack that is literally bigger than her, and tears her feet to bloody shreds with too-small boots.

Cheryl meets a few people along the way, mostly men, and there’s an explicit threat of assault or rape with many of these encounters, as a young cute blonde girl all alone on the trail. But she proves quite able, and some scary meetings turn out to be friendlier than first blush. (W. Earl Brown turns up nicely as a gruff bushmaster.) Still, a couple of hunters appear to enjoy frightening her just for the sheer thrill of it.

In the film’s most bizarre (but true!) sequence, she is nearly run over by an enthusiastic African-American reporter for the Hobo Times who says his name is Jimmy Carter. Despite Cheryl’s protestations that she’s not homeless, just in between homes, she ends up becoming an unwilling subject for the publication.

Along the way, our protagonist is revealed to be a thoughtful, literate woman – she writes down quotes from famous writers in the trail station journals – who’s simply made a lot of bad choices in her life. Rather than wallowing in self-pity, she hits the road like a latter-day Jack Kerouac, though on her own two feet rather than behind the wheel.

Instead of just flaunting her freedom, though, Cheryl Strayed was seeking inspiration and forgiveness. “Wild” is the soulful tale of how she learned these were not things out there to be discovered, but gifts only she could give to herself.

Review: "Ain't Them Bodies Saints"

Lyrical and bare bones, “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” is the sort of movie Terrence Malick made early in his career, where mood and imagery trump narrative and dialogue. Writer/director David Lowery is already more than a dozen years deep into his feature film career, but this movie has the aspect of a debut -- of a voice that is not new but now comes to the fore with a confident, compelling tone.

“Saints” is the sort of story we’ve heard before: a desperate man driven to extreme acts in the pursuit of something good and pure. In this case, a convict breaks out of prison so he can be reunited with his wife and the daughter he’s never met. But the way Lowery invests the tale with emotional weight and a lingering sense of portent, it takes on the feel of a small Homeric epic.

Even at a sleek 96 minutes, the movie has a sense of sprawl and languidness. While some might find the film indulgent, I hardly ever felt like the cast and crew were treading water.

Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara bring a genuine, sad quality to their performances as Bob and Ruth, two lovers separated for nearly five years while Bob is imprisoned. It’s endemic to Lowery’s style of storytelling that we never learn precisely what crime was committed, other than it involved a suitcase full of cash and the involvement of some shady characters, who will later return.

What we do know is that during a shootout with police, Bob’s partner was killed and Ruth shot and wounded a sheriff’s deputy. Bob takes the rap so she and their unborn daughter can remain free.

Their relationship continues as something heartfelt and almost mystical, in that it survives only through their imagination. Bob pens daily, emphatic letters declaring his everlasting love – both for her sake and his own. His sense of himself as more than just another outlaw is what sustains him.

In many ways Ruth’s sentence is harsher than his, since she must continue living in the same small dusty Texas town they came from, raising a little girl in the midst of a community that looks askance upon them.

Brooding right next door is Skerritt (Keith Carradine), a local shopkeeper and father figure to both Bob and Ruth. It was his own son who was killed during the botched getaway that sent Bob to prison, so he isn’t thrilled at the prospect of his return.

Complicating things further is that wounded deputy, Patrick Wheeler (the always-excellent Ben Foster), who looks in on Ruth out of a sense of duty and finds himself drawn in by her tragic gravity. As word of Bob’s escape makes the rounds, it appears as if their trio of fates are hurtling toward each other like runaway steam engines.

“Saints” is simply a gorgeous picture of sights and sounds, and full credit goes to cinematographer Bradford Young and composer Daniel Hart for their craftsmanship. There are long, nearly wordless stretches in the film where the photography and music carry us, and there’s a rhythmic cadence to these sequences that is infectious.

Set in the late 1960s to early ‘70s, the movie seems both defined by its era and timeless. This tale could just as easily be transplanted to the 1920s with a quick change of cars and clothes.

Some movies are pushed along by their plot, while a few are content to lay back and explore characters and settings. “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” is noteworthy less for what it says than the evocative way it goes about saying it.