Wild

Hollywood loves a story of redemption, especially if it involves someone putting themselves through something that’s interesting to look at – say, hiking across a whole lot of beautiful wilderness. The trouble with these stories is that redemption through suffering is a pretty Old Testament idea; these days most of us tend to think that all suffering does is make you suffer.
Wild gets around the problem of having a lead – in this case real-life author Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) – go on a journey that really doesn’t do much to solve any of her personal problems and instead focuses on the journey itself. Cheryl was very close to her mother (played by Laura Dern in flashback) and after she died Cheryl took to sleeping around and doing drugs, which totalled her marriage. In order to pull herself together, she decided to hike up the Pacific Crest Trail, which goes from Mexico up to Canada along the west side of the USA, because… a lot of walking would clear her head? But you don’t have to believe in the idea of penance just so long as you believe she does, because the spine of this film isn’t her emotional journey, it’s her physical one.
She starts out with the wrong gear, she gets tired, she gets blisters, she gets bored, she gets lost and she has to ask for help and pretty much every man she sees is a potential threat because after all, she is a woman by herself in the middle of nowhere. By focusing in on these smaller details (broken up by numerous flashbacks that fill in her past while making sure not to make the sleeping around and drug-taking seem too irredeemable), this sketches out the idea that by losing yourself in the tiny details of life you can let yourself heal in a way that wouldn’t be possible if you were trying to force it.
It’s still rough in parts and the few stabs at a wider meaning generally don’t work (Strayed’s habit of writing down quotes from famous thinkers in visitor books, then adding “and Cheryl Strayed” after them like she’s their co-author is hilarious), but unlike a lot of camping movies, Wild is a trip worth taking.