Wild
2014 · Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée
Original language: English
- drama
The story
A woman with a tragic past decides to start her new life by hiking for one thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail.
What it’s like
Sun-bleached and wind-scoured, with wide desert vistas, pine-dark forest and snowfields rendered in raw, handheld intimacy, the camera stays close to a single hiker as weather and terrain shift around her. Flashbacks arrive in grainy, washed-out memory fragments, cut in with the present-day trail in a way that makes the past feel like a weight she carries in her pack. Its vibe is bruised but resilient, a melancholy road movie with moments of wry humour and hard-won quiet. It suits a long solo evening, a reflective weekend, or a moment when you want to watch someone rebuild themselves one blister at a time. Intensity is moderate: grief, addiction and a brief, startling sexual encounter, with some raw, unflinching scenes of injury and drug use but no gore. The pace is measured and episodic, following the physical grind of each mile. It is for viewers who enjoy character-driven journeys about grief, self-reliance and the slow repair of a damaged life.
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