Wild (15.)
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee.
Starring Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Gaby Hoffmann, Thomas Sadoski, Michael Huisman and Keene McRae. 116 mins.
In 127 Hours you have to wait over an hour for the avert-your-eyes moment but in Wild, another tale of endurance in nature, they get it over with at the start: Witherspoon pulls a toe nail out of the bloodied and bruised stump of her foot when she is halfway through her solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail which runs, border to border, from Mexico to Canada.
Wild is basically a whydunnit. We see her at the beginning, a lone figure with a comically oversized rucksack setting out uncertainly on this epic quest. It's another example of a common Hollywood narrative – penitence through physical degridation. The narrative tension is not will she make it - the Pacific Crest Trail is a fairly well worn path completed by over 100 hikers each years – but finding out what demons are driving her to do this and these are revealed to us in flashbacks.
Canadian Vallee is the director of The Dallas Buyer's Club but this is closer to his earlier stylish sensual puzzle Cafe De Flor. He's a showy director, but with decorum; he wants to impress you with his imagery, his framing but without being pushy, which means that his associative jump cuts are more instinctive, natural and human than most directors trying to do a flashback filled narrative. In 127 Hours, Danny Boyle affects a similar style, with music and flashbacks and dreams sequences and the result is so clumsily bombastic it defeats the meaning of the story. Wild avoids that though the actual process of hiking the trail, completing those hard miles is rather lost or obscured by the backstory.
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee.
Starring Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Gaby Hoffmann, Thomas Sadoski, Michael Huisman and Keene McRae. 116 mins.
In 127 Hours you have to wait over an hour for the avert-your-eyes moment but in Wild, another tale of endurance in nature, they get it over with at the start: Witherspoon pulls a toe nail out of the bloodied and bruised stump of her foot when she is halfway through her solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail which runs, border to border, from Mexico to Canada.
Wild is basically a whydunnit. We see her at the beginning, a lone figure with a comically oversized rucksack setting out uncertainly on this epic quest. It's another example of a common Hollywood narrative – penitence through physical degridation. The narrative tension is not will she make it - the Pacific Crest Trail is a fairly well worn path completed by over 100 hikers each years – but finding out what demons are driving her to do this and these are revealed to us in flashbacks.
Canadian Vallee is the director of The Dallas Buyer's Club but this is closer to his earlier stylish sensual puzzle Cafe De Flor. He's a showy director, but with decorum; he wants to impress you with his imagery, his framing but without being pushy, which means that his associative jump cuts are more instinctive, natural and human than most directors trying to do a flashback filled narrative. In 127 Hours, Danny Boyle affects a similar style, with music and flashbacks and dreams sequences and the result is so clumsily bombastic it defeats the meaning of the story. Wild avoids that though the actual process of hiking the trail, completing those hard miles is rather lost or obscured by the backstory.
