If you thought Thoreau’s wish to find a meaningful life in the woods had vanished from the American spirit, think again. The film adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, shows that some still rely on nature’s isolating powers to recapture, or even reinvent, their sense of self. For Strayed, this meant hiking the Pacific Coast Trail (PCT) in her mid-twenties.
In an opening scene in which Strayed, played by a determined Reese Witherspoon, fearlessly rips off her bloody, beaten toenail and throws her hiking boots off a cliff, its clear that the hike is rough and tumultuous. Seconds later, we are transported to Strayed, arriving at a dingy, desert motel and calling her ex, who has clearly moved on. Come morning, Strayed clumsily dons her massive backpack, leaving her deteriorating California life behind to embark on a 1,100 mile journey from the Mojave Desert to the Oregon-Washington border on the PCT – solo.
The highlight of the film is undoubtedly Witherspoon’s performance in a role unlike her popular, and most recognizable, character of the past, Elle Woods. Sporting baggy, grey t-shirts and a glistening, makeup-free face throughout most of the film, Witherspoon embodies the dirty hiker. As an experienced actress, she seamlessly transitions between the Cheryl Strayed of the past – reckless, dangerous, and selfish – to the Cheryl Strayed of the present – brave, honest, and humbled. It is Witherspoon’s dynamism (perhaps unrecognized up to this point) that creates dark and emotional scenes in which she shrieks with sadness or shuts out her loved ones with deafening silences.
While Strayed encounters some fellow hikers along her journey, ranging from friendly soul-searchers to creepy hunters, the film has little dialogue. Since her journey is decidedly an independent one, viewers are instead given insight into her thoughts as she battles dehydration and frustration. Between flashbacks, the pieces of Strayed’s destructive past and impetus for her hike come together. It is revealed that she is a recovering heroin addict, an unfaithful wife, and a motherless daughter, losing her mother (Laura Dern) to cancer in her early twenties. Many of these memories take place during the roughest parts of the hikes through the harsh Mojave Desert.
Unfortunately, Fox Searchlight did not do Wild any favors when it released the official trailer. For any who mistakenly watched the trailer before seeing Wild in theaters, the film’s flashback structure would be artful at best and unsuspenseful at worst. All of Strayed’s most powerful motives for her journey are shown in the trailer, removing the element of surprise likely intended by the movie’s back-and-forth design. Nevertheless, the nonlinear nature of the film is still interesting, and an appropriate choice for a memoir.
Finally there is the question of the movie’s several messages and their successfulness. On the one hand, there is the notion of a woman’s independence and determination to recover on her own by doing something no woman has done before. As the first female to hike the PCT alone, Strayed becomes famous among her fellow hikers as the PCT Queen. For female viewers, her independence is inspiring, but may be tarnished by her encounter with Jonathan (Michiel Huisman), a singer she meets along her journey and enjoys a romantic night with in which she confidently reveals her toned body, ravaged by her backpack and the trail.
As he validates her naked, bruised body by having sex with her, one cannot help but notice that it is through this experience that Strayed gains the final confidence necessary to complete her journey, continuing on to its final leg after she leaves. A female viewer may be left wondering if Strayed is truly the strong, independent PCT Queen she has been made out to be if she still requires sexual validation from a man.
Then there’s Wild’s version of “everything happens for a reason.” Luckily by the end of the film, Strayed does not attempt to mask her poor life choices with the success of her hike. She does, however, recognize that without the decisions that prompted her to make this journey in the first place, she would not have been able to experience the joy and recovery that completion of the trail afforded her. As a subtle point, it may easily be misconstrued as a cliché, but viewers should not be quick to write Strayed’s journey off as simply another lost soul searching for self-definition.