Wild was a pick that was added by my wife and indeed it ticks many of her boxes: it stars Reese Witherspoon, an actress that she likes, it has vaguely feminist themes and it’s about hiking in the great outdoors. As an adaption of a popular memoir and a film directed by Jean-Marc Vallée following the incredible success of Dallas Buyers Club, it was always going to be a highly prominent release. After watching this however, it seems to me that Witherspoon is its real auteur more so than the director as it was made by her production company and indeed she worked hard to obtain the filming rights even before the book was officially published.

This film is ostensibly about a woman, Cheryl Strayed, and her determination to complete the entire 4,000+ kilometers of the Pacific Crest Trail all by herself. The grueling journey that would involve over three months of hiking is made worse by the fact that she has no hiking experience and makes many mistakes, including packing too much and bringing the wrong type of fuel for her portable stove. Alone on the trail, her thoughts turn to her past and her path that led her here. Indeed this is the real meat of the movie as through her disjointed reminiscences, we learn of her relationship with her mother and the self-destructive path that her life took following her mother’s death.

Most films in this genre would luxuriate in gorgeous, sweeping views of the landscape. Wild does its share of such moments but they’re surprisingly restrained. Likewise, apart from the cringe inducing opening scene of Cheryl prying out her dead toenails, this film is similarly light on the technical aspects and difficulty of the hike. The flashback scenes are stronger and carry more emotional impact but even so it’s not anything that breaks new ground. I can appreciate that the hike amounts to a months-long therapeutic treatment that helps her to eventually turn her life around and I can agree it’s inspiring. But there’s still some triteness there that I find off-putting, especially since the book basically belongs in the spiritual self-help genre.

I also note that her hike as depicted in this film makes for a terrible example for anyone to follow. As I’ve noted, she basically had zero training and zero advance preparation. The film exaggerates the weight of her pack so much that it’s actually comical and she does elemental mistakes like not bringing enough water and wearing the wrong size of shoes, while not having any companions to mitigate the risks. She could have been raped or killed half a dozen times over over the course of her trek and that she made it safely and in one piece seems like pure luck to me. The film tries to sell it as this being due to her grit and determination but I’m not buying it at all. Wild actually makes for a fairly good example of what not to do when on an epic trek like this.

In the end, I found this to be a decent but not especially good film. You don’t actually see or learn much of the trail from watching this so it’s not going to be a film that especially appeals to hikers. As for the personal development angle, it’s solid but not anything fantastic.