Wild: Grief, Courage, and Letting Go

When this year's Oscar nominations were announced, it was disheartening to see how almost all of the Best Picture nominations were for movies about men. The lack of female leads in the Best Picture race is appalling, but at least the Best Actress field showcases five movies where women truly delivered the goods. After watching Wild, you will be astonished by Reese Witherspoon's performance and strongly reminded of just how fantastic it is to watch movies where women get to just be themselves.

Wild is based on the memoir of the same name by Cheryl Strayed. It is the story of her 1100-mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail, a journey she embarked upon on as a way to start afresh after a particularly heinous period of her life. After the death of her beloved mother a few years ago, Cheryl had spiraled into grief, destroying her marriage, engaging in casual sex and heroin use, and generally unable to find any purpose to her life. By hiking along the PCT, she hoped to finally deal with her wild grief and come to terms with her turbulent past before embarking on her future.

Director Jean-Marc Vallee and writer Nick Hornby have created a dreamy, beautiful movie that chooses to follow a free-associating narrative rather than a wildly conventional biopic form. It is anchored by Cheryl's journey, counting the days and miles hiked, but most of the movie is told in flashbacks, accompanied by beautiful images, weird hallucinations, dreams, and nightmares. This movie is "wild" in every sense of the term; the locations are primitive and awesome, Witherspoon's performance is raw and unrelenting, and every scene contains an unflinching maelstrom of sadness, beauty, and perseverance.

We are so used to seeing men embark on these journeys but it is extraordinary to see a woman on her own, free to explore her psyche and think about her life, unfettered and unbound by convention. The movie doesn't shy away from the dangers of being a lone woman hiker, and Cheryl has to deal with her fair share of creeps on the trail, but she has already endured so much in her past that she is more than equal to the challenge. She endures innumerable physical hardships, but the emotional scars are the ones that bleed the most. The flashbacks to her mother (played wonderfully by Laura Dern) deeply resonate, giving us a sense of who this woman was and the enormity of her loss that has led her to this present moment. It is a courageous and devastating story that is wonderful to witness.

Wild is a spectacular movie that tells a very necessary and moving tale. From beginning to end, you are side by side with Cheryl on this journey and you emerge at the other end of the trail with a sense of fulfillment and gratitude. I did not know just how much I had missed watching a woman fearlessly lead a movie until I saw Wild. I can only hope that 2015 gives us many more movies about women, by women, for women.