Find Your Center

Wild (2014)

A Review By Ben Hunter

5 Out Of 5 Stars

GET TO THE POINT BEN!

Go on the journey with Cheryl and find a little happiness in your life!

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As she introspected into her life, spawning from that bloodied, nail dangling, toe, the questions arose of finding her strength and possibly being able to cope.  She felt rage.  She felt such an overwhelming rage of emotion that she tossed her boot over the mountainside, lost forever.  In the middle of the Pacific Crest Trail, the forest, the heat, the cold, and the wild, she now realized how alone she was.  Yet she was now on the path, figuratively and in some literal sense, to soon realizing she was more alone in her previous life than here and was soon to be at one with her spirit, her breath, and finally be at peace with herself and her choices.

Depression, drugs, empty sex, unwilling to fulfill the duties of one’s life, Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) feels lost and cannot find her center.  The loss of her mother Bobbi (Laura Dern) has sent everything uncoiling in a series of unpleasant events in their fruition.  To feel hopeless, your inspiration and leadership is no longer a tangible presence, it’s such a terrible feeling, it would drive me over the edge!  One day, it all just “clicks”.  Discussing a possible abortion over lunch with a friend, Cheryl needs to pick up a shovel afterwards, as it’s snowy Minneapolis.  While in the checkout aisle she notices a guidebook for the Pacific Crest Trail.  Another aisle but of the outdoors that stretches from Mexico through California and then all the way up to Canada.  It is here that Cheryl would find her strength.  It is here that Cheryl could be at peace with her spirit in the quiet of nature.  It is here that Cheryl would find her center and be the woman her mother has taught her to be, her best self. 

Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) on the path of peaceful fruition and starting to realize it.  

I was secretly impressed because all of a sudden I was experiencing greatness.  This film crept up on me and I couldn’t help but smile and nod in approval.  When Bobbi teaches Cheryl to look past the negativity in her life and to be her best self, I immediately jumped on board the bandwagon.  That’s exactly the lesson I’m currently learning in my life.  Cheryl pleads with her mother and lashes out for her to fight more against the fact that she married a terrible person who caused her nothing but pain.  How that left them broke and trying to pay off school loans.  With nothing but pure love and wisdom, Bobbi shares with her daughter to be the best version of herself that she can be and to hold onto it for dear life.  With love you’re able to look past the opposition presented against you and lift yourself above that.  It’s what makes you do what’s necessary and genuinely true to the success of everyone whose stories are all connected in that period of time.  It may and probably will be difficult … but it’s oh so worth it!

THAT’S what I left the theater thinking about the most.  That one little two-minute scene, for it’s something I’ve already started to inaugurate in my personal period of time.  These are the things that movies should do to us.  Help us to implement the positivity in our own lives, to escalate on such a grandiose scale!

Reese Witherspoon definitely was apart of such escalation.  I loved how the “rules” of filmmaking were even bent and gone against the grain to create such tension as Cheryl started out on her journey.  Hearing Reese’s words during this moment involved me on her journey.  This was in the beginning, so for the entire movie I could feel myself in each environment with Cheryl as she trekked and pressed on to find her center and strength.  I sincerely connected with her performance and secretly, once again, she and this film crept upon me again.  There is no performance better this year, in my opinion with the actresses, than with Reese. 

Go on the journey yourself with her initially or once again and find a little happiness in your life!

Wild

Drama, 115 Minutes, R

Based on the Memoir: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

By: Cheryl Strayed

Screenplay by: Nick Hornby

Directed by: Jean-Marc Vallée
Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Gabby Hoffmann