So tonight, I finally watched the highly recommended and anxiously anticipated movie, Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon. I came across a review online, written so beautifully and perfectly that I just couldn’t help but share:
“The book, ‘Wild: Lost and Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,’ is a memoir about loss, adventures and personal growth written by Cheryl Strayed. Adapted into the 119-minute movie the film takes viewers on a minute by minute ride filled with the challenges. Straddling every emotional curve from angst to victorious, of one woman’s journey to reckon with her past, as she uncovers her self, moves through grief, and finds her truth…(she) grapples with the loss of her mother, the end of her marriage to her husband, compiled by a heroin addiction, and unwanted pregnancy. She walks solo to heal inner herself.”
I have to admit, the movie itself was not as eventful as I had expected. In fact, it kind of reminded me of a less entertaining yet more physically intense version of “Eat, Pray, Love”, the way the main character (Witherspoon) worked through her past grief in the form of a physical journey that ultimately led to inner healing and self-discovery. Except she didn’t fall in love and get married in the end, so the feminist deep inside me has no complaints. There were also a couple of quotes that stood out to me so much that, in the end, I have to say I rate this film a 6 out of 10- if nothing else, Witherspoon does an excellent job as Cheryl Strayed and at the very least, it may motivate you to connect with nature and do a bit of hiking and/or self-discovery yourself.
“It only had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.”
“It was my life – like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be.”