Livre

Your life will most likely determine whether or not you like this film, whether or not it moves you.

I read the book and was not sure how they were going to make such an introspective novel into a movie but they did a pretty good job. My group of friends had mixed reactions, some of us were deeply moved (myself included) some where wondering why we were...

I felt the way her story was portrayed in flashbacks was very effective and about the only way to tell this story. It can never be as deep as the emotions in the book and it had to skim over a lot but still, for me and others I was with it was very powerful.

On a superficial side note... I wish she had looked dirtier. Her hair and clothes always looked too clean for what she was doing with very minimal hygiene.

Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern got well deserved Oscar nominations for their roles in this film. In fact, I cannot fathom how Witherspoon was denied a win.

I won't fall into the trap of comparing this film to the book. The book was the best one I read last year, and I thought it unfilmable. I was surprised at how well the film managed to capture the essential elements of the book.

The key was not the Pacific Coast Trail, but Cheryl Strayed's journey into self-discovery. The point where she fell to her knees in tears was the culmination of pain in her life, and the realization of her love for her mother.

This is definitely a film to watch more than once.

No secret that I love one-man survival films (although this wasn't that type of "survival" film). Still, despite very good reviews, there was always a severe lack of hype and passion it seemed (certainly here). Maybe that's why I was so surprised. Usually this kind of heavy-edited, heavy- flashback-intercutting-with-main-story film alienates me emotionally for that reason. Too much back and forth. I had the same problem with 2007's Into The Wild, which so often prevented me from getting too involved with it. For some reason I didn't have that problem here. The actual story, as well as the dramatic ticks in the flashbacks and even in the present, aren't anything we haven't seen before dozens of times. However, the film really managed work despite that. The editing I found to enhance the film immensely, and the specific style of the intercutting with her memories managed to make the film more powerful.

I like Witherspoon just fine in Walk The Line, but it was all mostly surface-level. She was fun, but any lasting impact? Not at all. She's truly fantastic here, and she will get a very deserved nomination tomorrow. Now, everyone knows how much I'd been rooting for Laura Dern for a nomination. I hadn't seen it, but she's one of my favorite actresses. But so many reports of her role being super small, almost a cameo. Her role technically is super small, less than 10 minutes for sure, but the relationship between her and Witherspoon is the central relationship at the core here. Dern's presence is felt throughout to an incredible degree. And she really does have a meaty role for such short screen time. It reminds me of Jessica Chastain in The tree Of Life and also to Patricia Arquette in Boyhood, perfect depiction of that feeling of compassion and motherly love that is eternal. Dern is one of those actors that can move me with so little, so I don't think this was at all anything difficult for her, but either way, she manages to become such an undeniable, powerful part of the film. The editing is part of the reason that central relationship works, but the scenes Dern gets to convey her entire character are flawlessly acted and, so beautifully ethereal. I had feared for a while there that it would be such a small role she'd make no lasting impact, but of course she'd make an impact. It's Laura Dern after all.

An arduous journey across America on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed tests her tenacity to continue forward till the end. There's very little else to the story, which makes this film really powerful. With not much else other than a tedious walk and a vampish past the story bobs back and forth between the present and the past revealing how Cheryl finds herself in such a circumstance and why she cant stop until she is finished.

At first Cheryl seems like a woman unable to let go of her now ex-husband, beginning a journey with more baggage than is necessary. It might almost be easy to throw this story into the bin of sappy chick-flicks when that inability to get closure on a relationships end is actually fronting as more of an act of remorse and regret. She messed up. And there is no way to repair the damage without an ugly scar.

The further she goes the more she dives into the series of events that lead her to such a devastating circumstance of sex and drugs. The loss of her mother is far too much for her to feel. The depth of such pain can sometimes strip a human being from feeling anything at all. The tears flow from her face but those tears are not falling for grief, they drop from the overwhelming numbing the death has caused.

Cheryl's emotions are lost in a wild and desolate space that is pain and grief, which is so perfectly mirrored with the vast, open landscape she is now physically wondering through. And both her emotions and the land are the same: it wont change immediately and things will be tough but if one keeps going forward one will come out of it. And better for it. Cheryl just needed that physical aspect to make the connection with her emotions. The self-loathing and destructive life she was living was the equivalence of her just lying down on the sandy path and dying right there.

It's a fairly event-less film where a woman just goes through some fairly tough terrain but somehow the flashes to her past spliced in with the turmoil of her present moves the story along swimmingly.

If you're a fan of deeply emotional story lines this one might very well be worth the watch.

I am the daughter of a mother who recently passed away from lung cancer. She never smoked, like the protagonist mother. I cried many times during this movie. It made me think a lot because like the lead character, i often ruminate over the past; i have a lot of flashbacks and memories of my mother keep replaying in my head., and the things she said to me will forever echo in my brain. In terms of the sex and the drug taking, i think Resse did very well in portraying the daughter who completely lost herself and the desire to live with the loss of her mother. I also grew up in a single household and my mother and I were always together, our identity are intertwined; it was us against the world. Losing our mother is like losing more than life itself, I am still finding myself lost and struggling to find meaning in life. It is a constant struggle to not give up and give into self destruction and I am very thankful that the protagonist captured this feeling very well.

Like the life of a lot of people, this movie is about the journey we take. Its not about the destination or achieving a particular purpose. It is deeply realistic, and i am glad it doesn't lecture or give a moral lesson on how we should be ,or a happy ending because we don't always get that in life. Life is ugly and it doesn't always end in happiness and things don't always happen for a reason good people do not always get a good ending and normal people can do bad things to themselves and to toh others due to pain brought on by unbearable grief. This movie inspires me to maybe run a marathon.

Walking, hiding and running are very meditative and its like a metaphor for life, no matter what happened, all we can do is keep walking.