Land

A woman in despair after a tragedy retreats to a cabin in the mountains to live alone.

Robin Wright directs her own performance, spending much time onscreen alone and silent as a woman struggling to survive both in relation to the wilderness and her own pain. Her performance always rings true emotionally, and the beats of her transformation are lucid. The landscape is beautifully filmed, the landscapes are vast, the winter is bitterly cold and the wilderness is living and breathing; though her interaction with it, her struggle to chop wood and hunt deer, the physical realities of her life, a very superficially depicted. The beauty and tangibility of the world is so real that I can't help but want to believe in her relationship with it. But the ultimate impact, of a woman struggling with significant emotional turmoil and despair, is real and her transformations and relationships are moving.

Some of the reviews of this movie complain of the slow pace and it is in fact slow. But as we get older we are not in such a rush to get to the end, don't need a breakneck pace to satisfy. We can often see ourselves in this sort of film and have some experience of loss. I very much enjoyed this.

"Everybody wants to rule the world" Sung along in Land, from Tears for Fears.

Ethan Hawke brings in those lyrics as well in Tesla last year, making it an anthem for lonely souls seeking more control of their modern lives. Edee (Robin Wright, who also directs) encounters that song and sentiment during her self-exile in the Wyoming mountains in Land as she struggles with life and death in a failed attempt to control a narrative that includes the loss of her husband and son to a mass shooting.

A week ago, I witnessed two other women against the odds with The World to Come, where smart ladies weather a brutal winter in 19th century Upper NY State and inadequate husbands. Both filmmakers have captured the reality of survival in hostile but beautiful surroundings, where the environment is metaphor for the storms within.

Yet, like the hostile living, the women fight fate to control their lives, not without pain and suffering. Edee forsakes life only to find it stalking her in the form of a Good Samaritan, Miguel (Demien Bichir), who not only saves her life but gives her life through his generosity of heart for all living things.

Edee must learn to survive (she has forsaken phones and cars) by killing animals and accepting humans, both challenges for a self-determined exile. The story is minimalist, needing not more than cinematographer Bobby Bukowski's stunning landscapes and Trevor Smith's production design, which is at home in the city as well as an old mountain cabin with previous haunting lives.

Escape to stunning landscape? see Land, but don't think life can be left behind. Robin Wright's expert direction, for her first helming, never lets us forget that our humanity, and the need to connect with it, will never leave us.

Land is a fascinating existential journey that showing the melancholy unity between the living and the dead, as James Joyce so poetically pointed out long ago. The connection that brings life: Miguel explains to Edee when she asks why he is helping her: "You were in my path."

Be exhilarated by a story about exile that doesn't work. Land is beautiful, harrowing, and ultimately rewarding.

Maybe it's a trend, maybe it's a passing phase, but simplistic stories about becoming one with the wild have been hard to ignore of late. From Chloe Zhao's 'Nomadland' to Robin Wright's 'Land,' following the stories of women who have tried to disappear into nature has made for intriguing subject matter.

In Wright's directorial debut we follow the journey of Edee, a middle-aged woman who escapes civilization as she copes with guilt that stems from a tragic personal loss. The film's low budget-ness helps give it an authentic feel, as the focus is on the Wyoming wilderness and the struggle Edee has not only with the elements, but with her inner demons. But it's not all doom and gloom - we get to witness a rebirth of sorts with her budding friendship with a local man (Demián Bichir), as well as a very important learning by film's end.

If 'Land' is an example of what Wright is capable of on both sides of the camera, we should expect much more to come.

LAND is a touching study of a woman steeped in grief, determined to leave life behind in the midst of a devastating happening. Robin Wright effectively directs from an angle of isolation, both of place and of mind. It's a solid directorial debut and a raw, emotional performance. A lot of moments and scenarios feel familiar, and while that hinders the overall experience, LAND is so beautifully shot with such deeply heartfelt performances that it earns a lot of respect by the end. The film's biggest achievement is the its second half, and the subtle way it works through grief and pain in restrained, tender moments.