I really enjoyed this movie from start to finish. I don’t know if I would recommend it since there a few things the movie does storytelling wise that might put some folks off, but I walked out of the theater very happy that I had seen this movie. I really liked Reese Witherspoon’s performance and she is looking very good in this movie.
Cryptically spoils some of the music, kind of.
The theater that I saw this at is in a mall and after I left the theater and was walking through the mall, the song Graceland was playing which was kind of cool.
This was a great movie. I loved just how tough just the beginning part of her journey was. And I loved little details, like them actually showing how she got that big ol’ backpack on her back that first time.
The only thing I didn’t get was the end of the movie. It just went by too fast. Everything else in the movie was repeated multiple times. You got to know her mother, her brother, her husband, her heroine use, and all the other things, but then she reaches her destination and she spouts off a bunch of stuff so fast, I didn’t really get to absorb any of it. Did she say she got married there and had kids there? Are we talking about the future (from the movie’s timeline perspective?) or just part of the story we’re missing here in her past that they just never bothered showing?
Just saw this and I agree it was a great movie. My wife almost universally only likes to watch comedies (her line is “I’m interested in this movie but I’m not in the mood for something serious right now, let’s watch something funny” - she says this pretty much every night). We began watching and my wife said she wasn’t in the mood (and the exciting toenail scene didn’t help!). However, after about 10 minutes I noticed we were both completely enthralled by the movie and we ended up watching it together. So to me that’s a testament to the quality of the movie. Plus I thought Reese Witherspoon was great.
As for the end, yeah, they blew right through it, didn’t they? She says something to the effect that she would return to the bridge in 3 or 4 years (I forget the number… maybe even 7!). That she would get married on the bridge, that a couple of years later she’d have a son, that a year after that she would have a daughter they’d name after her mom. I think it was a way of wrapping with a bow the thought about “what if everything you went through in life, including the extra crappy parts, made you who you are” (which simply echos what her mom said about how her abusive marriage was worth it because she ended up with the kids).
I just looked up the Pacific Crest Trail. Holy moly, what a trail! I’d heard of the Appalachian Trail before, and even seen several parts of it, but I’d never heard of this one or seen any of it. Whoever designed this trail seems to have gone out of their way to pick the toughest parts of each state to traverse. I imagine that the trail will see a lot more traffic now because of the book (2012) and then the movie (2014). They’d better make sure that tank is full of water for all these new hikers.
This film and the other midlife crisis back-to-nature film A Walk In The Woods are being cited as one of the causes of more drinking/partying along the Appalachian Trail, especially in the Maine (Northern end) area I believe.
The only reason I’d drink after seeing A Walk In The Woods is to forget how Robert Redford’s wrinkly face looked contrasted with his horrible dyed toupee/hair, to forget about his terrible acting and to forget this miserable excuse of a movie (yeah, my wife talked me into seeing it a couple of weeks ago…).
The only way that ‘news’ story makes sense is if it says “recent movies have led to an interest in hiking, which means more people are on the trails, which means more people drinking and partying” since neither of the movies has any “let’s go party in the woods” aesthetic.
Finally got around to seeing this. Such a wonderfully made movie, the way it deftly interweaves the music, the narrative, the flashbacks, the natural beauty – I can’t find any fault. I recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet.
This kind of story could easily have turned into Oprah Book Club Lifetime Movie treacle but it punches way above its weight.
After this and Dallas Buyers Club I am super interested in what Jean Marc Vallée is doing next. Looks like two new for 2017 TV series, oddly enough: Big Little Lies (HBO) and Sharp Objects.
(Lol just checking the trailer and Big Little Lies has Laura Dern and Reese!)
