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Wild (Blu-ray)
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - Germany - Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: James-Masaki Ryan (4th August 2015). |
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The Film
 The opening scene is of a young woman in her 20s who climbs atop a mountain after a grueling hike up with a huge backpack. After reaching the summit, she removes her boots and socks in agony, as shown an extremely blistered and bloody foot with the big toenail just barely clinging on. Removing the nail is one gruelingly painful moment, with her screaming in agony but at the same time makes her knock over her backpack, which then knocks over one of her boots down the mountainside. Panic overtakes her pain, and panic immediately turns into anger. She takes her other boot, and shouts “Fuck you, bitch!” and throws it off the mountain while she screams. During the scream, the screen is bombarded with a montage of images: sex, a dictionary page, a young child, a bloodied and swollen eye, a horse, a fox, an eyeless woman, and a book being burned, followed by the main title, “Wild”. Who was the “bitch” that the young woman was cursing at? Was it to the boot itself, was it the circumstances, was it God, or was it herself? The film actually starts at the middle of the actual film’s linear storyline, but then reinstates itself to the actual “beginning”, which is of the young woman named Cheryl (played by Reese Witherspoon) starting her journey. She is planning to hike 1,000 miles alone on The Pacific Coast Trail from the edge of the Mojave Desert, up toward Ashland, Oregon with a 70 pound backpack on her. With no hiking experience, and no camping experience, she has a terrible time during the first few days. She has trouble setting up her tent, her huge backpack takes an intricate amount of effort to put on her back, and she brings the wrong gas canister for her hot plate so she cannot cook any of the foodpacks that she brought. During the time on the trail, she meets various hikers and also some non-hikers. There is a farmer (played by W. Earl Brown) that invites her to his home for dinner and a hot shower which turns slightly suspenseful while she waits in his truck, but ends up being very helpful and friendly along with his wife at home. The first hiker she meets is Greg (played by Kevin Rankin) who helps her out with some basics, like setting a goal for a pace to hike. Ed (played by Cliff De Young) works at a campsite and helps Cheryl prune her backpack to a more manageable weight. Jimmy Carter (played by Mo McRae) who is no relation to the former US president interviews Cheryl and gives her a “hobo care package”. There are countless other people that Cheryl meets on the trail, at camp sites, and on the road which gives her both courage and inspiration, but there are the few times in which some people give her displeasure and fright. Although not only the people, but rattlesnakes, bugs, desert heat, heavy snow, and lack of water and food give extreme danger. The film follows a linear narrative storyline for Cheryl’s 3 month journey, but within the linear story are various flashbacks into who Cheryl was before the trek and what made her choose to walk the 1,000 miles. Moments of her trek makes her reminisce past moments, sometimes just glimpses and at other times in full. We see her close relationship with her mother, Bobbi (played by Laura Dern), who is a caring, funny, and encouraging mother. Her younger brother Leif (played by Keene McRae) is slightly distant, yet at times can be very close to Cheryl. Scenes with Paul (played by Thomas Sadoski), her ex-husband after 7 years together show their fun loving happiness together, but mostly the incredibly low points. Not because of Paul, but because of Cheryl’s troubling circumstances in life. The flashbacks are not in any linear fashion but like puzzle pieces to be put together. As memories are often thought of in segments, they are played out in random memory form within the film. The downward spiral of Cheryl’s life after the death of her mother at the young age of 45 unfolds in pieces, with her drug use and random sexual encounters damaging both her marriage to Paul, her relationship with her best friend Aimee (played by Gaby Hoffman), and self-inflicting pain both physically and mentally. The 1,000 mile journey for self-redemption is structurally one that requires attention to details and also a second viewing to fully piece everything together. The seemingly random montage at the start of the film is actually everything that Cheryl felt at the moment, and the “Ruthless Bitch” quote that Cheryl wrote herself solves who she was screaming at. Although it is never possible to fully understand every detail of another person’s life, “Wild” is an incredible emotionally draining and also inspiring true story. “Wild” is based on the memoir "Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail", written by Cheryl Strayed chronicling her journey made in 1995. It was published on March 20th, 2012. Although it dropped off the New York Times Best-Seller list 2 months later, it enjoyed resurgence through Oprah Winfrey who chose the book as first selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0. With “The Oprah Effect”, the book reached No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list in July 2012, and stayed on the charts for weeks afterward, selling 1.3 million copies and was critically very well received. Actress Reese Witherspoon announced prior to the book’s official publishing that her production company was going to adapt Cheryl Strayed’s book into a feature film. Nick Hornby, writer of “High Fidelity” and “About a Boy” was hired to adapt the book into a screenplay, and Jean-Marc Vallée, who hot off the Oscar-winning “Dallas Buyers Club” was to direct. Strayed herself was involved in the production, and also is featured in the film in a cameo appearance and her own daughter is also featured in the film as the younger incarnation of Cheryl. The film was shot along the actual Pacific Coast Trail, and stayed authentic to the linear/broken structure of the book. But how true is the story? Strayed has stated that quite a few of the names of characters were changed from the real people to protect identities, and certain elements like the alleyway sex scene did not happen in real life, but there was similar behavior. With almost every frame of the film having Witherspoon in it, the weight of the film is carried completely on her, and she does an amazing job with it. The performance was very deserving of the Academy Award nomination for “Best Actress”. But because of that, almost every other character became supporting, and had very little screen time compared to her. Laura Dern’s Academy Award nomination for “Best Supporting Actress” for the film seemed a bit questionable, as her performance as the mother in “The Fault in Our Stars” was a much more deserving of a nomination, being a fuller character. But it is “Supporting” after all, which we must remember that for the 1974 film adaptation of “Murder on the Orient Express”, Ingrid Bergman won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, by only being in one scene for 5 minutes of the 2 hour-plus film. Interestingly in “Wild” she plays a mother dying of cancer being taken care of by her daughter, and in “The Fault in Our Stars” she plays a mother who has a daughter dying of cancer. The character of Cheryl’s friend Aimee was someone that didn’t get enough screentime. She seemed to be quite an important figure in Cheryl’s destructive life, but who she was and what her friendship was to Cheryl was not defined well enough and there was no flashback to how they met in the first place. Minor quibbles aside, “Wild” is one of the best memoir-to-film adaptations recently. The film was nominated for 2 Academy Awards: Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress, and also nominated for many other awards at various other awards organizations. Interestingly, the only "win" the film had was at the Location Managers Guild Awards, winning the "Outstanding Locations in a Contemporary Film" award. Note this is a region ALL Blu-ray disc which can be played on any Blu-ray player worldwide.
Video
The original widescreen 2.40:1 aspect ratio is encoded in the AVC MPEG-4 codec, and looks wonderful. The pale browns of the Mojave Desert, the lush greens of the forests and the white snow covered landscapes look beautiful, while the darker flashback scenes have a darker tone, all reproduced very well. 20th Century Fox has done a great job with the transfer, but that is to be expected with such a recent release. One of my Blu-ray disc players had a difficult time playing at certain points during the middle of the film, Stopping the disc entirely and restarting the disc from that moment fixed the problem momentarily, but would have trouble with playback later on in the film. Many newer Fox Blu-rays have trouble being played back on quite a few older model Blu-ray players. Trying on a newer Blu-ray player worked without problems.
Audio
There are multiple audio tracks available: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 German DTS 5.1 Italian DTS 5.1 Japanese DTS 5.1 Russian DTS 5.1 Spanish (Castilian) DTS 5.1 The English track uses the separation channels very effectively. The narration and the dialogue are clear and mostly centered, while sounds of nature like the rain and insects are played subtly in the surround channels. The soundtrack is very well played, with the Simon & Garfunkel rendition of “El Condor Pasa (If I Could)” being a recurring motif (which should sound familiar to DJ Shadow fans with the sampling of the original version in “You Can’t Go Home Again”), and songs by Bruce Springsteen, The Shangri-La’s and Portishead being very important to the narrative of the storyline. There is no original score and only existing songs (by 1995) are used for music. There are also optional Cantonese, Danish, English, Estonian, Finnish, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Russian, Spanish (Castilian), Swedish, Thai, Ukrainian, Vietnamese subtitles available for the film. The menus are offered in English as well as many other languages, and Japanese is only available with the Japanese menu settings.
Extras
The following extras are available on the Blu-ray: Audio Commentary by Jean-Marc Vallée, Bruna Papandrea, and David Greenbaum Director Jean-Marc Vallée is a quiet speaker in the audio commentary and is mostly dominated at first by producer Bruna Papandrea. Later in the commentary, production executive David Greenbaum joins in to add some more to the conversation. Nothing extremely revelatory and it could have helped more if either Cheryl Strayed or Reese Witherspoon had joined in. The commentary includes optional Danish, Finnish, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish (Castilian), Swedish subtitles. Deleted Scenes (with optional commentary by Jean-Marc Vallée) (7:49) - Nature Calls (1:36) - Shoe Tree (0:38) - Last Night Before Divorce (1:15) - The Book on Backpacking (1:40) - Lorraine and Cheryl Talk (2:28) There are some interesting scenes like Cheryl asking Greg what he thinks about while hiking, and the biker family’s mother telling Cheryl about life after her son’s death. But as Vallée says in the commentary, they had to be trimmed. A series of short featurettes are up next: "The Real Cheryl Strayed" (8:37) The featurette showcases who the real Cheryl is, about the book, and a little on her cameo appearance. "The Real Location Is the Best Location "(8:45) Nothing greenscreened. The featurette showcases the PCT and how important it was to shoot in the authentic and iconic locations. "How Much Does a Monster Weigh?" (3:46) The huge backpack that Cheryl carried on the 3 month trek is featured, and they show that Witherspoon did not carry a fake lightweight bag, but one that was as heavy as the real “Monster”. "The Pacific Crest Trail" Interactive Map Viewers can use their remote to follow Cheryl Strayed’s journey via interactive map. The text explains the area, and the accompanying scene of the location can be played. Next are a series of promotional featurettes: "Bringing the Book Into the Wild" (3:35) Shows how Witherspoon got hold of the book and immediately wanting to make it into a feature. "Reese Witherspoon in the Wild"(3:55) The featurette shows Witherspoon in the hard physical and mental conditioning of Witherspoon for the role. "Wild: 94 Days, 1100 miles" (3:18) Showing various points in the journey. "Directing Wild" (3:56) Featuring interviews with the cast and crew as well as the director on his style. "Making Wild"(5:21) A standard making-of featurette. Much of the information from previous featurettes are repeated and condensed here. "Pacific Crest Trail" (4:03) The featurette introduces the 2,650 mile hiking trail and the PCT Association, a non-profit that maintains and promotes the trail. "Real Locations" (3:21) Like a shorter version of the previous “The Real Location…” featurette. Stills Gallery (with Auto or Manual advance options) (2:03) A series of behind-the-scenes photographs. The stills gallery plays silently. Theatrical Trailer (2:02) The deleted scenes and featurettes include optional Cantonese, Danish, Finnish, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai subtitles. All extras are in 1080p. So what is missing here? The US release of “Wild” has one additional featurette: "Experiencing the PCT: A Special Message From Cheryl Strayed" (1:47) which has not been ported over to the non-US releases for some reason. As stated before, a commentary by Witherspoon and Strayed would have been ideal to hear, but their comments are seen only in the featurettes. The featurettes themselves tend to repeat a lot of the same information over and over, so a single documentary would have been a better extra rather than the multiple short featurettes.
Overall
“Wild” is exceptional, especially with Witherspoon going above and beyond in one of her most intense and physically demanding performances in her career. Although it is recommended for a second viewing to take everything in to piece together, it may be emotionally too harsh and draining for some to go through it all over again. Very highly recommended.
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