![]() ![]() Surely if she’s to heal, Edie is going to need to get right with the rest of human population, but Miguel’s injection in her life, all calm smiles and adoration for Tears for Fears, is false and fantastical. Eventually, even for a film ostensibly set around a solitary woman and her journey, someone else is going to have to come in to move things along.Įnter Demián Bichir, the exact kind of soothing, patient presence that a film like “Land” needs, even if his sudden appearance during Edie’s darkest hour - “you were in my path,” he shrugs - feels like the worst kind of storytelling. Edie is nothing but a vessel for her pain, and while her initial idea to work through it - or not - alone is a compelling one, it’s not exactly conducive to rapid forward motion. She’s hellbent on not being defined by her grief, but Chatham and Dignam’s script is loath to provide any other details about her life before all this, save for the tragedy that changed her (and when those details are revealed, they don’t feel necessary so much as shocking and a little cheap). ![]() Mainly that she’s alone.Įdie is stiff with people, not cold or cruel, just stiff. The problem: Wright hedges when she should be digging deeper into what’s compelling about a woman battling her demons alone. As Edie’s cabin life grows tougher by the day, Wright screams to no one (besides, of course, an audience that will be tempted to heartily agree) that “THIS ISN’T WORKING!” No, it isn’t, even if the attempts made by the filmmaker and star are admirable enough. Perhaps Edie’s predilection for collapsing on the ground in fits of grief - both in flashbacks and in her current, increasingly dire situation - rankle, a trope-laden way to clue people into the obvious fact that she’s suffering. Until it tips straight into a familiar grief drama. Set against stunning scenery (the film shot in Canada, and save for a few shoddy bits of CGI, fully immerses its audience in the landscape) and focused on a stripped-down performance from Wright, “Land” seems to be set on delivering a new sort of survival story. She does, however, try to make a go of it, and the film’s first act, beset with sequences of Edie’s failures, showcase the film’s (and its director’s) strengths. And yet, like so many of the film’s most interesting choices, these sequences are picked up and dropped, never to be seen again.Įdie isn’t really suited for country life - even a discomfort as benign as brushing with straight baking soda makes her grimace, and that’s before the wild animals and the blizzards and the filthy outhouse. There’s no mistaking that Edie’s pain is real, and a series of flashbacks and happy hallucinations make plain what (and who) she has lost to push her to this moment. Soon enough, Edie alights for off-the-grid Wyoming, taking up residence in a dilapidated cabin tucked into a spread of hunting grounds, far away from the civilized life that has thus far hurt her so badly. Oscars 2023: Best Original Screenplay PredictionsĪn observation from said therapist, however, seems to take accidental root: if Edie isn’t around people, she’s “alone with her pain.” Maybe that’s how she wants it. 'The Redeem Team' Review: A Fully Authorized (but Still Absorbing) Look at 2008 Olympics Champs 'Pretty Problems' Review: Rich People Get Very, Very Wine Drunk in Fizzy Hangout Comedy The film opens with a pair of scenes that showcase just how far gone she is, first telling a well-meaning therapist that “it’s really difficult to be around people, because they just want me to be better,” before threatening suicide in front of her horrified sister (an underutilized Kim Dickens). ![]() Wright, working off a slim screenplay from Jesse Chatham and Erin Dignam - the film is Chatham’s first credit, but Dignam previously directed Wright in early ’90s offerings “Loved” and “Denial” - doesn’t waste much time offering up her broken Edie. While Wright, making her feature directorial debut with tough material, exhibits an appealing unfussiness, so much of “Land” is painful not for its subject matter, but because of its predictability. It doesn’t go any further than that, just one small look, but it hints at a more honest film buried underneath a too-familiar grief drama. For a moment, it seems, even Edie is terrified at the desolation of the world around her, of the terrible isolation she has prescribed for herself. Early in Robin Wright’s “ Land,” as her Edie (Wright) trucks out to middle-of-nowhere Wyoming, a brief flash of fear passes over the filmmaker and star’s face. ![]()
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