This movie features a whole lot of hiking. Hiking is a very slow sport. To make matters worse, Reese Witherspoon is hiking in the middle of nowhere up the Pacific Crest Trail. So for starters, this was not really my type of movie. But I can appreciate what hiking means for Witherspoon's character Cheryl Strayed, whose memoir this movie is based on. Hiking has a regenerative power. She is giving herself new life and accomplishing a massive feat to prove that she can make it on her own.
The narrative is told with a lot of narration and time jumping, so to speak. I imagine the narrations giving us first-person insight into her thoughts are reflective of the story's origin in a book. Strayed's hike is linear, but there are many flashbacks interspersed in the movie. These are powerful memories, that don't only cause her to remember but take Strayed back emotionally. She is emotive, expressing fear and frustration and moments of bliss. Reese Witherspoon gives a gritty performance as the solo hiker. We see her anguish and her perpetual pain out in the desert. Laura Dern, too, as Strayed's optimistic mother is good in the few scenes that she's in.
