Wild

Tonight I saw Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern.

Everyone processes grief differently: some hide and retreat for the privacy; others weep every day until their tears run dry. Cheryl Strayed (Witherspoon) coped with the loss of her young mother (Dern) by having extramarital affairs and shooting heroin.

When those recreations weren't satisfying her anymore, she divorced her husband and hiked the Pacific Crest Trail from California to Oregon—completely alone. She wrote a book about her journey, which is what this film is based upon.

Of course, because she wasn't a nature enthusiast or even regular hiker, Strayed wasn't truly prepared for what was in store. She read guidebooks and bought fancy supplies at REI, but when she got to the trail, her bag was too heavy, she didn't know how to pitch a tent or use her stove properly and her shoes didn't fit. Admirably (or stupidly, depending on how you look at it), she pressed on.

She encountered everything from foxes to snakes along the trail, and with the exception of one pair of creepy men, several human beings who were nothing but kind. Watching this just may restore your confidence in humanity.

Witherspoon does a stellar job of making Strayed's pain seem authentic and her mistakes almost necessary. What judgmental folks who scoff at the path she took will overlook is that at the heart of everything, she was searching for an experience to expel the grief that she couldn't let go of in any normal scenario.

I've never lost a parent, but I have lost love in life and it took me years to recover from it because I wasn't able to completely lose myself in that grief and step outside myself to process it.

Strayed gave herself a great gift by completing her trip and she gave us a great gift by sharing that journey. More than a story of pain, it's a meditation on healing.

We could all learn a thing or two from her courage.

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127 Hours

On Monday, I saw 127 Hours, starring James Franco.

When I heard about the real news story that inspired this film, I was simultaneously repulsed and fascinated. How could anyone cut their own arm off to free their body from a rock? What conditions could be so dire that would leave no alternative?

Director Danny Boyle does a good job of spelling it all out for us viewers using James Franco's convincing talent to mimic what the real Aron Ralston must've endured.

When we meet Aron on-screen, he's a twentysomething adrenaline junkie seeking a Saturday hike in the canyons of Utah. He meets some cute girls, flirts with them and continues on his solo expedition. He jumps and climbs and leaps with reckless abandon. The angles and shots we see when we're experiencing his point of view are so dramatic, I had to wonder how close to danger the camera crew really came.

Very soon after leaving his new friends, a boulder falls during one of his climbs and pins his arm to a canyon wall. The remainder of the movie is his struggle to free his arm and eventually the desperate act of amputating it with a dull knife.

I wasn't sure I'd make it to the film, as I'm the squeamish type, but the buzz surrounding Franco's allegedly Oscar-worthy performance left me too curious to pass it up.

I'm glad I had the courage to go (even if I had to turn my eyes away from some of the most graphic parts) because his acting is first-rate and the story, though spoiled years ago by the nightly news, is still compelling. A man who was careless enough to go on a dangerous hike and not tell a soul where he was headed also turned out to be smart enough to survive—a feat many people probably couldn't have accomplished under the circumstances.

The only drawback for me was the distracting, almost Indian-sounding score that was overbearing at times.

Silence, I believe, can illustrate tense moments better than anything.

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