Land is a movie all about being alone. For so much of the screen-time there is none but Robin Wright’s Edee to attract your attention as she attempts to survive off the land in an old cabin in the remote mountain wilderness of Wyoming (though actually shot in the Albertan Rockies). She is choosing to live like this as some means of coping with the trauma of a largely mysterious tragedy that resulted in the deaths of her husband and son. Out there she doesn’t have to see people, doesn’t have to know what’s going on or participate in society at all.
The film is Wright’s directing debut, and I wonder if she would have made it had she known the idyllic, pastoral solitude of Edee’s isolation would lose any romanticism in the minds of most viewers by the time it came out. For as much as the plot depicts the severe hardships of living alone in the barren wilderness and the need for human contact, the films’ language also allows that very isolation a tranquil, peaceful atmosphere and sense of healthy escapism, especially in the second half. It’s a notion hard to sympathize with in 2021 when so many of us have spent so much time alone against our will. That however is hardly the films’ fault, and to its’ credit it stresses heavily the importance of social connection. In fact it’s the primary theme and the necessity for Edee’s character growth.
Edee is a very reserved character, even when she isn’t all by herself, and she doesn’t seem to have any interest in communicating honestly with anybody or having to deal with her trauma in a useful way. She simply wants to escape it and take her mind off it. Surviving off the land in a dark and cold cabin that probably shouldn’t be permitted for long-term living provides routine challenges for her to distract herself. For much of the movie we’re seeing this womans’ avoidance, and it’s inevitably going to turn out disastrous, especially given how she’s no expert on backwoods living, struggling to chop firewood, cook freshly caught game, and keep herself warm during the harsh winter. In fact there’s a chunk of the movie that might as well be from The Revenant or The Edge, and like those it involves a bear.
For all of this though and the grimness that goes along with it I don’t know that the film adequately confronts Edee’s depression or her self-destructive behaviour. Sure, we get one great scene, a flashback where she contemplates suicide to her sister (Kim Dickens), but by virtue of the film being so often on her physical performance, without venturing into her psychological subjectivity all that much -outside of just the fact she misses her husband and son immensely, it doesn’t leave a lot on hand to grapple with. We’re just there watching her quiet descent and it’s not all that pleasant, pretty though some of the natural imagery around it is.
Eventually she is given a scene partner, another human being to interact with in the form of Demián Bichir’s Miguel, a hunter and outdoorsman from the nearest town who comes to her rescue in a critical time. And though he’s framed very much as her conduit to humanity again, she still remains guarded, not opening up until near the end -so it still feels like the movie isn’t really saying anything about what she’s going through, just how she’s healing from it. Both Wright and Bichir are good through this, the latter playing up a real believable homeliness in his bad humour and penchant for 80s music that doesn’t seem to extend beyond singing “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” off-key. And I appreciate there’s no attempt at any kind of a romance between theme, he merely seems to be her substitute for a therapist, albeit one who doesn’t ever really try to get to the heart of the issue.
Edee’s process of coming out of her shell is pretty subtle. It’s mostly communicated through visual cues when with Miguel or by herself in her wooded oasis. Ultimately when she does confess the cause of her grief, the circumstances, and how Miguel helped her through it, it’s a marvelous turn from Wright, displaying that vulnerability she had earlier during the dire circumstances of her first months alone, but with a substantial emotional catharsis of finally vocalizing it and getting it off her chest. And it also feels like the script just ran out of excuses not to delve into her mental baggage a little, and needed to expunge it before the end. Perhaps Wright kept Edee underdeveloped as a way of making her story resonate more widely; but it’s a choice that does prevent that story from being as engaging as others like it to address such subject matter.
There’s no denying the optimism of the film though and the capabilities of Wright as a filmmaker (she previously directed a number of episodes of House of Cards). Land makes good use of its’ scenery, a film with that title would have to, and it captures well the sheer harshness of those elements. But its’ personal story is lacking in spite of the efforts of Wright and Bichir. It understands the antisocial effects of trauma but chooses not to explore the trauma itself with any urgency, or communicate comprehensively how to get through it. To some perhaps it may be an interesting story, but I can’t see it being a useful one.
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