Land (2021)
Directed by Robin Wright
Edee, in the aftermath of an unfathomable event, finds herself unable to stay connected to the world she once knew and in the face of that uncertainty, retreats to the magnificent, but unforgiving, wilds of the Rockies. After a local hunter brings her back from the brink of death, she must find a way to live again.
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What critics compared Land to
In this way “Land,” which at one point felt a little like “Into the Wild” actually recalls “Wild” – there’s even an exchange where Edee confesses to sometimes being lonely, but not as lonely as she’d be “back there,” which if memories serve, echoes almost verbatim a passage in the Reese Witherspoon movie.
There are parallels, too, with ex-husband Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild” or Kelly Reichardt’s off-the-grid rambles, though Wright resists the heady art-house austerity of such indies.
After all, innocent-tenderfoot-lost-in-the-boondocks adventures such as Into the Wild (Emile Hirsch exiling himself to Alaska) and Wild (Reese Witherspoon solo-backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail) can provide needed thrills—not to mention valuable life lessons—to bored urban audiences, even when the tenderfoot is a fool, à la Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast.
It’s difficult not to compare the film to Jean Marc-Vallée’s Wild (or even Sean Penn’s Into the Wild), but Land is a much more insular take on familiar survival material, with Wright putting on a nearly one-woman show for the film’s 90-minute running time.
Speaking of wild, “Land” will remind many of “Into the Wild,” directed by Wright’s ex, but it is nowhere near as good a film.
We’ve also seen it, to a different degree, in Into the Wild , directed by Sean Penn.
(Lars von Trier's Antichrist, with Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg writhing naked on the chilly ground, comes to mind.)