Robin Wright battles grief, bears, and a bad script in her off-the-grid survival drama Land
Film Reviews Land
Note: The writer of this review watched Land on a digital screener from home. Before making the decision to see it—or any other film—in a movie theater, please consider the health risks involved. Here’s an interview on the matter with scientific experts.
In the opening scene of Land, the first feature film directed by Robin Wright, a fruitless therapy session captured in anemic neutral colors gives way to a glorious, sun-specked drive up the mountains of Wyoming. Suicidal after a devastating loss, Edee (Wright, pulling double duty behind and in front of the camera) has gone off the grid, purchasing a dingy log cabin where she plans to live out her days. The immediate contrast between our protagonist’s lifelessness and the vitality of the natural world establishes Land as the familiar story of a white woman braving the elements to restore her spirit. Yes, it’s essentially the same premise as the Reese Witherspoon vehicle Wild. But while that tale of redemption-via-communion-with-nature was measured and unexpectedly raw, this one is neither original nor particularly powerful.
Emotionally ravaged by the death of her husband and young son, Edee withdraws from society. “Why would I want anyone to share in [my pain]?” the widow explains in therapy. “They can’t anyway.” She trashes her cell phone and gets rid of her vehicle, cutting herself off entirely from other people when she moves into her hastily acquired deep-forest cabin with a box of non-perishables and a foolhardy plan to eventually live off the land. From the outside, Edee’s new pad, which overlooks a valley of flora and fauna, looks idyllic. But its bare-bones accommodations prove challenging. A mediocre outdoorswoman, our ex-suburbanite has difficulty chopping wood, hunting food, and using the outhouse. As winter descends, her troubles take on a new gravity when a run-in with a bear wrecks her food supply.
With her square-jawed beauty and exacting gaze, Wright brings intelligence and dignity to her character’s self-imposed martyrdom. It’s a weighty performance from the routinely strong actor. Maybe too weighty: Even in her blunders, Edee is solemn and deliberate. The same qualities that in recent years have made Wright such a go-to strongwoman (as House Of Cards’ Claire Underwood or a literal warrior goddess) only enhance the mannered quality of her survivalism drama. At times, Land has a bit too much in common with uplifting Lifetime fare. Co-writers Jesse Chatham and Erin Dignam show little interest in capturing the nitty gritty of Edee’s grueling lifestyle or truly unpacking the psychic toll of her utter solitude. What we’re left with is a woman stunted by grief and all too willing to let herself perish—a harsh truth conveyed by Wright’s performance but not properly developed in the screenplay.
Land’s biggest misstep comes with the introduction of good Samaritan and potential love interest Miguel (Demián Bichir), another lost soul who rehabilitates our heroine after a near-death experience. Under the condition that he not bring news from the outside world, she begrudgingly assents to his visits. And as he teaches her some handy survival skills, the two loners expectedly grow close, pulling Edee out of her misanthropic torpor. As written, the relationship is clearly meant to convey something about the power of empathy and human connection, but Land only grazes those themes. Though Bichir, with his husky growl and warm, easygoing demeanor, is a welcome presence, the character functions too bluntly as a savior, teaching Edee the ways of the world and reminding her of her humanity and relative privilege. (This last point feels particularly perfunctory, given how briefly it’s touched upon.) Miguel exists solely as the means to this white woman’s healing, cheapening her journey while falling into a stock saintliness.
At the very least, Wright demonstrates directorial competency, having previously honed her chops with several episodes of House Of Cards. But from the folksy acoustic score to the slow-motion flashbacks and hallucinations, Land grasps at profundity via the most overplayed methods. The harrowing details surrounding the death of Edee’s husband and son are withheld ’til the end. Yet by the time we reach Edee’s big, cathartic disclosure in the last act, any sense of mystery or expectation has been wiped out by the film’s blandly obvious trajectory. Land ends with a phone call that reconnects Edee with her roots, suggesting an inevitable return to normalcy—her harebrained cabin scheme, like the movie itself, already fading from memory.
25 Comments
This has a ‘vanity project’ feel to it that makes me wonder if making this was Wright’s condition for sticking around for that embarrassing last season of House of Cards
This film goes to show, that you can get a movie about paint drying into Sundance, if it’s an established actor’s directorial debut.
I look forward to Amy Adams’ “Cutting An Apple In Half And Watching It Brown”.
Or 90 minutes of drinking whiskey in front of a fire.Oh, wait.
I’d blind-buy the digital download of Amy Adams’s 90 Minutes Drinking Whiskey in Front of a Fire. Wouldn’t even bother reading AA Dowd’s C- review first.
I agree with everything said but still refuse to finish watching Hillbilly Elegy.
“Excuse me, m’am! I came to this movie assured that I’d get Amy Adams’s directorial debut, where she drinks whiskey for 90 minutes. Instead, I got a whole mouthful of Ron Howard’s middlebrow values and Glenn Close trying real hard to win an Oscar! I demand my money back! And a stick of gum, if you have one…”
Somehow even as a director she’ll find a way to grab that best supporting actress nomination haha. Not trying to diss Amy Adams with that joke, she’s awesome and deserves all the accolades.
She’ll get the nom and then she’ll lose. Again.
“Ms. Wright, how can we convince you to stay with House of Cards?”“I want carte blanche to direct and star in my own film.”“As you wish.”
OH BUTTERCUP!!! AS YOU WISH!
If only she could’ve hired a Farmboy to help her live off the grid!
Or a dread pirate!
My name is Robin Wright
And I am proud to be
Right back in the woods
With no family
There’s Edee
And therapee
And even a bear
Through blunders
And square jaws
It’s true love we share
And so I found a place
Where everyone will know
My happy mustached face
This is The Edee Show!
I like Robin Wright but, also, maybe just a teensy bit overrated. Still, female directors need more chances so glad this was made and maybe her next effort will be more…uh, good.
i remember her from when she was on ‘santa barbara.’
so glad she got all these opportunities.
Robin Wright has sort of a Rob Lowe problem, where every character she plays has to be very good looking. Lots of actors are good looking, but they can play “ordinary” characters. Wright can only play beautiful. She always has to be someone’s trophy wife, or princess in distress, and that has probably limited her career.
Maybe they can have her wear glasses! Everybody knows that only mousey women wear glasses, and then they can have the scene where she takes them off and suddenly she’s beautiful! Glasses completely change what you look like. That’s how Superman’s Clark Kent disguise works!
So you’re saying she needs to do the Charlize Theron “Monster” type movie where she plays a very unglamorous character who, for better or worse, takes decisive charge of her future and rejects being saved? To show her range.
I think in “House of Cards” especially in the middle/later seasons (I didn’t see the final season due to Spacey tainting the show even after they removed him from it) Wright proved she was nobody’s trophy wife, as she was quite capable. Though as the wife of a senator and later a First Lady she was definitely kept in the best clothes and makeup, which as you mentioned is kind of a type she keeps getting cast in, not an “ordinary” character but constant beauty.
It’s commented many times in House of Cards that Claire was an extremely desirable young woman and that her choice of Frank was surprising. That’s a trophy wife character.
Well she’s definitely a lot more attractive than him, objectively and also in my personal opinion, so I could see her looks gearing people to think she was a trophy wife. Though Underwood didn’t seem like somebody who would marry a person just for their looks, more concerned with what they can do for him. Even if she was desirable for aesthetic reasons, she definitely has a brain and also the type of ruthless cunning that helped them advance in the series. I think she also played off that assumption, that she was just a pretty face, and when people underestimated Claire it was usually to their detriment. Like, there were plenty of instances where she had some growing pains moving from an NGO to politics, but I think she proved to be more than only a trophy wife in the long run.
Political wives resemble trophy wives in a lot of ways, but they’re not the same thing. Politicians usually aim for a wife who’s pretty, but more importantly someone with family connections or money who can help their career, put them in contact with donors. The looks are often secondary to all the other considerations. Claire Underwood was written as the ultimate political wife.
I… guess? She’s worked constantly, I wouldn’t call her a failure. I don’t agree she has a “princess in distress” vibe either… She has a feistiness and intelligence that might actually get in the way of that kind of role, unless we’re talking Princess Bride or Forrest Gump where it’s subverted. Marrying Sean Penn might have slowed down her career more than anything, if we are going to say she has a hurt career at all. Kind of like Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise— the husband is kind of suspect and that may have rubbed off on her, unfairly, in the court of public opinion. But I think she still has decades of great roles ahead.
Why do we keep getting these subdued contemporary rural psychodramas when “The Nightingale” and “Black ‘47″ blazed the path for superior social critique wearing older clothes and with the bonus of people blasting at each other using old-timey muskets and such?
I really need to know how much screentime the bear gets; I like menacing bears onscreen (yet I see a fair number of real-life bears and I prefer those ones to be non-menacing, oddly enough).