Robin Wright’s directorial debut follows a trail beaten by recent female-led films about living off the grid: notably Jean-Marc Vallée’s Wild, Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace and Chloé Zhao’s Oscar-winning Nomadland. Although the scenery is just as awe-inspiring here, Land cleaves too close to familiar ground. Its unimaginative script pales in comparison to its free-spirited predecessors.
Much of the film plays out as a grim, silent montage of naïve Edee failing at self-sufficiency.
Wright stars as Edee, a woman who retreats to a precarious cabin high in the mountains of Wyoming following a personal tragedy. She is far from suited to the cabin life, which is more hardcore than cottagecore. Much of the film plays out as a grim, silent montage of naïve Edee failing at self-sufficiency. Her hands bloom with blisters after hacking firewood; she can’t hunt, her crops wither and she’s soon eating cold tuna from a can while shivering through her first winter. In one fearsome moment, a bear circles her outside privy, swiping at the walls. Be thankful, then, that Land frequently cuts away to those distractingly verdant mountain views for relief.
Intermittent flashbacks to Edee’s memories of a sunnier past life help explain her rash behaviour. Wracked by grief, at some level she’s hoping the elements will win. And that’s what she’d get, if gruff Miguel (Demián Bichir), a local hunter, didn’t step in to save her, with medicine and patient lessons in survival skills. From that point on, the film’s horizons narrow dismally to Miguel’s sacrifice and Edee’s redemption, amid some affable but forgettable banter between a diffident, self-absorbed heroine and her enigmatic saviour. For Edee, sadly, Wyoming’s landscape and its native culture are just a prop for her own therapy. And Land’s pat conclusion is liable to leave you yearning for something as unpredictable as the weather, as broad in scope as the view from her rickety porch.