Not so wild about Wild

When I read Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed a year ago, it blew me away. Superlatives failed to capture how I felt about her writing. Here was a non-fiction author whose work I read like a novel – lapping it up, longing to get back to it at the end of each day. It felt like a book that could change my life and, I dared to hope, my writing. I was even heard to remark that Strayed’s attitude to the people she responded to in her Agony Aunt column on the literary web site, The Rumpus, reminded me of how I thought God would respond to wounded, confused, self-obsessed souls. Her voice on the page was like the voice of God – not about to let you get away with a thing, but absolutely, utterly, completely loving and on your side, rooting for you, if you will, like the best parent in the world – like Strayed’s own mum.

I haven’t read Wild yet, and I will soon and look forward to it, but I could describe the movie adaptation, which I saw yesterday in two words: disappointing and saccharine. I could add clichéd and one-dimensional (thank you, that last one’s from the mate I went with.) I have read that Strayed herself was very involved with the making of the film; I see that Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay; I find both these facts hard to believe. Because I enjoy Hornby’s dry, British humour, and the one thing Strayed is not, is saccharine. Her writing is down to earth, intensely personal and honest but completely unselfpitying.

I’ve admired Reece Witherspoon’s acting in the past, but this character is irritating in the extreme – narcissistic, self-pitying, whinging and, for a smart woman, really dumb. Okay, so maybe Strayed was all these things when she headed off on her epic trek to self-discovery, but it doesn’t make for very compelling viewing.

The hike itself contains every standard hike cliché – she encounters a snake, she gets lost, has to battle snow and desert heat (with all the extraneous junk she took in that massive pack of hers, you’d think she could have included a hat and sunnies), she meets up with threatening men, has a one night stand with a cute guy, runs out of food, runs out of water.  There is a great deal of interminable trudging; I love walking and I love wilderness, but I found it just plain tedious. Plus that’s the second American film I’ve seen in a week (Birdman last Monday) and I am heartily sick of the words f—k and s—t. Not trying to be coy with the dashes or anything, but I don’t even want to look at those words on the page for a while.

The thing I found most aggravating of all was Strayed’s mother Bobbie, nauseatingly played by Laura Dern. The character of the ‘mom’ could have been inspirational – her refusal to feel sorry for herself, her determination to ‘put herself in the path of beauty’, and of happiness, despite the crummy deal life dealt her. In fact, I just wanted to scream at her endless, margarine commercial sunniness, which did not for one moment convince.

I’m not a cynical person, and I love to be swept away by a good story on the big screen. So I’m trying to understand why I reacted so strongly. I reckon it’s because I expected too much; I thought Strayed’s vivid, evocative, confronting, funny, real prose to translate to the screen without losing its verve and sass and humour. Maybe I got a lesson about the dangers of going to a movie of a much-loved writer’s work, maybe simply a lesson in expectations. In any case, it will not put me off reading the book. Just as soon as I’ve waded through the last 300 pages of the Luminaries.

Comments

[Rod]

Maybe you were expecting too much and not allowing for the change in media. I think it is only rarely that really good literature adapts to the visual medium with the same power and impact. After all, a person's imagination is not engaged through film with the same abundance words offer us. Film does not give you time to reflect and savour the emotions words evoke. Your appreciation of Strayed's writing might be an indicator of that.