Rated: M
Directed by: Robin Wright
Written by: Jesse Chatham and Erin Digman
Produced by: Allyn Stewart, Lora Kennedy, Leah Holzer and Peter Saraf
Starring: Robin Wright, Demián Bichir and Kim Dickens.
“What are you feeling?”
Land is a quiet film, with only the call of coyotes, the crickets, the birds, water flowing. Then there’s the strings in the soundtrack, the only music, that rise and fall.
The film follows Edee (Robin Wright) as she leaves the city following a road that turns from asphalt to gravel to turn into a dirt road that leads further into the mountains.
She doesn’t want to be around people anymore.
The flashbacks to the past show Edee asking her sister (Kim Dickens), Why am I still here?
There are flashes of a little boy and a man, her son and husband. And you know they’re gone.
Edee organises herself, she cleans up her cabin. There’s a river. She fishes. She remembers.
But in the quiet she slowly falls apart as the land freezes into winter – as she realises she doesn’t know how to survive. Doesn’t know if she wants to survive, until she’s found and slowly brought back to life by a local hunter, Miguel Borras (Demián Bichir).
This isn’t a love story.
Land is a story about friendship.
This is a story about grief.
And there’s a genuine honesty in the telling.
Robin Wright plays the main character and directs – she brings a softness and strength to the story that invites the audience to feel it all along with Edee.
And Miguel as the one with the big heart that helps her just because she’s in his path is honest in his kindness.
It feels so rare, the selflessness, the reaching out, the understanding.
There’s nothing forced, just the space and quiet to recover.
I was looking forward to seeing nature on the big screen, yet the land of burnt skies, icicles dripping and the wind flowing through a tree standing on a rocky outcrop were a backdrop to the depth of Edee’s loss, subtle and powerful, as she focuses on surviving, to see the little things – to really take notice.
I basically had tears running from the beginning of this film. So calm and kind in the telling.
A deeply moving film.