Good One

 

Writer/director India Donaldson

actress Lily Collias

Donaldson with Lily Collias

The director on the set

GOOD ONE               B                                                                                                               USA  (89 mi)  2024  ‘Scope  d: India Donaldson

Premiering at Sundance in 2024, yet also widely circulating on the festival circuit, where it played in more than thirty different film festivals, including Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, yet very little has been heard about this film, flying completely under the radar, where this is about as minimalist a film as you could possible create, seemingly out of nothing, with no narrative to speak of, a portrait in miniature of passing into adulthood, yet it’s all bathed in the pristine naturalism of a 3-day backpacking trek through the national forest of the Catskills in upstate New York.  While it bears a resemblance to Kelly Reichardt’s early film Old Joy (2006), which may be the cinematic template for this film, it lacks the sly homoeroticism and 60’s counterculture vibe of that film, which was shot in the rugged Oregon Cascade mountains of the Pacific northwest, instead approaching the subject through the lens of a generational divide.  It may also recall the outsider father/daughter dynamic living off the grid deep in the woods from Debra Granik’s remarkable 2018 Top Ten List #5 Leave No Trace.  Pared down to its bare bones, there’s little to no story, as not much happens, where this is about as low-key as you can get, more of a character study with nuance that is deceptively simple, where what lies beneath the surface is everything.  The daughter of New Zealand filmmaker Roger Donaldson (one of the many producers), having grown up in the business, this is the director’s debut feature, written with an eye on minute details, where if you blink you’ll miss what’s happening here, as it’s about as subtle a film as you’ll ever see, with a few interesting 70’s and 80’s choices of alternative music, like Kay Gardner - Touching Souls YouTube (5:45), Kevyn Dymond - Endless Present [US] Psych Folk (1984) YouTube (3:16), or a Nico and the Velvet Underground sounding Moonlove - All Your Mysteries YouTube (2:45).  Lily Collias in her first leading role is 17-year old Sam, a girl from Brooklyn in a relationship with another girl, mostly unseen except through text messages, just weeks away from heading off to college, becoming the central figure of the film as she embarks on a weekend excursion with two divorced dads, her own, Chris, James Le Gros from Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women (2016), and his longtime best friend Matt, Danny McCarthy from the Coen brother’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018).  The total opposite of a Hollywood depiction, this trimmed down, offbeat approach is much more authentic, capturing the human experience in such a raw and visceral way, where nothing feels overly forced, accentuating what’s left unspoken, with a continual back and forth between these three characters, yet right from the outset there is turbulence, as Matt’s teenage son Dylan was also supposed to go, but abruptly refuses at the last minute, which is seen as part of the collateral damage from the recent divorce, still angry at his dad, blaming him for their separation.  Every child has that moment when they realize their own parents are flawed.  And while there is plenty of muttering under his breath, Matt is resigned to go without him, but it’s an inauspicious sign undermining whatever good intentions were originally planned.  Essentially a coming-of-age, father-daughter movie, but not a conventional one, with Matt serving as a comic relief sidekick and the butt of all jokes, continually making cocky and potentially offensive statements, as the filmmaker plays around with audience expectations and how easy it is to ignore the warning signs, where you never know what lies ahead as they head into the woods.    

Another film that was developed during the pandemic, allowing Donaldson an opportunity to spend time building her fictionalized characters, inspired by how an isolated environment could draw out family dynamics, often in funny and unexpected ways, creating something that was intimate and emotionally contained.  Ostensibly a buddy movie between two bickering old friends whose competing egos are a handful, continually airing long-held grievances, both seemingly suffering from a midlife crisis, chirping at one another endlessly, much of it dealing with their own personal regrets, with an overcontrolling Chris coming across as a self-absorbed know-it-all, who left Sam’s mother for a younger woman (she cheated first is his rationale), while the more anxiously insecure Matt wallows in his combustible feelings, with Sam silently sitting in the middle, occasionally acting as the arbitrar, continually trying to smooth things over.  Everything happens very slowly, as this film is painstakingly patient, allowing the words to sit with viewers and resonate, where it’s never anything profound, but more a reflection of their wounded state of mind, where both men come across as damaged goods with frazzled nerves, who tend to get tipsy, bringing along a flask, where they seem to be their own worst enemies, all but ignoring Sam, who may as well be invisible.  After spending the night in a one-roomed motel with two beds, and Sam sleeping on the floor, where the guys spend most of the evening in the bar, they get up early the next day, with Chris finding fault with everything Matt decides to pack, or overpack, as he’s brought any number of useless items, perhaps a metaphor for that overcluttered brain of his.  Yet once on the trail, the verdant scenery couldn’t be more calming and peaceful, enraptured by the sound of babbling brooks, where there’s a reason people visit these places, as it’s like a religious experience cleansing the soul.  Dad always takes the lead, like a military reconnaissance mission, with Sam a short distance behind, while Matt always brings up the rear.  It’s not your typical adventure, with a designated place in mind, instead it simply allows the wind and forest sounds to seep into their consciousness, changing up the landscape, altering the routines, discovering the beauty of the great outdoors.  Of course, there are other things that stand out, like not disturbing the environment, or attracting bears, so it’s important to bury waste products and keep all food covered, things Sam has already learned and does automatically, as respecting the environment they are in is an essential aspect of the journey, maintaining a balance at all times.  Who knew that the greatest risk of all was her own femininity?  They appear to be well-educated campers, so when they set up camp for the night, it comes as a surprise when three other male hikers stop to camp right next to them, taking advantage of the shared company.  This may not be what everyone desires, as who likes to feel crowded in the open terrain of the wilderness, but no one makes a fuss.  However, any male threat they pose to Sam, who suddenly finds herself overwhelmed and completely ignored by a sea of masculinity, is immediately overlooked in the interest of getting along and having a good time. 

While the lush beauty and contemplative atmosphere are the real highlight, what stands out is that Sam, who can be sullen at times, is wise beyond her years, seemingly acting more adult than the adults, where she actually says the least, yet her character stands out the most, assuredly connecting with her inner self, confidently saying so much largely through facial expressions, as she does not miss much, ultimately becoming the heart of the movie.  Being female and gay, her life is radically different from these two adult men whose lives are constantly in turmoil, thinking only of themselves, having little time for her, which this film makes very apparent.  Matt is something of an unfiltered chatterbox, but his emotions are raw, out there and exposed, coming up with the weirdest things to say, some of which is easily ignored, while other things can stick with you.  Chris is more tightly wound and reserved, used to managing his emotions and keeping them in check, yet it’s clear he loves and respects his daughter, but his measured tone can feel awkwardly stiff, like he’s playing a role, hiding what he really feels deep inside.  Both men have been deeply wounded by marriage and divorce, something that tore a hole in them, with frustrations literally seeping out of them, where this trip is an attempt to heal those open wounds.  There’s a delicate progression to the film, as the characters come to life, personalities are revealed, with viewers rewarded by glorious waterfalls and some magnificent vistas overlooking a glistening blue lake down below.  Their habits become known to us, with Sam being the responsible “good one,” actually preparing the meals, while also seen cleaning the cooking utensils by rubbing dirt in the bowls, as water is a precious commodity, used sparingly.  There is no cellphone reception deep into the forest, so they are disconnected from the outside world, having only themselves, becoming something of a family unit, with Sam and her dad sharing one tent, while Matt has the other, even bringing foldable chairs to sit on in camp.  There’s a moment that takes us aback, as Matt drunkenly blurts out something that inappropriately crosses a line, with Sam doing a doubletake, not at all amused, shocked at what she hears, but this happens organically, with no dramatic overtones, yet clearly Sam is offended.  The next day when she tries to tell her dad about it, he tries to minimize her outrage, hoping to lessen the impact, telling her to suck it up and not ruin the trip, but his apathy only makes things worse, as the damage has been done, and the floodgates have been opened.  It couldn’t be more quietly devastating, but Sam’s behavior afterwards reveals everything, telling us all that we need to know without any words being spoken.  The subtlety on display is impressive, carving out its own path, but the drama, what little there is, is more about the power of observation, allowing each individual viewer to come to their own conclusions, with an abrupt ending that really has no resolution, but exudes in the power of silence.  Shot in just 12 days by Wilson Cameron, a former visual effects producer, where the rhythm of the film is unwavering, capturing the beauty of the forest, with close-up shots of plants and insects, along with some interesting rock formations, and more than a few unexpected surprises, accompanied by an original score by Celia Hollander that never intrudes, but its ethereal presence is felt throughout.  In the end credits, special thanks are given to indie staples David Gordon Green and Larry Fessenden. 

Wild

Author Cheryl Strayed (left) and actress Reese Witherspoon  

Cheryl Strayed  

WILD              B-                   

USA  (115 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Jean-Marc Vallée          Official site

I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told.

—Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, 2012

Adapted from the 2012 memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, this is a case where literature is the better format than film, as most of the story is told through seemingly disconnected, stream-of-conscious thoughts that continually feel fragmented in the film, randomly pulled together through music and flashback sequences, but it all feels so cliché’d, especially the choices of music, which are mere snippets, where the audience never gets a feel for how or why this journey is so essential, other than on a superficial level.  It’s not unusual for people’s lives to fall apart from time to time, but this is certainly an unusual method to put the missing pieces back together again.  By the end, despite the grand poetic gesture, supposedly finding transcendence in the final moment, there’s little reason to believe this character is really any different, as she’s always been the sum of her parts.  The film pales in comparison to the male counterpart, Sean Penn’s Into the Wild (2007), where the characters throughout are more deeply fleshed out and complex, offering more memorable performances, where here it feels more like a mother and daughter film, where neither one is fully revealed, but remain abstract configurations.  Reese Witherspoon purchased the rights to the book, while Oprah listed it on her Oprah's Book Club 2.0 in June, 2012, becoming a #1 best seller for seven weeks, where Witherspoon plays the lead character (author Cheryl Strayed) and is also a producer on the film.  While the backstory is only revealed in flashback, the film counts off the days in 1995 as 26-year old Cheryl begins her journey alone in the Mohave Desert near the Mexican border and follows the Pacific Crest Trail through the mountainous terrain of the Sierra Nevada in California and the southern end of the Cascade Range in Oregon, where hikers have to make sure they complete enough miles every day to reach the opposite end of the trail before weather conditions make snowy sections impassable, targeting several resupply points en route to stock up on food and water, until reaching the Bridge of the Gods traversing the Columbia River at the border of Washington, the lowest elevation of the entire 1100-mile journey that took over 3-months.  While the feat is not to be minimized, something very few could actually accomplish, nonetheless the film itself minimizes the difficulty of the journey and instead attempts to reveal the unfolding narrative through the restlessness anxiety of her interior world.    

While Cheryl Strayed is a novelist and essayist, someone extremely familiar with words and language, this adaptation by Nick Hornby is a poor substitute, as the various sequences never feel connected, but remain isolated moments, as people Cheryl meets along the road simply vanish from view without a word, where they, along with her memories, are like ghosts following her along the trail, where they never materialize into living, breathing human beings that matter to the audience.  Instead, the camera focuses entirely on Cheryl 100% of the time, where everything else is incidental, even the vastness of the wilderness, beautifully photographed by Yves Bélanger, where despite the continuing timeline, there is no real comprehension of time and distance, as the film really takes place inside her head.  While the experience is a document of mood swings, resembling Danny Boyle’s 127 HOURS (2010), it lacks that film’s intensity and sense of desperation as well as the degree of difficulty encountered, though both rely upon the interior world of flashbacks.  In the end it becomes a road movie, where Cheryl’s initial encounters with her own naiveté reflect just how angry and unprepared she is to make such an extreme journey, where the F-word is littered throughout, but she receives needed help and excellent advice along the way.  One of the more unusual scenes is seeing Cheryl and Paul (Thomas Sadoski), her husband of seven years, getting matching tattoos, something they can share forever even as it comes on the day they are getting divorced.  Their familiarity with each other is touching, especially when Cheryl acknowledges she cheated on him, obviously recognizing the cost at that moment, adding that she actually cheated on him a lot.  This may be their closest moment together throughout the film, though it only hints at her own personal descent into reckless drug abuse and a rampant proclivity for sleeping around with any man that so much as looks at her.  Much of these self-destructive experiences are narrated as she hikes along the trail, becoming a parallel world of soul searching through her past that she carries with her throughout her long and arduous ordeal.

Perhaps the heart of the film is her close relationship with her mother Bobbi, Laura Dern, who rescued her and her little brother from an abusive and alcoholic father, yet maintained her dignity and self-esteem throughout the ensuing years of struggle, sacrificing all to make sure her children had a brighter future than her own, suggesting she would never change a thing if it produced something as beautiful as her two children, but she dies quickly at the age of 45 after being diagnosed with lung cancer, fueling a period of rage and self-destruction.  Her own history of sexual violation leaves her even more exposed as a lone traveler through such remote territory, where she has to instantly assess her encounters with various men, where the possibility of sexual violence is always on the back of her mind, yet it’s the terrain she’s chosen to navigate on her own terms.  What’s perhaps most surprising is how few negative encounters she has, where most everyone she meets is helpful and overly friendly, except for a couple of leering, beer guzzling DELIVERANCE (1972) guys carrying bows and arrows, who find it most peculiar to run into a woman alone in the woods, though we never get a clear picture of just how much time is spent alone.  When she wanders into the heart of civilization, where a guy is passing out flyers for a musical tribute to Jerry Garcia, who just passed away, she jolts at the closeness of his physical presence, something she’s obviously not been used to for several months, where she has to recalibrate her bearings.  But apparently it’s like riding a bike, as in no time she’s hopped into the sack with the same guy, heading back out the next morning.  Particularly because she crosses through some of the prime real estate for pot growing in America, one wonders what might have been cleaned up for the movie, as drug use is not uncommon for back packers in that neck of the woods, but this subject is completely glossed over without incident.  While we assume Cheryl has gone through some psychological trajectory, this is never evident, though a final sequence attempts to grow increasingly transcendent without ever actually rising to the moment.  It recalls a more dramatically compelling bridge sequence at the end of Chris Eyre’s SMOKE SIGNALS (1997), where both films attempt to reconcile the violence and discord of their pasts with a Siddhartha-like moment of self-realization. 

Gringo Trails

Director Pegi Vail

Director Pegi Vail (center) with her cameraman Melvin Estrella and local guide on the Tuichi River in the Bolivian Amazon

GRINGO TRAILS       B-                   

USA  Bolivia  Thailand  Mali  Bhutan  (79 mi)  2013  d:  Pegi Vail         Gringo Trails Official Site

Take only memories, leave only footprints.                —Chief Seattle

More than ten years in the making, the film explores the effect of institutionalized tourism in remote regions around the globe, where the tourist mindset, especially when they arrive in droves, alters the natural landscape and turns whatever natural beauty the site offers into a money-making theme park, where instant gratification outweighs long term gains or benefits.  While the director is an American anthropologist who is also Associate Director of the Center for Media, Culture and History at New York University and a Fulbright Scholar, the film exposes a kind of hedonistic behavior that is altering the face of the planet.  Whether one travels on the luxurious high end of the economic scale using Fodor’s or Frommer’s Travel Guide or backpacks on the cheap scouring through The Lonely Planet guide of must see places around the world, tourists are continually looking for a bigger bang for their buck, searching to discover new unexplored worlds.  Using an episodic structure, the director takes us into some of the most remote regions of the world, beginning with the harrowing adventure in 1981 of Israeli backpacker Yossi Ghinsberg in the Bolivian jungle of Rurrenabaque, where he and some friends set out on an authentic jungle experience hiking into the wilds of the rain forest in Madidi National Park, though they had little knowledge of wilderness survival.  Using maps that were nearly unusable, they were unable to track the overflowing riverbanks of the Tuichi River that cut a path through the Bolivian Amazon, causing him to lose contact with his companions, where Yossi was stranded in the jungle for nearly a month before he was rescued by search teams.  While he was fortunate to have been found, where the boat slowed to turn around at the exact same spot where he happened to be, his emaciated body resembled photos of concentration camp survivors.  Writing a book about his experience, Back from Tuichi in 1993, it attracted the interest of similar wilderness seeking tourists, especially from Israel, where they descended into the remote region by the thousands, all searching for that same authentic jungle experience, where people who had lived quietly and peacefully for generations were suddenly called upon to act as tour guides on hastily put together expeditions, where the myth of Yossi Ghinsberg only grew more exaggerated by the retelling of the tale, turning a poor indigenous community into a tourist trap. 

Another British tourist enthralled by LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) and OUT OF AFRICA (1985) was realizing her dream by finally traveling to Timbuktu in Mali, one of the poorest countries on earth, where this once-thriving mythical village on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert exists in a time warp, once one of the thriving cultural centers in Africa, featuring the Sankore Mosque and other scholarly university centers for Islamic study, where literally nothing has changed, as the town is surrounded by sand dunes and the streets covered in sand as well, seemingly preserved for centuries.  While remarking on the beauty of the region, locals had a differing view, claiming nothing could grow in the desert, that life is nearly impossible, making it one of the poorest towns in the world, where the culture has all but disappeared as the population moved elsewhere, so there was nothing beautiful about any of that.  The romantic fantasies suddenly meet the reality, yet the next day they arrange for a camel ride, where each of the tourists is decked out in flowing white robes that resemble Peter O’Toole in the movie, where she’s finally excited by the thrill of adventure, sleeping out under the stars, yet when they return to town the next day it only takes them 5-minutes, as they simply moved them to the other side of an existing sand dune where the town was out of sight.  In another desert on the other side of the world, Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat in the world, measuring four thousand square miles, where tourists began gathering in the 1980’s to collect cactus from Incahuasi "island" in the middle of the flats.  Twenty years later, after being listed in various guidebooks, people started arriving in SUV’s to visit Fredo Lazaro Ticoma, the self-professed “first inhabitant,” having built his home on the site which he turned into a tourist museum where he could profit tremendously, creating a spot where crowds of visitors would gather at picnic tables bringing with them large quantities of alcohol, showing little respect for the fragile environment, while leaving behind plenty of garbage for someone else to clean up.  By 2010, tourists had swelled to 300 to 400 per day, where Fredo can be seen serving lunch, as the government now runs the island.  Travel writer Rolf Potts asserts that “since modernity kicked in, displaced middle class people have to look to poor people [for authenticity].”

The most egregious example of beauty turned to ruination started out as an unspoiled paradise, where National Geographic travel editor Costas Christ describes his own unbridled enthusiasm about visiting Ko Pha Ngan Island in Thailand in 1979, taking a ferry down the river in southern Thailand with about a dozen or so other backpackers, and when they disembarked, he was met with a flurry of tourist hawkers, all trying to steer them into their own business, which was exactly the last thing he wanted to experience, so he asked the ferry pilot where he was going?  He was told the next island had no tourists as there was nothing to do there, so he hopped back on and seemingly had the entire island to himself.  After walking a few miles, he came to an overlook of a spectacular beach below known as Haad Rin Beach, where he met another couple living there, so he spent a month with them in what can only be described as idyllic conditions, as this was literally paradise on earth.  Ten years later small bungalows were built along the beach to accommodate the tourist traffic, but by the Millennium New Year’s Eve Full Moon Party in 1999, closer to 15,000 drunken revelers showed up, and by 2010 that number was closer to 50,000, where there were simply no sanitary facilities to accommodate everyone, so human waste and refuse, especially plastic bottles, littered the beach afterwards in what resembled a disaster zone.  In contrast, the breathtaking beauty of Bhutan, nestled at the foot of the Himalayas, opened up to tourists in 1974, adopting a policy of “gross national happiness” rather than gross profit margins, where they charge tourists $250/day, attracting only the most affluent, threatening visitors with expulsion if they don’t comply with their cultural traditions.  This attracts older tourists, retired professors or the economically elite, where a tour group is seen climbing 2500 feet on foot just to get to a desired restaurant.  This two-tiered economic plan, one price for the locals, another for the tourists, brings much needed money into the region in order to properly maintain the natural splendor.  This same policy is implemented at the Chalalan Ecolodge in Bolivia in what’s called eco-tourism, as the tourist money is used to help explain the value of the land and its resources to their indigenous culture while helping to sustain the upkeep and pristine beauty of the region.  Costas Christ observed that while there used to be plenty of empty spaces around the globe that hadn’t been visited, “now it looks like a Jackson Pollard painting.”  While this might be required viewing on all transcontinental flights, reminding prospective tourists that they are “guests” in another country, the film only artificially examines the surface realities, as Vail never digs any deeper to explore the real underlying causes of why tourists tend to be so uniformly disrespectful to the nations that they visit.  Whether it is the economically elite or the more frugal backpacker, both exhibit the same sense of entitlement, where the sole criteria appears to be to have a good time, irrespective of the consequences to others.