Saturday, August 26, 2023

Two-Paragraph Review: Land (2021)

If the theme that Robin Wright wanted to explore in her film Land is loneliness, she managed to do it more than justice. However, while she took off on this exploration of the human soul in her small directorial debut, Wright also avoided the chance for the audience not to feel the same towards her main character, which she also portrayed.

Played also by Wright, Edee is a middle-aged woman who goes off into the wilderness of Wyoming after losing her husband and son in a senseless tragedy. The move is unclear and remains between a hope for a spiritual rebirth and a slow suicide-by-nature. That emotional space is seemingly interesting, but Wright, behind and in front of the camera, makes it distant and unconnectable. The strong tone of loneliness slowly turns into an even stronger sense of disconnection and throughout the film, Wright fails to do anything there, even when the script is supposed to show us something different. For me, Edee never finds a way out of the woods in every sense of this phrase.