Review of A Walk in the Woods
The media hype for A Walk in the Woods caused more than a few conversations in lean-tos on the Appalachian Trail this year, mostly concerned with the question of whether it would cause such a spike in popularity that the A.T. would become crowdedand different,full of beginner hikers. A hike on the A.T. can be an exercise in reflection and solitude, and many long-time enthusiasts pointed to the increase in use of the Trail after Bill Bryson's book ( the inspiration for this movie) became a best seller in 1998. Along those same lines, the book and movie "Wild" starring Reese Witherspoon and the Pacific Crest Trail, was credited with a spike in interest for that long distance trek.
Now that I've seen the movie, my message to everyone is - "Relax. This movie is not in any danger of inspiring anybody to do anything." The movie fails to capture the Appalachian Trail or the experience of it, and my guess would be that nobody will be inspired to take even a day hike.
If you need me to fill in the details, follow the orange blaze to the next point of this trail, below the fold.
Two Guys Taking a Road Trip on "America's Alternative Interstate Highway"
America has a long history of "Road Movies" - groups of guys in search of bonding, traveling with a purpose or perhaps making an overt decision not to have one. Think "Easy Rider," "The Grapes of Wrath," any number of westerns featuring Conestoga wagons. Or, since backpacking is an essential component of infantry maneuvering, a movie like "Saving Private Ryan," or the TV mini-series "Band of Brothers." The core of such movies is the close relationship between the small group that's on the trip and the way they suffer adversity together. Now, on Saving Private Ryan, the costumers meticulously researched the small details of soldiers - what they wore, the way they carried things in the pack, the graffiti on their jacket - but nobody did that for A Walk in the Woods, and the small inaccuracies were annoying. A long distance hiker would never leave the hiking poles in the pack going up hill, for example, as these two guys did. They should have supplemented Bryson's book with research of their own to determine accuracy of portrayal.
Comparison to Peter Jackson?
I remember vividly seeing the first of the Lord of the Rings trilogy the first time. Tolkien's books were a treasure to me since I was twelve, and I knew I would walk out in the first twenty minutes if Peter Jackson, the director, didn't "get it right." That movie opened in The Shire and I heaved a big sigh of relief when it became obvious that The Fellowship of the Ring had impeccable production values (about one minute in.) A Walk in the Woods started slow and petered out for the next twenty minutes or so and during that time I found myself asking "What would Peter Jackson have done with this movie?" But alas, we will never know.
Space and Time and Chronology are meaningless
Granted, it's hard to capture the experience of a long distance hike. In fact, that was the original brilliance of Bryson's book. Most accounts of a through-hike ( an end-to-end hike of the Trail) suffer from the one-foot-in-front-of-the other stricture of chronological storytelling. That's why most books written by actual hikers are boring. They often read like cut-and-pasted diary entries. ("Today I crossed a river/climbed a mountain/hiked a forest. Today the weather was sunny/rainy/windy/war/ cold. Today I hiked five/ten/twenty miles")
Bryson abandoned this approach, to great success. Even though he was not a hiker, he conveyed the unique traditions and feel of joining the cult of those who were. In the book, he shared his hike with "Katz" - a sort of foil or alter ego who provided a element of random meandering emotion, balancing out Bryson's own methodical and unemotional planning.
Nolte
That's where Nick Nolte comes in. He is the sidekick - another time-honored tradition in literature and film. He's Gamgee to Redford's Frodo, or perhaps Abbott to Redford's Costello, Ackroyd to Belushi, or even (reaching way back) Tonto to Redford's Lone Ranger. I think they were expecting him to rescue the plot somehow, as he supplied all the gags.
Maybe he was trying to channel Beetlejuice, for this movie. For some reason my mind wandered to the way Michael Keaton defined the Beetlejuice role, while watching Nolte. I admit that I never saw any of Nolte's previous movies, I think he was a action hero of some kind, back along, (was he?) but for this one, for me, he came across as boorish. Hate to sound Politically Correct here, but there is a phenomenon in which a sub group of long distance hikers hauling a Kelty backpack are legitimately "the old guys of the trail." If he was trying to convey what that is like, he missed it by a mile.
Redford
Neither is Redford blameless. We see him say goodbye to Emma Thompson, who is foxy as ever, and there are a few insipid phone calls home, but the rest of his mind - any thoughts, any inner turmoil - is a blank slate at the beginning that never gets filled in. He has no soul. A long distance hike gives a person time to think - Redford didn't do any, other than to show that he'd read about geology and the plight of the American Chestnuttree.
Is that what Bryson is like in real life? I hope not. (Is that what I'm like in real life? golly, I need to pray more... and get out of the house more. I did one trip on the A.T. this summer, maybe I need another before the snow flies.... )
Women Hikers
The movie sparked up when a bubbly women hiker jumped in, played by Kristen Schaal, jumps in. She is portrayed as a neurotic babbler, and the two men conspire to get away from her ( something I personally have sometimes done when it seems I am in lockstep with an annoying person that hikes at a pace similar to mine). The phenomenon of solo woman hiker's is relatively new on the Trail. It's been called a "sausage festival" for that very reason. But there are some amazing athletes hiking these days who just happen to be female, and if youth must be paid, Ms. Schaal's part was short shrift indeed. She should have had more of a role.
Sound track
I did not like the sound track - the tune "Wagon Wheel" by the Old Crow Medicine Show is the unofficial anthem of the Trail. No movie would be complete without it. I remember singing it with ten other backpacker's on the front porch of Levardi's Hostel in Massachusetts.
Scenery
You might expect the scenery to rescue the movie. Here is where the cinematography betrays the low-budget aspect of production. The sweeping vistas seemed blurry, when they should have been breathtaking. MacAfee's Knob was one of the iconic locations pictured, and the movie did not do it justice. High-definition camera work such as used in The Hobbit, would have made this movie go a lot further than it did.
So - this movie fails to inspire. I'd say see it on the small screen if you like bro-mance of two actors past their prime.