In the coming months, with the announcement of Hillary Clinton’s second run for the democratic nomination and eventual presidential candidacy, the United States will be scrutinised by the world that sees the country’s internal and external politics through the lens of its foreign policy.
From the outside looking in, it is easy to critique America’s unique brand of self-determinism, or, to use the loftiest of terms, that idea of “manifest destiny”, a now historically problematic phrase that was coined as the nation was trying to define itself. The romantic notion that the US was wide open for everyone who wanted to come, conquer, and create a new, free world, capitalising on the riches of the vast continent that stretched from sea to shining sea, is one that still brings people streaming to the US.
If you have never lived in the US – one can easily laugh at the proud way in which the country and its citizens see themselves. Yet, having had the benefit of an American liberal arts education on the East Coast, in a small pastoral campus in Western Massachusetts, I can understand the yearning to buy into the kind of longing, and that endless possibility that the American countryside can open up in one’s mind.
This infinite possibility is exactly why Wild, the film, produced by and starring Reese Witherspoon (as Cheryl Strayed), and based on Strayed’s bestselling memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is such a successful film.
While the idea that a burnt- out woman, mourning the loss of her mother, fighting heroin addiction, recovering from a recent divorce, and trying to mend relations with an estranged brother, can be saved by hiking 1,100 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail (which runs an astonishing 2,663 miles from Mexico to the Canadian border) is uniquely of the American New Age, the film is saved by Witherspoon’s incredibly compelling, vulnerable, and humourous performance, grounded by a great adaptation written by none other than Nick Hornby, and some unerring direction by Jean-Marc Vallée. Then there’s the overarching idea that America, the land itself, offers that very ability to redeem and remake oneself, through an intense engagement with the varying, epic landscapes, and ultimately the power of the harsh but essential beauty of nature.
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