Land review: Robin Wright makes her feature directorial debut with a moving wilderness drama

Robin Wright makes her feature directorial debut with Land, a moving drama about a woman trying to escape her demons by decamping to a remote mountainside cabin in Wyoming.

As Land begins, Edee (Wright) moves from her home in the city and takes up in a small cabin with no electricity or running water. Edee is clearly bereaved, but the film is in no rush to delve into her backstory. She has a burning desire to be completely alone — she pushes aside any help, even though she appears to have no real experience in roughing it at this level.

With only a few manuals to guide her in the necessary elements to sustain herself in such limited circumstances (hunting, fishing), she nevertheless pushes onward, until she nearly dies during a blizzard. She is eventually discovered and brought back to health by a nurse named Alawa (Sarah Dawn Pledge) and her friend Miguel (Demián Bichir). Even after her near-death experience, Edee still pushes aside any further help from the duo, but Miguel keeps stopping by to check on her, and Edee eventually begins to welcome his company, not to mention his helpful tutorials on how to provide for herself by gathering her own food and securing her shelter against the intense elements and surrounding wildlife.

While the evolving friendship between Edee and Miguel could have easily fallen into any number of romantic drama tropes, the script by Jesse Chatham and Erin Dignam manages to keep audiences on their toes by staying true to Edee’s initial desire to escape from her old life. As her tragic backstory slowly begins to unfold, her relationship with the charming and also intensely private Miguel begins to deepen, with the pair recognizing each other’s need for companionship, while also respecting each other’s own space to grieve and deal with their demons.

Wright’s feature debut is an achingly emotional and mostly understated film that pays homage to the notion of getting back to the land, without ever pandering to the audience. This is not a film about how embracing “wellness” and nature can rectify all of one’s problems. Wright delivers a nuanced and heartbreaking performance as a woman who literally runs to the edge of civilization in order to reset her life, only to discover that a solitary existence doesn’t necessarily hold the answers she hoped for.

With stunning shots of the remote scenery (the film was shot in Calgary, Didsbury, and Kananaskis) and numerous extended scenes with no dialogue, Land is a visually striking film but isn’t the sort of flashy project you would expect from a first-time feature director, especially not from an actor with a pedigree as deep as Wright’s. While the plotting becomes a bit more formulaic as the film progresses, Wright’s spot-on direction and aching lead performance make Land worth a visit. Ideally, this would be seen in a theatre with the film’s incredible landscapes taking center stage, but if that isn’t a safe option, there’s definitely something to be said for cozying up on the couch and letting Wright’s sure hand guide you through this emotional and rewarding tale.

Land arrives in select theatres on February 12, 2021.