When Cheryl Strayed arrives at a way station along the 2,663-mile in someone refers to her backpack as “the Monster.”
It is. Nearly bigger than star Reese Witherspoon, it is filled with camping paraphernalia she has yet to use.
It’s also packed with books Strayed brings as essential company: the travel guide that prodded her itinerary in the first place and poet Adrienne Rich’s “The Dream of a Common Language” among them.
Monster figures prominently in the early humor of “Wild,” director Jean-Marc Vallée and writer Nick Hornby’s beautifully textured adaptation of “From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.”
No doubt, there are . They were surely more prepared than our heroine for the trek. But it was this grieving, reeling young woman who penned one of the finest books about loss and recovery. Who invited so many along for an indelible tale of a hurt soul heading into the desert, the woods, our brilliant American wilderness.
Heroine may be too resonant a word choice. Among the destructive behaviors that send Strayed backpacking is her dalliance with heroin. There’s also the matter of her promiscuity.
Thomas Sadoski portrays Paul, her ex-husband but current friend. His steadfast forbearance makes an argument on behalf of Strayed’s better angels. If he can stick with her — even as they separate and divorce — surely there’s something there.
Laura Dern brings a lively and warm grace to the film as Strayed’s mother, Bobbi, whose death at 45 sends Cheryl into a downward spiral at once sensual and nihilistic.
Strayed confesses her own sense of failing to be her mother’s daughter to a friend (Gaby Hoffman) on a snowy Minneapolis day.
Not since June Carter Cash in “Walk the Line” has Witherspoon been so present to a character. Her Cheryl is funny and messy, wounded but not without survival instincts.
She’s also a believable example of a woman raised to be culturally conscious. Or, as a rather giddy young man writing for the “Hobo Times” states more than asks, “Are you a feminist? I love feminists.”
There is a lot of wit to be relished on this trek from the Mojave to the span between Oregon and Washington known as the Bridge of the Gods.
There are moments of camaraderie: A group of guys celebrates the quotes and entries Strayed has left in the trail’s guest-books. There are also moments for which we should be thankful that “Wild” is not a Smell-o-Vision film. And there is an unnerving bit of business that speaks to the reasonable (infuriating) suspicion that women traveling our shared outdoors solo confront.
The filmmakers handle Strayed’s past with an elegance that is inventive, subtle and gritty. They give us not so much flashbacks — although there are a few in the traditional sense — as heated glints and startling flickers mixed with shards of thought.
“Wild” is always told from Strayed’s point of view. So scenes of mother and daughter can be steeped in regret. More than once, Cheryl says something so judgmental about her mother’s seemingly boundless embrace of life that you want to scream at Cheryl. Until, you remember that these memories are a version of Strayed yelling at herself.
Vallée and Hornby deliver an echo chamber of reckoning and self-recrimination, reconciliation and forgiveness. “Wild” captures the ways our vast interior can be stirred by time spent in the great outdoors.
Yes, it’s all in Strayed’s book — but very little feels lost in this visual translation.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost .com or twitter.com/bylisakennedy
