For a New Years Day treat we went out to a movie.
Reese Witherspoon will probably get nominated for this film, and she will deserve to win. It's an unflinching look at a young woman, Cheryl Strayed, who falls apart after her mother, only 45, dies of cancer. She engages in drug use, promiscuous sex and a divorce in an effort to escape the pain. After these extremes only make her feel worse, she decides to take another extreme measure, hiking something like 300 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail all by herself.
[Edit: Whoa, Wikipedia says she hiked 1,100 miles. Impressive!)
Through that ordeal she ultimately experiences redemption and acceptance.
It's a simple story, and not an uncommon one, but it resonates very strongly. Her love of the outdoors, her reaching into herself to find strength through sacrifice, her indomitable will drive the narrative. Reese is at turns ferocious and resolved, and unguarded. It's an Oscar-worthy performance.
My late sister did a couple hundred miles of the PCT, Washington-to-Canada (Cheryl's was California-to-Oregon). The same sister also bicycled all the way from Astoria OR to Washington D.C., solo. I recognized a lot of Kristen in Reese's character. I cried a few times.
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