Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line) plays Cheryl Strayed, the memoirist of the best-selling, Oprah-approved, super bestseller, Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found. In 1995, after her mother’s death, and a bout of destructive behavior including heroin use and sex with strangers, Strayed decided an 1,100 mile trek through the Pacific Crest Trail, alone, would help her recover. The Guardian describes the film Wild as “a two-hour hallucinatory montage of the hike.”
Since Wild is a travelogue featuring an unhappy woman who’s trying to “find herself,” it will inevitably be compared to the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love which starred Oscar winner Julia Roberts (Erin Brokovich). But in Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth (Julia Roberts) learns that the world is there for her entertainment. Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) learns that she’s just a tiny part of it. As for who’s tougher, eating and praying aren’t as difficult as solo hiking. Love–it’s hard to say. P.S. Oprah liked both books and gave each author an entire episode (Gilbert got two!) on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
