It’s a deceptively easy premise for a two-hour characteristic movie. A married couple who had deliberate their retirement in a B&B are, resulting from dire monetary circumstances and bum luck, compelled out of their residence at some extent that’s, on the floor at the least, utterly devastating. With their youngsters now off in school, they make the choice to pack up what they will of their backpacks and take off on the Salt Path, a 630-mile stretch from Dorset to Somerset on the Southwestern English Coast. To make issues worse, the husband has simply been recognized with a terminal neurodegenerative illness, however they’re sure and decided to finish this journey, maybe the final of their lives as a result of they haven’t any different alternative.
Oh, and it’s a 100% true story.
Exquisitely directed by four-time Tony Award winner Marianne Elliott (Battle Horse, Angels in America, Firm, Demise of a Salesman) with a screenplay by Rebecca Lenkiewicz (She Mentioned) primarily based on Raynor Winn’s 2018 memoir, The Salt Path is an inspiring story of affection and resilience in a state of affairs which may in any other case break most individuals, particularly a pair getting into their later years with little hope towards an unforgiving system. That is actually not the primary movie primarily based on somebody setting out on an bold stroll for varied private causes. Martin Sheen starred as a person tackling El Camino de Santiago path in 2010’s non secular The Manner; Reese Witherspoon performed the depressed Cheryl Strayed in Wild, the 2014 true story of her 1100-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Path; and Mark Wahlberg starred in one other true story, 2020’s Joe Bell, a couple of father who walks throughout America in protest of the bullying of his son.
All of those movies, and different comparable tales of willpower towards all odds, had been admirable makes an attempt however not at all times profitable films as typically dramatizing the journey generally is a little repetitive. The place Elliott succeeds with a high quality Lenkiewicz template, is getting us immediately engaged within the travails of Ray (Gillian Anderson) and Moth (Jason Isaacs), a pair who could possibly be you or me as life hits them laborious within the intestine and the Salt Path turns into someway a remedy, a non secular redemption nonetheless momentary, to set them on a brand new path (actually and figuratively) in life. Is it an journey? Is it madness or an existential mid-life disaster? In some methods, it’s paying homage to the premise of John Cheever’s The Swimmer and its movie adaptation, by which Burt Lancaster swam from one neighbor’s pool to a different, encountering varied individuals alongside the way in which. However furthermore, it’s the story of those two born to come back collectively to expertise life collectively, irrespective of how laborious that will get.
After unreasonably being evicted from their B&B, having their checking account dried up resulting from authorized bills and dropping their farm, this likable couple decides to fullfil a dream and dwell off the land because it had been by embarking with simply chump change on an bold stroll overlaying 630 breathtaking miles, whilst Moth has had a reasonably devastating analysis. This may cease most individuals of their tracks, however on this case solely units this couple off in theirs.
The story from this level on turns into episodic as they make their method, stopping at varied factors and cities, interacting with the locals and kinfolk, bleeding an ATM dry only for sufficient to get meals, and even for Ray getting a job shearing sheep. Nothing vastly life-threatening occurs alongside the way in which, no sudden tidal wave or earthquakes, not one of the typical film tropes, however slightly a love story of two individuals benefiting from the place life has introduced them up to now. In fact to make this work, you want actors of the extraordinary grace and expertise of Anderson and Isaacs who’re solely plausible as this pair staring down nature as an antidote to the playing cards life has dealt. Each are glorious in primarily a two-hander, though they get assist alongside the way in which from varied individuals they meet or stick with.
With Helene Louvart’s glorious cinematography an actual plus, The Salt Path is a cinematic journey price taking. It had its world premiere Thursday on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant. Producers are Elizabeth Karlsen, Stephen Woolley, Lloyd Levin and Beatriz Levin.
Title: The Salt Path
Pageant: Toronto
Director: Marianne Elliott
Screenplay: Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Forged: Gillian Anderson, Jason Isaacs, James Lance, Hermione Norris, Megan Placito
Working Time: 1 hour and 55 minutes
Gross sales Agent: Rocket Science, Black Bear
