Land

By Jesse Chatham and Erin Dignam

But if you leave, you’ll be alone with your pain.

In an interview, director Robin Wright said of the move Land that she created it because the world needed a story about human kindness right now. I couldn’t agree more. But Land is so much more than that. Everything about the film, the landscape, the people, the colors tells the story, so poignantly, of the life altering time between the loss of a loved one and a return to life.

When I started watching the movie I texted my daughter that it was a fantasy of mine after Roy died. To escape to the wilderness, a refuge from all of the assaults to my raw and vulnerable nervous system. “Don’t worry,” I texted, “I’m staying put. I can do it vicariously now through this movie.”

It’s the story of a woman, Edee, who loses her husband and son. We enter the story as she is telling her therapist why she is leaving. Or trying to tell her therapist. She couldn’t really articulate what she wanted, why she had to go, or what she hoped to accomplish. Next we see her completing the purchase of a remote cabin in the wilds of Alaska. The rest of the story, her journey into and out of isolation in the wilderness is a profound allegory for the psychological journey of integrating loss. When her therapist challenges her about being alone with her pain, her response is “but who would I share it with? Who would I ask to join me?”

She sets out, thinking she has her plans well in place, the over-confidence of one who has no idea what they’re actually dealing with. And of course her plans all fail. She comes to the point where she is raging at an unnamed God that her best laid plans weren’t working. A short time later, overcome by the challenges of the wilderness she eventually surrenders, on the floor, barely alive in a fetal position. I can’t speak for others, but I know I certainly came to my own limits, and the terrifying reality that I was in over my head trying to manage my way out of the grief experience.

And that was when human kindness found her, in the form of a local hunter who we come to learn shared her pain. She realized she couldn’t do it alone. And that she didn’t have to do it alone. But what I especially appreciated about the way writers Jesse Chatham and Erin Dignam crafted this story, is that the man who saved her life, wasn’t her salvation. She continued to protect her isolation. She accepted some offers of assistance, but set boundaries around others. She did not want to be rescued. She wanted someone who would teach her how to find her way into surviving, and ultimately thriving, on her own. No prince charming here.

And to all of that I say yes. As a widow, I initially felt a sort of cultural nudging toward finding another partner who would restore me to wholeness again. Then my family, and community and the world could exhale a collective sigh that I would be alright. And initially, that’s what I thought I wanted as well. But the journey taught me what I really needed. I needed to find my way into being all right on my own and how friendship and community would shape my particular journey. The story’s protagonist Edee didn’t want someone to bring her food. She wanted to be taught to trap and hunt and garden. The very physical, material tasks that Edee took on represented, for me, symbols of all of the psycho-emotional tasks required of loss, integrating loss, and finding one’s way.

This movie tenderly explores the paradox of human self-reliance right alongside our inter-dependence. What does it mean to listen to one’s inner wisdom, to take care of one’s self, and also, at the same time, open to relationship, and acknowledge our deep seated longing and need for human kindness?

My hat’s off to the writers, Chatham and Dignam for this portrayal of the grief experience which helped me continue to learn from and understand my own story.