Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

It didn’t occur to me until the credits were rolling that Land could have more meaning as a title than just the literal one. How intentional was that, I wonder? Things like that in movies are rarely a coincidence. In this case, Edee (Robin Wright) has moved into an abandoned cabin high in the mountains of Wyoming, to live through the grief of the loss of her family in absolute solitude. She has to learn to live off her new land, from gardening to hunting—but, this is also how she “lands” after the disorientation of her monumental loss. A little on the nose? Maybe.

For the first third or so of the movie, Land is mostly Edee on her own. If feels somewhat similar to a movie like the Robert Redford film All Is Lost (2013), which features only Redford onscreen in the entirety of the film’s run time. The key difference is that film is about a man learning of the hopelessness of his isolation on a wrecked sailboat in the middle of the ocean, and in Land Edee learns how to survive.

The Land script could have gone the All Is Lost direction, and in fact for a while it does. There is a moment when Edee basically gives up, and utters one of the more poignant lines in the film: “This isn’t working.” It’s not just that she is ill equipped to live off the grid as intended, but it’s also not taking her beyond her grief as she had hoped. And in the middle of her first winter, she collapses inside her freezing cabin and remains there, laying on the floor, until she happens to be discovered by a guy out hunting.

This is where Land makes the choice to go in a more hopeful direction, and makes it a slightly more uplifting movie—although to be clear, a whole lot of the movie has a gently melancholy tone, even as it is packed with truly gorgeous shots of the Wyoming mountains, over multiple seasons. Fall, winter spring: it’s all gorgeous. I would almost recommend this movie just for the cinematography. (It’s released on VOD today, but at the top-tier $19.99 price; I would also recommend waiting the requisite few weeks until the price drops to around six bucks.)

The man who discovers Edee is Miguel (Demián Bichir), who with the help of his nurse friend Alawa (Sarah Dawn Pledge), spends several days nursing her back to health—but only within her cabin, as Edee refuses to be taken to the hospital. Over time she develops an acquaintance with Miguel, once she reluctantly agrees to his offer to teach her how to hunt and trap animals. It’s a very gradual process over months, but this turns into a friendship, and thus veers Land away from being a movie focused exclusively on one person. Even through all of this, Edee still insists on otherwise total isolation, asking Miguel not to tell her any news of the outside world, which he respects.

Land is thus a film about grief, and about the healing powers of time, with a beautiful backdrop of nature. Robin Wright is not only playing an unusual part for her, but she is also the director of the film, an impressively strong feature directorial debut. The circumstances of Edee’s grief and loss could not be more different from current real-world concerns (although they are unfortunately common to how the world was before the pandemic, and likely will be again after it ends), but it may still be that this is the perfect time for it. Grief is relatable no matter what causes it, and Land could be in some part cathartic for anyone going through it.

Or hell, for anyone who just needs a good cry, it could be just the thing. Land isn’t what I would call a major tearjerker, but it did make me cry. There’s no question this movie won’t be for everyone—reviews have been somewhat mixed—but it worked for me. Even in its melancholy, Robin Wright’s screen presence has a soothing quality to it. It’s an effective ode to both those we have lost and those who make us want to keep living.

Overall: B+