Land by Robin Wright

Light on mountain ridges. The rush of the thawed river. The cloud drift of grief. Two shattered people meet where so few exist. They find a connection that heals—friendship. “How did you find me,” she asks him. His reply? “You were in my path.”

Robin Wright’s directorial debut, Land, is a quiet movie, contemplative, even. It is the kind of movie that can be appreciated by mature audiences. There’s a stillness to the scenes where little dialogue disturbs. Some scenes run without soundtrack music too.

Wright plays Chicago lawyer Edee Mathis, a wife and mother, who has lost who made her thus. She despairs and leaves her city life for outback Wyoming where she purchases a rustic cabin mounted on a high wooded crest. Being with others makes her lonelier. So she cuts all ties and sends her rental back after she’s even dumped her smartphone.

Here in the Shoshone National Forest she will live or die. She can fish. But Edee can’t chop wood. And she pours the liquid from a tuna can off her porch. In bear country. Will she live? Does she want to live?

The changes are incremental. There is no magic wand. She walks through memory and loss and the saw teeth of grief before she can hold a ladybug on her index finger and watch it.

Robin Wright needs little introduction. She is a longtime fixture since her first movie role at 21 in the beloved The Princess Bride (1987). Her latest has been as character General Antiope in Wonder Woman.

Demián Bichir supplies the believable outdoorsman, who can offer kindness because of what he’s suffered. This Mexican-American star of the famous Bichir family of actors was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in A Better Life.

After the movie, I asked my deeply Christian counselor husband if he’d recommend it.

“Yeah,” he said. My husband, who was widowed once, now keeps a list of grief movies.

“Would you put it on your list?”

“For sure.” (Rated PG-13, Focus Features)