I am a couple years late seeing this film but the myriad reviews I've read demonstrate to me that many do not get this film. Hence, I am writing one in its favor.
All the complaints about "slow-moving plot," and that the story doesn't move fast enough, provide enough "action" or "suspense" are, in my opinion,indefensible. So accustomed to traditional suspense ploys, this is not so much about what happens next as what is happening in the moment. It is about the need to make a shelter within a vacuum, to find a foothold in a raging river, to find a bit of nourishment from a morsel and a little warmth from a beast's body in lieu of a human one. It is about the looming and interminable experience of guilt, whether real or imagined. No one understood the presence of the woman and why she is both savior and nemesis. Near film's end, there is a snatch of what seems a trivial argument between the two. On the brink of his own extinction, the crash victim tries to extinguish his guilt about this little altercation. This regret looms as tall as the tree-tops against the sky as he is lying in the dirt looking skyward. The man clings to life in the same way that we cling to our magical thinking, cling to those tiny respites from the daily anguish of survival, both physical and mental. We and this protagonist learn the truth at the end, suggesting that if we manage to survive, we too will learn that we might have been the good guy all along. The element of suspense is couched in the wild and unforgiving setting--both within his mind and in the wilderness and create enough nurture to choose life.
All the complaints about "slow-moving plot," and that the story doesn't move fast enough, provide enough "action" or "suspense" are, in my opinion,indefensible. So accustomed to traditional suspense ploys, this is not so much about what happens next as what is happening in the moment. It is about the need to make a shelter within a vacuum, to find a foothold in a raging river, to find a bit of nourishment from a morsel and a little warmth from a beast's body in lieu of a human one. It is about the looming and interminable experience of guilt, whether real or imagined. No one understood the presence of the woman and why she is both savior and nemesis. Near film's end, there is a snatch of what seems a trivial argument between the two. On the brink of his own extinction, the crash victim tries to extinguish his guilt about this little altercation. This regret looms as tall as the tree-tops against the sky as he is lying in the dirt looking skyward. The man clings to life in the same way that we cling to our magical thinking, cling to those tiny respites from the daily anguish of survival, both physical and mental. We and this protagonist learn the truth at the end, suggesting that if we manage to survive, we too will learn that we might have been the good guy all along. The element of suspense is couched in the wild and unforgiving setting--both within his mind and in the wilderness and create enough nurture to choose life.