It is a deceptively simple premise for a two-hour feature film. A married couple who had planned their retirement in a B&B are, due to dire financial circumstances and bum luck, forced out of their home at a point that is, on the surface at least, completely devastating. With their kids now off at school, they make the decision to pack up what they can in their backpacks and take off on the Salt Path, a 630-mile stretch from Dorset to Somerset on the Southwestern English Coast. To make matters worse, the husband has just been diagnosed with a terminal neurodegenerative disease, but they are bound and determined to complete this adventure, perhaps the last of their lives because they have no other choice.
Oh, and it is a 100% true story.
Exquisitely directed by four-time Tony Award winner Marianne Elliott (War Horse, Angels in America, Company, Death of a Salesman) with a screenplay by Rebecca Lenkiewicz (She Said) based on Raynor Winn’s 2018 memoir, The Salt Path is an inspiring story of love and resilience in a situation that might otherwise break most people, especially a couple entering their later years with little hope against an unforgiving system. This is certainly not the first film based on someone setting out on an ambitious walk for various personal reasons. Martin Sheen starred as a man tackling El Camino de Santiago trail in 2010’s spiritual The Way; Reese Witherspoon played the depressed Cheryl Strayed in Wild, the 2014 true story of her 1100-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail; and Mark Wahlberg starred in another true story, 2020’s Joe Bell, about a father who walks across America in protest of the bullying of his son.
All of these films, and other similar stories of determination against all odds, were admirable attempts but not always successful movies as sometimes dramatizing the journey can be a little repetitive. Where Elliott succeeds with a fine Lenkiewicz template, is getting us instantly engaged in the travails of Ray (Gillian Anderson) and Moth (Jason Isaacs), a couple who could be you or me as life hits them hard in the gut and the Salt Path becomes somehow a cure, a spiritual redemption however temporary, to set them on a new path (literally and figuratively) in life. Is it an adventure? Is it insanity or an existential mid-life crisis? In some ways, it is reminiscent of the premise of John Cheever’s The Swimmer and its film adaptation, in which Burt Lancaster swam from one neighbor’s pool to another, encountering various people along the way. But moreover, it is the tale of these two born to come together to experience life together, no matter how hard that gets.
After unreasonably being evicted from their B&B, having their bank account dried up due to legal expenses and losing their farm, this likable couple decides to fullfil a dream and live off the land as it were by embarking with just chump change on an ambitious walk covering 630 breathtaking miles, even as Moth has had a pretty devastating diagnosis. This might stop most people in their tracks, but in this case only sets this couple off in theirs.
The story from this point on becomes episodic as they make their way, stopping at various points and towns, interacting with the locals and relatives, bleeding an ATM dry just for enough to get food, and even for Ray getting a job shearing sheep. Nothing hugely life-threatening happens along the way, no sudden tidal wave or earthquakes, none of the usual movie tropes, but rather a love story of two people making the most of where life has brought them to this point. Of course to make this work, you need actors of the extraordinary grace and talent of Anderson and Isaacs who are entirely believable as this pair staring down nature as an antidote to the cards life has dealt. Both are excellent in essentially a two-hander, although they get support along the way from various people they meet or stay with.
With Helene Louvart’s excellent cinematography a real plus, The Salt Path is a cinematic journey worth taking. It had its world premiere Thursday at the Toronto International Film Festival. Producers are Elizabeth Karlsen, Stephen Woolley, Lloyd Levin and Beatriz Levin.
Title: The Salt Path
Festival: Toronto
Director: Marianne Elliott
Screenplay: Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Cast: Gillian Anderson, Jason Isaacs, James Lance, Hermione Norris, Megan Placito
Running Time: 1 hour and 55 minutes
Sales Agent: Rocket Science, Black Bear