robin wright

With Land, the new movie she both stars in and directs, Wright has traded in the peak of American political power for the peak of a remote mountain far removed from civilization. Land is a slow, quiet, thoughtful movie about the human condition. It’s about the profound power of human kindness and our need for connection. Focusing on grief and isolation and, ultimately, the importance of connecting with other people, Land just may be the perfect movie for the pandemic.

Building on the experience of helming several episodes of House of Cards in which she also starred, Robin Wright drops all vestiges of glamor to direct and star in this wilderness saga. Following a devastating, unfathomable loss, Edee Holzer (Wright) is determined to leave Chicago and all civilization far behind her. Buying an old cabin high in Wyoming’s Rocky Mountains, she discards her cellphone, returns her rental car and tries to live off the land: “I’m here in this place because I don’t want to be around people.”

Land means the part of the earth not covered by water, but as a verb, it means to come down through the air to the ground. The latter applies to the title of Robin Wright’s meaningful film, an exploration of boundless grief. It matters little why Edee mourns. It matters how.