Movie review: The Salt Path
After receiving a bad health diagnosis and finding themselves unexpectedly homeless, middle-aged couple Raynor and Moth Winn decide to embark on a 1010km journey on England’s South West coast path.
Directed by Marianne Elliot, The Salt Path is a film adapted from Raynor Winn’s 2018 Memoir of the same name, based on journal entries Winn wrote while the couple embarked on their long walk. The Winns, portrayed by Gillian Anderson of X-files fame, and Jason Isaacs, aka Papa Malfoy from the Harry Potter series, suggests this star studded cast might translate to a well-produced film. This I’m not so certain about, it felt like there was something missing when all the elements came together. Elliot adapts Winn’s source material well, but the challenge always comes with adapting writing for film and portraying characters internal dialogues or thoughts without the use of voiceover make it challenging for audiences to connect with characters. Winn’s book is a personal, intimate, raw, unfiltered account of their experience whilst Elliot’s film felt more like a distant observation.
The film opens with the metaphor of the impending storm, a helpless couple trust into powerlessness, battling the elements, holding up a collapsing tent, clinging onto each other, as a harsh storm batters them. Perhaps this scene represents the adversity of the human spirit, but it felt cliched, and although it did happen in the book, it felt unnecessarily overdramatic. Setting up a tent in a storm is ridiculous, a metaphor for the chaos of life perhaps, something only hope and humour can carry us through during dark times.
Whether or not The Salt Path translates well onscreen is dependent on perspective and a viewer’s personal history with loss in whatever form it may be. Death and taxes are a universal anchor many of us can understand with the cost of living rising, sudden bouts of sickness, a search for meaning of self through the abundance or absence of one’s possessions or career, and the feeling of safety dependant on circumstance. The Salt Path tackles topics of homelessness, identity, sickness and loss. These topics although universal are introspective and differ depending how we choose to cope, and the film felt slow echoing the internal mental battle individuals face when coping with sudden loss or tragedy.
‘Let’s just walk, it’ll give us time to think’ Winn remarks, suggesting the mundane nature of walking can help those grieving life’s unexpected circumstances to process, as if only in these ordinary mundane moments are we allowed to process emotions because sometimes they can feel too intense, internal, and deeply personal to share.
The Salt Path is a beautiful film highlighting how the shame of asking others for help plays parallel to the shame of admitting weakness, that if we don’t have our lives together we’re not put together or socially acceptable. Perhaps in our individualistic society where the fear of speaking up and asking for help is linked to the pride of our individualistic and consumer-focused, capitalist-driven society where it’s ultimately about pride and saving face. Internal frustration, shame, and blame on others during a journey of loss is perhaps the easy path perhaps to take, guarded with resistance against the kindness of strangers and generosities based on misunderstandings of identity. The film was sprinkled with moments of humour and beautiful shots of vast English coastal landscapes throughout both of which I enjoyed.
The Salt Path isn’t merely a film criticising a system a few of us may find themselves in, one that advantages or disadvantages a select few, or a story to evoke feelings of pity or sympathy, and though both readings are valid and true, the film is one of resilience only few may recognise, those who have experienced and lived through it.
The struggle of Elliot’s adaptation of Winn’s source material was in portraying this mental change, this internal shift onscreen, and have this relevant to audiences watching understand. Unless already familiar with the source material and a prior knowledge of Winn’s story, as observed during as my post cinema experience, overheard conversations about the confusion as to why the couple walked such a long distance filled the moments after the credits rolled.
A scene that perhaps sheds light on the resilience and reason for this and gives purpose in why the Winns decided to walk the path is when a stranger says to Raynor and Moth in passing, pointing out the shape of the weathered rocks on the beach, ‘you can’t make that, it has to come from time and nature.’ Experience shapes us, scars us, and builds us into who we are and, to me, that is beautiful.
Review by Addy Fong.
