Sorrow on the mountains

In Land, director Robin Wright stars as Edee, a lawyer whose city life is upended when a gunman kills her young son and husband. To flee painful memories and people who can’t grasp the depth of her grief, Edee sells everything, loads up a trailer, and purchases a remote, ramshackle mountain cabin.

Rid of cell phone, car, electricity, and plumbing and alone with the rushing rivers and mountain vistas, Edee thinks her suffering might ease. But she has inadequately prepared for a harsh Rocky Mountains winter.

She reaches the brink of starvation and suicide before a passing hunter happens on her cabin. Miguel (Demián Bichir) becomes Edee’s Good Samaritan and nurses her back to health—body and soul. He teaches her to hunt for deer, protect her garden from hungry rabbits, and fish for river trout.

Rated PG-13, Land has a spattering of mild bad language and two instances of brief nudity when Edee bathes and changes a shirt. The quiet and slow-paced film explores the importance of finding purpose while dealing with grief. Without her family or an understanding of her eternal purpose, Edee feels she has nothing to live for. But the care shown by Miguel and the challenges of life in her quiet corner of the world give her a new, if incomplete, mission.

The knowledge that her next meal depends on her own actions, at least, keeps her aiming one more rifle and casting one more line.