Featuring two favourites in Gillian Anderson & Jason Isaacs, THE SALT PATH was one of the most anticipated pictures at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
About: After losing their home and livelihood, a middle-aged couple impulsively set out on a 630-mile walk along the southwest English coast, a walk complicated to no small degree by the recent diagnosis of a terminal neurodegenerative disease.
Ray (Gillian Anderson) and Moth (Jason Isaacs) are out of time, money, and hope. They’ve been forced out of the B&B that was going to provide for their retirement, with nowhere to go, and Moth has recently been diagnosed with a terminal neurodegenerative disease. And that is how, in a moment of panic, they decide to walk the Salt Path, a 630-mile trek along the English coast from Dorset to Somerset. Are they trying to outrun an existential crisis or embarking on one last adventure? Does it even matter?
Adapted by Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Ida, Disobedience, She Said) from the 2018 memoir by Raynor Winn, The Salt Path marks the moviemaking debut of four-time Tony Award–winning theatre director Marianne Elliott. But this is no chamber drama. Elliott and her crew filmed in some breathtakingly beautiful locations — though not always in the finest of weather. This is a bracingly cinematic tale of a couple struggling against the elements and trying not to turn on one another, while the whole world seems bent on beating them down.
Reaction: THE SALT PATH is such a strange movie that you really have to stick with as it’s a movie that jumps over the time frame as a couple goes on a massive hike. The reasons for all of this is slowly revealed but the first act is such a downer with a lot of strife going on with its two leads. The subject of a major walk really struck a chord with me, and how it handles its terminal cancer issues. I was almost ready to walk from THE SALT PATH. As the movie progresses, however, it started to win me over thanks to its idea of a long hike across the English coast and how it reveals the couple as they are trying to deal with a terminal illness. On a technical level this is such a lovely looking picture as well, and it even plays with the aspect ratio as it starts out in the narrower 1.85:1 aspect ratio, then moves to the scope 2.39:1 widescreen format making it feel even more grand. The movie works well thanks to the always reliable Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs who have a good connection here, along with some notable dramatic and comedic moments for people they meet along the way (there’s also a good sequence in which a couple takes them in, mistaking the couple for a much more famous individual). The movie is a bit long and far from perfect with some of its secondary/supporting characters along the way, but overall this may find an audience down the road, especially for those who like “road trip” movies of discovery.
Thanks to TIFF Media for assistance with this reaction article. This is one of the many movies playing at TIFF this year. For more information, point your browser to www.tiff.net!