10 Great Movies About Men In The Wilderness
Men and the wilderness go together like a bear and a roll of toilet paper...
The Hunt For The Wilderpeople is the latest cinematic entry where man meets nature. A wayward boy (Julian Dennison) is taken under the wing of his outdoors-obsessed uncle (Sam Neill). But the pair get more than they bargained for when they become the unexpected target of a wilderness-based police pursuit.
The offbeat comedy from Taika Waititi (What We Do In The Shadows) brings us the New Zealand countryside, arguably as we've never seen it before. Though the director is a master of the weird and wonderful, the subject matter is tried and tested. It seems there's nothing a twenty-first century audience finds more invigorating than a trip to an air-conditioned multiplex to watch the world's greatest untamed scenery.
So with this strange family-based offering and other, diverse movies placing such far removed settings front and centre for the urban masses, now is a good time to take a look at some truly breathtaking wilderness adventures, both modern and classic.
I’ll be doing a fair amount of rummaging through the celluloid bracken to uncover how filmmakers use the uncultivated earth to really accentuate the relationships between their male characters...
10. A Walk In The Woods
It wasn’t just the bears who were grizzly for this outdoor opus starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte. The unlikely pairing of these craggy stars formed the centre of a tale in which two ageing pals went a'wandering in search of a hernia-inducing adventure.
Redford played real life author Bill Bryson (a casting decision that I'm sure the mild-mannered scribe approved of), who took the snap decision to go on an epic hike along the Appalachian Trail, an event which led him to the pen the book on which the movie was based. Nolte portrayed Stephen Katz, Bryson's weathered friend, who accompanied him for the nature-based slanging match.
Originally intended as a swansong of sorts for Redford and sparring partner of long standing Paul Newman, the project finally made it to the screen after Newman's sad death, with Nolte donning the rambler's hat. The wilderness became the backdrop for the rekindling of a friendship between two men, testing themselves to the limit in the twilight of their years.