Review: The Salt Path

Director:  Marianne Elliott

Stars:  Gillian Anderson, Jason Isaacs, Hermione Norris

It’s a tricky thing adapting a memoir that also serves as an inspirational creed. The wealth of good intentions run the risk of running roughshod over any sense of objective realism (if, indeed, objective realism is what you’re going for). Take Nora Fingsheidt’s tackling of The Outrun last year. In spite of a tearaway central turn from Saoirse Ronan, the film struggled under the weight of eking something triumphant out of one woman’s isolationist battle with alcoholism. It was a very well-meaning film, but one that ultimately suffered from a scrambled approach to chronology and an overpowering desire to turn anthemic. Marianne Elliott’s handling of Raynor Winn’s tale of homelessness comes a’cropper of some of these same pitfalls. It’ll absolutely gobble up the ‘grey pound’ box office at Picturehouse cinemas nationwide, but it also plays acutely to this audience as the most M&S-friendly account of living off-grid imaginable; something designed for Aunt Susan to come out of exclaiming, “I wish I could toss it all away like that and disconnect from my problems”. Dear Sue’s rather missed the point.

So too have Elliott and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz, as its customary when telling a tale of endurance that has perseverance and dedication built into its bones to stick with it to the end. 

With a far less problematic tendency for jumbling the sequencing of it’s telling, Elliott presents us Ray (Gillian Anderson) and Moth (Jason Isaacs), a middle-aged couple who lose their middle class farmhouse home due to some coyly undisclosed bad investments. While their college-age kids are still able to attend university, the couple find themselves homeless. Fortunately, Ray grabbed a book on coastal paths just as the bailiffs came knocking. She suggests that the two of them walk the UK Westcountry coastline while figuring out what to do next with their lives.

From the get-go this is a tale of adversity, as Moth has been diagnosed with CBD (corticobasal degeneration), a progressive illness that is already causing him problems with his ambulation. Elliott’s onscreen mile-marker hasn’t yet ticked into double digits and Moth is making the first of many limping stumbles to come. The Westcountry coastal path is unforgiving to ramblers and hikers. The couple’s aimless and arbitrary endeavour begins as a slow and spurious fool’s errand.

Credit to Elliott, she gets us involved in it, though. The landscapes are taken advantage of keenly, and she even expands the aspect ratio around a third of the way into the picture to fully upscale our sense of awe at the natural beauty her actors are scrabbling across. Less successful is the cumbersome, nay dodgy script, which is over-eager to spoon feed us sentimentalism that borders on the mawkish. While there’s plenty of misery to go around in this plodding tale of suffrage, efforts to brighten things also miss the mark. Intentionally or not, Ray in particular is depicted as a little slow-witted, swerving some of these scenes into the uncomfortably patronising. Anderson’s a fine actor, and moments that catch her off-guard still shine. But the screenplay (and affected West Midlands accent) often unfortunately pivot her in the direction of Alice Lowe in Sightseers.

As things progress the film furthers a growing sense of hippy politics. Conventional medicine is presented as untrustworthy and, by the film’s surprise – and abrupt – end, Moth is even wistfully announcing that he doesn’t regret anything, including the loss of the family home. It’s a staggeringly romanticised depiction of homelessness that feels utterly removed from the harsh, dangerous and scary realities that an increasing percentage of the UK’s poor have to face. There’s the slightest of tilts that this other world exists when the couple briefly take in wandering stray Sealy (Gwen Currant), but it’s as flimsy as the acknowledgement of whatever monetary problems created this crisis for Ray and Moth in the first place. Something altogether too unpleasant for this film to grapple with.

And that’d be fine, as it goes. A middling picture would have been okay. But The Salt Path becomes truly aggravating. Having set up the premise and even included a mile counter so we can track their progress from one provincial coastal village to another, Elliott and Lenkeiwicz give up on the story altogether. Barely halfway through the journey, onscreen text announces that you can read about the rest in Raynor Winn’s best-selling book and up go the lights. 

Now, this was obviously a considered choice. Lenkeiwicz deciding on what she felt was the emotional pivot point of the story and shaping her screenplay with this in mind. But it feels like everyone involved has grown even more disinterested in the endeavour than the audience. It’s totally at odds with the spirit of the story and ultimately plays like a shrewd bit of bait to drive floundering book sales back up. It’s hard, as a cinemagoer, not to feel swindled.

The beginning of the film suffers from a mild, forgivable lack of trajectory, as Ray and Moth seem to have little idea of their options in the face of such a sudden (mystifying) loss. As soon as they have a plan, the movie gives up on them, and makes us feel like fools for investing our time and attention.