About a Film: Into the Forest (2015)

It's the right thing to do

(Eva)

Director: Patricia Rozema

Screenwriter: Patricia Rozema

Cast: Ellen Page, Evan Rachel Wood, Max Minghella, Callum Keith Rennie

Origin: Canada

Runtime: 101 minutes

Synopsis: Two daughters need to survive in the middle of forest after losing their father

Based on the novel Into the Forest by Jean Hegland

awas koen!

A film by Patricia Rozema, played by Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood. A director, two female lead actresses and my brain is just hypothesized by itself. Is it somehow related with feminist’s view or something near that? One thing that I know about the movie before I decide to watch it is it’s a survival movie. Okay, women and survival. I’m hoping there will be a zombie thing but, it’s just in my imagination. No one said about zombie in the movie. Instead, the movie is categorized as a science-fiction drama. So, I’m thinking there will be alien, but….yeah, maybe it’s about alien. Definitely.

waduh waduh

The movie introduces me with a family of three. A Dad (Callum Keith Rennie) and two daughters named Eva (Evan Rachel Wood) and Nell (Ellen Page). The two daughters had different personalities. Eva was…calmer than Nell. While Nell was always complaining everything straightly, Eva always kept everything in her mind. One day, a certain event made some changes in their lives. There was an outage and suddenly, they needed to learn how to live without power, in a secluded area since they live in the middle of forest. Fortunately, their father knew how to handle the situation and they could live without having a hard time; even though, the daughters started to complaint about how the things changed. Things turned worse when the father died in an unfortunate accident. The stress between the daughters began to swell up and they started to fight each other. The more they lived without the power, the more they began to realize how different they were. Then, in one rainy night, Eli (Max Minghella), Nell’s boyfriend, came to their house and he invited Nell to come with him. To go to the place where the people gathered, so they could live without holed up in the house without power. So, what would Nell do? Would she leave her sister alone or she just stayed with her, despite of all the fighting that they had?

aku syedih

After I see the movie, I feel like praising myself because I can finish the movie without any intention to skip any scene. You see, there is no alien, at all, in the movie. It’s purely drama with….yeah, I know why it’s a science-fiction movie. Usually, a drama movie like this will bore me, certainly. But, this one isn’t. I can emotionally relate to this movie because I have a sister and we had…our problems. Yet, I love my sister and I’ll help her if she needs any help. This movie shows me the depth of sisterhood, in the hardest moment. Another thing, just like the title, Into the Forest depicts how people lived without any power. I figured that the movie and the novel (since the movie based on a novel) can be a perfect study for Eco criticism where people need to give a deep thought about the environment. I think both the writer of the novel and the director of the movie want me to realize the dependence of people with power and somehow, they want us to see that we need to go back into the forest, back to nature, where the things won’t be rotten and expired. Solid performance from Evan Rachel Wood and Ellen Page because the two of them need to do many things in here. Hunting, chopping wood, skinning pig, and many others to show their struggle, living in the middle of the forest. I’d also admire how Patricia Rozema captures the moments and put it together in one beautiful movie. Nice! And no alien, my bad.

Credits:

A24 @ Youtube