|  Kokuyan elders simply accept what comes to them. They teach that everything in the natural world has its own spirit and awareness, and they give themselves to that other world, without expecting voices, without waiting for visions, without seeking admission to the hidden realms.
— Richard K. Nelson Wilderness movies touch on fundamental themes – the struggle to survive, the balance of beauty and cruelty in nature, the relationship between nature and culture, the core value of being human. Movies tend to enact two different myths about the wilderness – the Edenic myth, which sees the wilderness as pure, nurturant, and either unpeopled or peopled by innocent children; and the demonic myth, which sees the wilderness as cruel, treacherous, and peopled by savages. What the myths have in common is that, in both cases, the wilderness stands over against civilization, which intervenes to protect the wilderness on the one hand, or to conquer it, on the other. Movies about the wilderness can thus be roughly sorted into three piles – the Edenic, the demonic, and what we can call the transitional, in which there is a switch in perspective from one myth to the other, whether by the protagonist or the audience. Each theme, in its own way, addresses the question of how we, the civilized, relate to wilderness as the ultimate Other. The movies on this page are a sampling. I would be very grateful for any further suggestions, or for any additional comments on any of the movies listed here.
 Aguirre The Wrath of God Directed by Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski plays crazed conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro on a doomed quest for El Dorado, the city of gold, in the impenetrable jungles of Peru. The story is based on a historical expedition in 1650, as recorded in the journals of a priest who accompanied the mission. The conquistadors, greedy and cruel, face an environment whose cruelty is equal to their own – hostile natives, disease, starvation, and treacherous waters. The opening shot shows a long line of men and animals snaking their way down a trail on the eastern slope of the Andes into the jungle; the final shot – one of the most unforgettable in cinema – has the camera swooping around the insane Aguirre drifting down the river on a raft filled with corpses and monkeys. In between, the conquistadors face foes indistinguishable from nature itself, only dimly glimpsed in the jungle, their arrows flying from invisible bows on the green shoreline.
 Cast Away Tom Hanks plays a workaholic Federal Express engineer, obsessed with time to the point of compulsion, whose plane goes down over the South Seas, leaving him stranded alone on a desert island for four years. Now, with nothing but time, he has to learn to survive, using, among other things, the contents of FedEx packages that wash ashore from the wrecked plane. Of course, if you have to be stranded, this particular island seems ideal – food practically leaps into his hands – but it is still interesting to watch an intelligent person in extreme circumstances learn how to solve the problems of survival from scratch. Screenwriter William Broyles, Jr., spent a week studying survival skills on a desert island in the Sea of Cortez with instructors from the Boulder Outdoor Survival School, so Tom Hanks uses the fireplough correctly. The film clearly depicts the effects of extended wilderness solitude; one of the things I liked best about this movie is the way it conveys how Tom Hanks’ wilderness experience is simply beyond the comprehension of the people he talks with when he returns.
 Deliverance Director John Boorman follows four city slickers – Burt Reynolds, John Voight, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox – on a psychological and physical journey down an uncharted section of a river in the backwoods of Georgia before a dam project ruins the region. The men certainly pass beyond the confines of civilization, with the transition marked by the famous “dueling banjos” encounter with a mute inbred boy, and they are exhilarated by the wild freedom of the river. But beyond the city is a cruel and demanding nature, symbolized by two rifle-wielding mountain men, who rape one of the travelers and almost rape another. The film balances the pristine beauty of the Chattoga River in Georgia against a chilling sense of infinite menace. Based on poet James Dickey’s novel, the film ponders violent instincts and definitions of manhood, the nature of revenge, and the fragility of civilization.
 Dersu Uzala After his notorious attempted suicide, director Akira Kurosawa wrote and directed this Russian-Japanese coproduction – the story of an elderly Goldi guide and hunter who, at the turn of the century, agrees to shepherd a Russian explorer and a troop of soldiers through the most treacherous passages of Siberia. The hunter, named Dersu Uzala, teaches the captain and his men how to survive in almost impossibly brutal conditions; more important, he shows them how to act with dignity and compassion. The relationship between the captain and the wilderness hunter is almost entirely wordless. Perhaps the most compelling scene is the magnificent action sequence in which the two men fight against time and exhaustion to stay alive in a raging snowstorm. Very little seen, and strikingly different from his more popular samurai films, this is Kurosawa at his very best, finding in this film a reason for his own continued life.
 The Earthling William Holden is terminally ill with cancer, so, tired of drifting, he returns to his native Australia intending to live out his last few months alone. Ricky Schroder is a city boy lost in the remote backcountry after his parents are killed in an accident. Holden can't take the boy back to civilization, so he reluctantly takes him along to the valley where he wishes to die, and along the way teaches him the survival skills he will need to make it out on his own. Ironically, at the time of filming, the director of the film, Peter Collinson, was himself dying of the same cancer Holden's character had, and died shortly after he finished the film, but the irony does not make it into the film. This is no Walkabout; still, it is an enjoyable low-key character study about a doomed man redeemed by the love of a boy, with some beautiful photography of the Australian outback. Watch it with a kid.
 The Edge Billionaire Anthony Hopkins thinks that fashion photographer Alec Baldwin may be shtupping his much younger wife Elle Macpherson, and all three sides of the triangle are heading for a remote lodge in Alaska. Hopkins plays a quiet, introspective man, fond of accumulating trivia and other facts in his encyclopedic mind; it just so happens that he has read a book on wilderness survival. Although Hopkins suspects the younger man plans to kill him, he nonetheless goes with the photographer and his assistant on an airplane trip into the bush, where the plane crashes in a lake, killing the pilot. The crash is miles from their planned path, so they can't expect to be spotted by an aerial search, and their only chance is to walk to a more likely spot. Though Baldwin and the assistant are more physically fit, Hopkins has, of course, read the survival book, and his calm wit and ingenuity proves the key to their staying alive, especially after a ferocious bear brutally kills the assistant and starts stalking them. At my age, I am always happy to see an older man defeat a younger, stronger man through wisdom and guile. The bear is wonderful.
 The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat) The critics have been kind to The Fast Runner, despite is manifest flaws – its excessive length, murky exposition, idiosyncratic use of digital video instead of film, and . . . well, bad acting. Yet there is no question that the film becomes more and more absorbing as you enter into its mythic rhythms; the plot moves with the pace of the Arctic seasons. Produced and acted entirely by Inuit people, with dialogue in their native language, the film is a retelling of an ancient Inuit story of jealousy and murder; propelled by a primordial patricide, an evil spirit has entered into a tiny Inuit community, manifest as the bitterness, jealousy, and murderous rage of the leader and his son. The hero – and the tale is without doubt a heroic journey – is Atanarjuat, the fast runner, who, in an excruciating ten-minute sequence, flees his pursuers, naked and barefoot, across the Arctic ice. The Arctic landscape is, of course, remarkable – vast fields of snow or rock, in which humans and their habitations seem to disappear entirely. Moreover, the film clearly shows the daily life of the Inuit, all the more effectively for being an understated part of the background – how they prepare their food, build their iglus, provide lighting, construct their clothing, travel and hunt, preserve water, and use their all-purpose ulu knife. The film also shows the intricate social structures and complex personal and political interactions of a small isolated indigenous community. Altogether worth seeing, on multiple levels.
 Jeremiah Johnson Sidney Pollack directs and Robert Redford stars in this film based on the life of a historical mountain man named Jeremiah Johnson, also known as Liver-Eating Johnson. Set in the mid-1800s, ex-soldier Johnson sets out to the wilderness of Colorado in order to escape the constraints of society. Along the way he meets grizzled mountain veteran Bear Claws, wonderfully played by Will Geer, who teaches him how to survive. He strives to live peacefully, even marrying the daughter of a Flathead chief in order to avoid confrontation, but the killing of his family by the Crow Indians, in retaliation for an insult inflicted by the U.S. Cavalry, turns Johnson into the vengeful and driven Indian killer of legend. Shot in Utah, the scenery is spectacular, and the film vividly captures the struggles of a lone man against an overwhelming nature, as Johnson tries to light a fire in a blizzard, cross a meadow in knee-deep snow, or catch something – anything – to eat. For more on the real-life Jeremiah Johnson, see Raymond Thorp, Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson (Bloomington IN: University of Indiana Press, 1969), ISBN 0-25311-425-X.
 Man in the Wilderness Richard Harris, who also starred in the remarkable A Man Called Horse, about an English hunter captured and enslaved by Plains Indians, here plays a trapper who joins a Northwest Territory expeditionary group. Left for dead after being mauled by a grizzly bear, Harris struggles to regain his strength and exact vengeance against John Huston, who left him to die. If this sounds to you an awful lot like the real-life story of mountain man Hugh Glass, then you’re right. Man in the Wilderness alternates between a classic revenge tale and a one-man demonstration of wilderness survival under extreme conditions. The incredible story of Hugh Glass is told in John Myers, The Saga of Hugh Glass: Pirate, Pawnee and Mountain Man (Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1976), ISBN 0-80325-834-8, and in Bruce Bradley, Hugh Glass (Berkeley CA: Monarch Press, 1999), ISBN 0-96690-050-2.
 The Naked Prey In the bush country of South Africa in the late nineteenth century, a bigoted hunter deliberately offends a local tribal chief. As consequence, the tribesmen capture the hunting party and, in a bizarre and excruciating scene, torture them brutally to death. The only white man they spare is safari guide Cornel Wilde, who has a respectful relationship with the tribe. The tribesmen offer Wilde a chance to survive; they strip him naked, turn him loose in the jungle, give him a head start, and then send their best warriors to hunt him down. The rest of the film follows Wilde in his desperate, resourceful flight to the safety of an English fort. An absorbing feature of the film is the way in which Wilde – previously insulated by all the trappings of the white hunter – gradually learns to use the resources of the jungle for his survival. Cornel Wilde both produced and directed. Believe me, you will not be able to turn this off.
 Nanook of the North This is the first, true, original wilderness survival film. In 1920, American anthropologist Robert J. Flaherty traveled alone with his camera to the remote Canadian tundra. There, for over a year, he lived with the Inuit, documenting their daily lives and returning to his editing studio with the raw footage. With Nanook of the North, Flaherty pioneered both a new cinematic genre, the narrative documentary, and created a truly timeless drama of human perseverance under the harshest of conditions. Flaherty obviously understood the charisma of one Inuit in particular, Nanook, and much of the film's warmth, humor, and charm come from the mutual respect and sympathy between the filmmaker and his subject. Flaherty possessed an acute eye for simple detail and his presentation of the stark climate and unique culture remains breathtaking. In this film he shares his tremendous respect and awe for a culture that has learned to not just survive but thrive in such an inhospitable environment.
 Never Cry Wolf Dorky Charles Martin Smith plays an inexperienced young biologist sent by the Canadian government to establish that the wolves are depleting the caribou herds. He is dumped in the middle of nowhere by a drunken bush pilot, taught survival skills by an aged Inuit who saves his life, and finds, instead of vicious predators, a harmonious natural order. In a culminating scene, he runs with the wolf pack, and for an instant becomes one with the wilderness. On the basis of his careful observations and growing relationship with a single wolf family, Smith finds that the real destroyer of the caribou has two instead of four legs. Director Carroll Ballard, who also made The Black Stallion, captures the awesome natural beauty of the Canadian wilderness. This is a gentle, funny, and at times exhilarating film. The movie is based on the autobiography of Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf (New York NY: Bantam Books, 1979), ISBN 0-55327-396-5.
 Rabbit-Proof Fence Directed by Phillip Noyce, who also directed the elegant and intelligent The Quiet American, Rabbit-Proof Fence tells the true story of three young Australian Aborigine girls snatched away from their families by the government to be raised in a special boarding school for “half-caste” children. They are part of the “stolen generations,” Aborigine children intended for assimilation into white society – as domestic servants – with eventual outbreeding erasing any trace of their Aborigine blood and culture. The three girls escape from the school and walk 1200 miles through some of the harshest terrain on earth, in order to go home to their mothers. They are pursued by an Aboriginal tracker, played by David Gulpilil, the same actor who, many years earlier, played the young Aborigine in Nicholas Roeg's Walkabout, now with an older, weather-beaten face which conveys far more than his few words. Kenneth Branagh is the government's “Protector of Aborigines,” a man willing to do horrible things to children for what he believes to be the most honorable motives; in one scene, as the girls emabarrassingly continue to evade capture, he snaps at a police officer, "Just because they use neolithic tools doesn't mean they have neolithic minds." There are lots of wilderness survival and tracking skills to admire here; but, more than that, the movie powerfully conveys the grit and tenacity of the girls, and the unshakeable bonds of love and family.
 Touching the Void This is simply one of the best survival movies ever made, based on the equally excellent book by Joe Simpson. In 1985, two skilled British mountain climbers, 25-year-old Joe Simpson and 21-year-old Simon Yates, decided to climb the previously unscaled western face of Siula Grande in the Andes. They chose to climb Alpine style, without setting up stocked camps and supply depots, but rather in one big push, carrying all of their supplies with them. The difficult climb soon turned into disaster when Simpson fell off an embankment and shattered his leg. As the two attempted to climb down, another series of accidents left Simpson stranded in a crevasse, on an outcropping 50 feet below the surface, with no possible way to climb out. Believing that Simpson could not have survived the fall, Yates continued down to the base camp, unknowingly leaving his severely injured friend behind. How Simpson managed to get down the side of the mountain all by himself is one of the truly great survival stories, and the movie is both enthralling and beautiful. Simpson and Yates tell the story themselves, and their tale is intercut with reenactments of the events and scenes of the mountain in Peru. Simpson’s endurance, heroism, and modesty come across clearly. Yates had been criticized for his actions on the mountain, and Simpson had written his book, in part, to exonerate his friend. Simpson seems to be that kind of guy.
 The Valley (Obscured by Clouds) Produced and directed by Barbet Schroeder, with a wonderful soundtrack by Pink Floyd, this 1972 film follows a group of hippies searching for paradise in the wilderness of Papua New Guinea. The beautiful Bulle Ogier plays the bored and self-centered Vivian, married to the French Consul in Melbourne, who is in New Guinea searching for feathers of the near-extinct Bird of Paradise, which she plans to send back to Paris to sell in her boutiques. She falls in with a ragtag bunch heading for the interior to search for an unknown valley, obscured by clouds and thus invisible from the air, where the natives believe that the gods live. What follows is not entirely clear. They head into the jungle, Vivian has sex with the leader of the group, they are welcomed by a primitive people wearing mud masks, they abandon their horses, the expedition is stripped to the essentials, and finally, at the point of exhaustion, they see a valley – and the movie ends. There is a lot of dreamy psychedelia in all this, and it is obvious that this group does not have the slightest idea of how to get from one place to another in the jungle. Still, the cinematography by Néstor Almendros, along with the Pink Floyd soundtrack, provides a compelling evocation of the other-worldly quality of the deep jungle, and at least a brief glimpse of the ceremonial life of one native group. And reality consistently intrudes. Tripping out with a green tree snake, Viviane gets a nasty bite, which she deserves.
 Walkabout This deeply mysterious and visually compelling film by Nicholas Roeg tracks the journey of an urban teenage girl and her younger brother when they are suddenly abandoned in the Australian outback by their suicidal father. They are helped to survive by an Aborigine boy on his initiatory solitary walkabout, who becomes infatuated with the snotty older sister and her still largely unconscious sexuality. The movie contrasts the natural world and aboriginal culture – including its survival skills – with a sterile European urban civilization. The film shifts between bland city images and truly stunning, beautifully composed Australian landscapes.
 The Wild Child What is it that makes us human rather than animal? What is the relationship between nature and culture? What must we give up to be who we are? Francois Truffaut approaches these questions through a true story – a child abandoned in the woods, found years later apparently mute, deaf, and retarded, yet with remarkable ability to survive and to get intense pleasure from drinking pure water and feeling the rain on his skin. Truffaut himself plays Dr. Jean Itard, whose 1806 report on the “Wild Boy of Aveyron” forms the basis of the film. Dr. Itard brings the boy to his own home, hoping to establish a communication base with kindness and compassion, and to teach the boy how to be civilized. It seems to me it is a mixed blessing, and the film leaves that question clearly in suspense, with a strongly ambiguous final shot. Interesting note: the methods used by Dr. Itard to teach the boy to name objects and read words eventually formed a basis for the work of Maria Montessori.
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