In The Salt Path, Gillian Anderson plays Raynor Winn, whose 2018 memoir documented her and her husband Moth’s hike along the 630-mile South West Coast Path, which stretches from Minehead in Somerset to Poole Harbour in Dorset. Played here by Jason Isaacs, Moth had been diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration (or CBD), a rare and progressive neurodegenerative disease. Then, the very same week, the Winns lost their home. It’s a story of extreme choices in the face of extreme circumstances.
It’s those circumstances, and those circumstances only, that we see etched on Anderson’s face. It’s the shame and exhaustion of someone whose security net has been ripped from under their feet in a way they never could have imagined – who went from living blissfully on a family farm with two kids off at university, to having an elderly man smacking at the side of her tent and screaming that it’s “disgusting” to be camping out so close to the public path. The actor presents those emotions studiously. As does Isaacs, who has the added responsibility of sensitively reflecting how Moth’s CBD fluctuates, the ebb and flow of trembling hands and stiff muscles.
But people are more than their burdens, and theatre director Marianne Elliott’s feature debut, with its script by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, loses sight of the humanity these two individuals fought so hard to preserve. Their story, in its telling, becomes routine: Raynor and Moth hike to a new location. There, they discover the restorative beauty of nature, or that strangers are capable of great charity. Cue a flashback that reveals one more clue about their background: a scene in a doctor’s office in which the subject of end-of-life care suddenly rears its head, or the time bomb starting to tick when they’re told they have only five days to vacate their farm.
“Something will come through,” Moth reassures Raynor at that point. That statement, on its own, sounds extraordinarily naive. She reacts accordingly. Yet, the way the film streamlines the couple’s experiences ironically suggests Moth may be right. The Salt Path, in practice, is an emotionally tidy film about the inherent chaos caused by major personal blows.
We open with a scene of their tent caught in a storm – our vision obscured; our ears filled with the roar of the wind and the scream of waves crashing against rocks. Elliott lingers on their hunger and thirst, on the licking of chapped lips; on the memories of fists at the window of their home when it’s time to vacate, and the council worker who flatly tells Moth that if he isn’t planning to die in the next 12 months, then he isn’t considered a priority for social housing.
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But there’s little effort to make us understand the failed systems that led them to this point, or the new normalcy they’re forced to adjust to – indeed, any of the more subtle, complex facets of this story. Too rare are the moments that anchor us into the quotidian reality of the Winns’ experiences, like how the couple will surreptitiously slip one of their own tea bags into a pub’s complimentary pot of hot water.
Without these touches, we’re regrettably left with yet another pat story about how reconnecting with nature is good for the soul, as Anderson, her arms outstretched and eyes closed, realises bird song is the only soundtrack she needs in life.
Dir: Marianne Elliott. Starring: Gillian Anderson, Jason Isaacs, James Lance, Hermione Norris. Cert 12A, 115 minutes.
‘The Salt Path’ is in cinemas from 30 May
