When girlhood and toxic masculinity collide in the woods
'Good One' Review: The cinematography is gorgeous, the soundtrack exquisite, the story spare and fine, like a stage play.
As someone who has spent a fair bit of time hiking in the Catskills, the opening shots of “Good One” were beautifully, achingly familiar: a still pond framed by trees; an eastern red-spotted newt clambering over the forest floor1; the disjointed but slithery movement of a millipede; two butterflies flitting around a stack of river rocks; the moon. I instantly felt at home, before the camera moved to Brooklyn, where, incidentally, I am also very much at home.
Backpacking films can be hard to pull off. “Wild” was a disappointment that I suspect failed to show the full majesty of the Pacific Crest Trail. “A Walk in the Woods” was even worse, a slapstick, farcical flop. Writer-director India Donaldson’s first feature-length film is, in comparison, a miracle, perhaps because a three-day backpacking trip is the vehicle for this compact drama, not the plot in and of itself.
That’s not to say that hiking isn’t essential to the film. The tropes and routines of backpacking are a primary driver of both the plot and character development of the three people who anchor the film.
There’s Sam (Lily Collias), the precocious high school graduate teetering at the edge of adulthood; her divorced, tightly-wound contractor father, Chris (James Le Gros); and his even more recently divorced and very unhappy, underemployed-actor friend, Matt (Danny McCarthy). The three of them embark at the start of a holiday weekend on a three-day backpacking trip in the Catskills. It was supposed to be a foursome—a father-child trip—but the morning they leave, Matt’s son, angry at how his father treated his mother, refuses to join.
Sam and Chris are experienced backpackers whose past treks together have included the John Muir Trail. Matt, on the other hand, is a backpacking rube, who wears jeans—and packs a second pair in his overstuffed pack, along with a whole host of other inappropriate items. In an early moment of levity, Chris enforces a gear purge in the parking lot to get Matt’s pack down to a reasonable weight. Somehow, Matt’s sleeping bag doesn’t make the final cut. “Yeah—I realized many hours ago I left it in the car,” he tells Sam as she helps set up his tent that evening.
The next morning, after finding a wrapper in his tent, Sam reasonably and calmly tells Matt he really shouldn’t keep food in his tent (because of bears, obviously). Chris, overhearing the conversation, unleashes a wave of pent-up anger and frustration, shouting that Matt can be careless with his own kid but not Sam.
Then, it’s back to hiking.
Matt’s emotional and physical journey, as seen through Sam’s sympathetic and pitying eyes, carries the first half of the film. He tears up over a dinner of ramen (prepared by Sam), which is an extremely relatable thing to do while hiking, because as the saying goes, “hunger is the best spice.” But it’s also obviously not just about the food. “It just tastes so good,” he says, adding, after a long pause, that he wished his son was there to try it. He tears up again at a beautiful cliff overlook (in Minnewaska State Park, as far as I can tell) and says he wants to “do this more often.” He floats the idea of hiking the whole Pacific Coast. Chris smirks and mocks him, even as Matt visibly chokes up, but Sam gently encourages him.
Donaldson seeds the film with tiny breadcrumbs that take on a much larger significance as the trip winds on, including an offhand story the men share about a trip they took in their youth. A woman Matt had invited along stormed off without warning, leaving the men confused and dumbfounded as to why, and wondering how she got back to town. Sam, watching the two men pensively, maybe has a germ of an idea.
[Spoilers ahead.]
Later, when pressed, Sam offers thoughtful advice on how Matt can begin healing his relationship with his son, and is repaid for her kindness with an inappropriate overture. The next day, when she tries to tell her father, he is unwilling to hear or grapple with what she’s saying. The contrast to his earlier response to finding Matt had kept food in his tent is starkly, quietly devastating. “Can’t we just have a nice day?” he asks, plaintively, pathetically.
They swim. The light is warm and the music swells. The camera lingers on the two butterflies from the opening shots again, which we can now see are visibly battered, and now there’s a third smaller insect in the frame, a bee or some kind of fly, out of place, different. When Sam exits the water, the music cuts off, the light has gone cold, and she quietly leaves the men behind and hikes out to the car. Something tectonic has shifted, and it is subtle—to the two men, perhaps invisible, baffling, just like the mysterious departure of the woman from the trip in their youth—but excruciating.
The cinematography is gorgeous, the soundtrack exquisite, the story spare and fine, like a stage play.
If you can see “Good One” in theaters this week (it’s showing at Metrograph and Lincoln Center) I wholeheartedly recommend it.
A note to my new and old readers:
There are now over 1,000 of you! This is a huge milestone for Pinch of Dirt and I am overwhelmingly moved and excited at how far this little newsletters has come since I started it in 2017 with just a dozen or so readers, all friends and family.
I wanted to take this post to introduce myself to readers who may have signed up without knowing much about me or my writing, but then I saw ‘Good One’ earlier this week and showings will be limited, so I wanted to get this review out while my New York City readers have a chance to see it in theaters. But, I’d love to tell you a bit more about me soon! So stay tuned, and thanks for joining.
Also, in honor of the occasion (and of my birthday month) I’m offering a discount on paid subscriptions, which you can redeem here. Valid through the end of August!
Most of my posts are free for all, but I do occasionally send out special dispatches to paid subscribers, and I really value the financial support (and ego boost) I get from paid subscribers. It really helps me want to keep this thing going. If now isn’t the right time, that’s cool! Maybe it will be later.
I saw the film earlier this week in theaters but don’t have access to a copy to fact check some of the details/quotes herein. For example, I agonized over whether the newt climbed over a log or the forest floor, but I hope you’ll forgive any small inaccuracies this review may include!