The Salt Path - a Truncated Reflection of a Better Book
While reading the book, I remember thinking: this would make a great film. It wasn't the best-written book I have ever read; its power came from the honest telling of a true story of shocking adversity and redemption through walking.
A great film it wasn't, but if you are captivated by the story, of a middle-aged couple who start walking because they have nothing else left to lose, you may experience some of the same emotions watching the film. I certainly did.
Its strongest point was the central relationship between Ray and Moth. If Gillian Anderson seemed a strange choice to play Raynor Winn (she had apparently never pitched a tent) she was surprisingly convincing, portraying gritty motivation in a soft midlands accent. The final credits confirmed what I guessed, that Raynor Winn was a co-producer.
The director, Marianne Elliott, apparently had difficulty finding backers for films focussing on older women, until this one. I have seen many films which do, but I am struggling to think of many which focus on the strength of a long-term marriage. Our culture, high and low, seems more comfortable with conflict and failure on that score. The chemistry between Anderson and Jason Isaacs, who plays Moth, conveys some of that strength, though without the interior voice of Ray the author. In one of the most moving passages of the book, she describes her mother's disapproval of Moth and the life they share. She imagines her late mother laughing: "'I bet you're regretting it now, my girl.' No Mum. No, I don't." If you ever wondered what those words "for better and for worse, 'till death us do part" really mean - this is an inspiring example.
The real Ray grew up as the daughter of a tenant farmer, and her revulsion towards the cap-doffing deference of her village drives her towards socialist politics, protest movements, and Moth. Glancing over the book again, I had forgotten quite how political it is, particularly about homelessness and land ownership. That politics is entirely missing from the film, and that is a weakness. You may feel you have seen too many 'political films' but this one is missing a vital element that motivates the author and unites the couple.
Partly for that reason, the film rewrites some key incidents from the book, in TV adaptation style. The couple's real interactions with homeless people are transformed into a caricature of a young girl at risk from predatory men, saved by a gift of £5 from Ray, for a ticket back to her family on a Megabus (an egregious example of product placement!)
With an income of £40 a week, wild camping was the only option available to Ray and Moth. Two caricatural old men vent their outrage at this intrusion, although the key point - that wild camping is illegal in most of Britain - is never mentioned. Should it be legalised, as Nick Hayes argues? I have mixed feelings on that, but watching this film made me feel both grateful, and slightly guilty, that I don't have to carry a tent on my own long-distance walks.
In 300 miles of walking around different parts of the British coastline, so far, I must say: I have seen nothing to compare with the wilder parts of the Southwest Coast Path. The beauty of that coast and its wildlife are all there, but the story is strangely truncated at the halfway point. We never get to see the South Coast, because it ends with epilogue text, as the couple return to begin the second half. The ending is an anti-climax.
It is possible to make a film which is better than the book on which it's based. Wild - a film with a very similar theme, set on the Pacific Trail in Western USA - was a notable example. The screenplay was written by Nick Hornby, I discovered on the closing credits. I can't say the same about The Salt Path. But for all its flaws, it was still worth watching, and don't be put off from reading the book. One woman I know described it as over-sentimentalised, but those sentiments seem genuinely felt, honestly-described and have a harder edge than you will find in the film.
