Review: 'Wild Life' captures the beauty of Chile's national parks, and the spirit of the loving couple who worked to create them
In synopsis, the documentary “Wild Life” is a tale of an American businessman reinventing himself as a global conservationist — but, at heart, it’s a love story between two people who loved each other as much as they loved the land they aimed to preserve.
Husband-and-wife directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin — who have worked together on “Meru,” “The Rescue” and the Oscar-winning “Free Solo” — profile the lives of another couple, Doug and Kris Tompkins. It’s made clear early on that Doug died in 2015 in a freak accident, and he’s seen entirely through archival footage, and in the observations his widow, Kris, and their friends tell the camera.
Doug Tompkins made his fortune through clothing — co-founding, with his first wife, Susie Buell, the apparel companies The North Face and Esprit. Meanwhile, Kris, a former ski racer, got a job with rock climber and equipment maker Yvon Chouinard — which led to her moving up the ranks in Chouinard’s new company, Patagonia, and ultimately becoming CEO.
Doug left the corporate world and moved to Chile, buying a farm and other parcels, with the goal of giving that land to the Chilean government to become a national park. The Chilean government and the locals were suspicious of Doug. The country’s economy was geared toward mining, logging and other extractive industries, so the idea of setting aside land and not doing anything with it sounded odd. Besides, Doug was an American, and Chileans have a well-earned distrust of the United States, as the country that backed the dictator Augusto Pinochet’s coup in 1973. (Off topic: How much longer does Satan have to wait for Henry Kissinger to die already?)
Doug asking Kris to come to Chile, as the movie describes it, was essentially their third date. In 1993, they married, and devoted their lives to each other and to conserving wild lands in Chile and Argentina. It’s a cause that Kris continues to pursue, more than seven years after Doug’s death — though, as she tells it during one of the movie’s most gut-wrenching passages, that decision to carry on wasn’t an easy one.
Vásárhelyi and Chin specialize in capturing human stories in incredible vistas, and “Wild Life” doesn’t disappoint on that score. Watching the movie may prompt some adventurous eco-tourists to visit Chile and Argentina, to see if it’s as beautiful and wild as it looks on the screen. The rest of us can enjoy the view through this wonderful film, and through Kris Tompkins’ unconquerable spirit.
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‘Wild Life’
★★★1/2
Opens Friday, May 5, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for brief strong language. Running time: 93 minutes.