Maine (2018)
The Appalachian Trail has a particular hold on the American imagination. Running roughly 2,190 miles from Georgia to Maine, it has generated a small but persistent strand of storytelling, from Bill Bryson's wry memoir to Cheryl Strayed's rather more harrowing account of the Pacific Crest Trail in Wild. What these stories share is an interest in what people carry with them into the wilderness, not just the physical weight but the personal. Maine (2018), a low-budget drama from writer-director Matthew Brown, fits squarely into that tradition, using the trail as a frame for something quieter and more interior: two strangers hiking northward, circling each other, and slowly, carefully, letting their guards down.
Brown, whose previous feature The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015) was a polished but unremarkable biopic of mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, makes a pronounced shift in register here. Maine is leaner, less obviously structured, and far more comfortable sitting in silence. Produced through Beachside Films and Story Farm, the film carries a modest footprint, which suits it. There are no sweeping set pieces, no pointed dramatic confrontations designed for a trailer. Brown wrote the screenplay himself, and the dialogue has the texture of something that was not so much written as pared back, lines chosen for what they withhold as much as what they say. At 86 minutes, nothing outstays its welcome.
The two leads do a considerable amount of the heavy lifting. Laia Costa, the Spanish actress best known internationally for her single-take performance in Victoria (2015), plays Bluebird, the married woman at the centre of the story. It is a role that requires both warmth and opacity, a character who must seem open without revealing herself too quickly, and Costa handles that balance with genuine skill. Thomas Mann plays Lake, the younger hiker she falls into step with, and he brings an understated ease that keeps the film from tipping into melodrama. The supporting cast includes Pat Dortch, Gus Halper, and Yossie Mulyadi as the fellow trail walkers whose casual assumptions about the pair begin to complicate things in ways neither Bluebird nor Lake is quite prepared for.
Cinematographer Donald R. Monroe shoots the Appalachian landscape in a way that feels earned rather than postcard-pretty. The misty ridgelines, the filtered green light through deciduous canopy, the low-contrast greys of early morning on the trail: it is the kind of imagery that gives the film its breathing room, and Monroe uses the terrain to create a sense of beautiful, slightly melancholy isolation without overplaying it. Editor Sofi Marshall keeps the cutting patient and unshowy, allowing scenes to find their own natural endpoints. The film's sound world leans on an americana-flavoured score of longing guitar, folk-adjacent and unhurried, which sits well against the landscape. There is a specific moment, a character picking up a guitar and singing quietly around a campsite, that the editing and sound design handle with a particular lightness of touch, letting it land without underlining its significance.
For what it is worth as a companion piece, I also reviewed Nomadland (2020), which shares something of this film's interest in characters moving through open American landscape while carrying private grief, and Licorice Pizza (2021), another film built around the texture of two people orbiting each other before they quite understand why. Neither is the same film as Maine, but there is a loose family resemblance in tone. See also my thoughts on Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), which, for all its tonal differences, shares something of the same conviction that the road, or the trail, or the wilderness, has a way of making people honest with each other when ordinary life does not.
I came to Maine for an odd reason: Blaze Foley's "Moonlight" sits on the soundtrack, and I simply wanted to hear it in context. The film is on nobody's best-of lists, I went in with low expectations, and I came out very pleasantly surprised.
We have all seen the romance where two people meet, talk, slowly give something of themselves away and drift together, but this is not Before Sunrise, which I found to be pretentious waffle, and it is not Past Lives, too becalmed a slow burn for my taste. Maine finds its own, quieter register, and it works.
The setup is simple. Bluebird, a married woman, and Lake, a younger man, are both hiking the Appalachian Trail north towards Maine, and for a good while they are barely more than two people enjoying one another's company on the road. Things shift when the other hikers they meet start assuming the two of them are a couple, and the awkward questions that follow nudge them into slowly, warily revealing themselves to each other. Laia Costa is superb as Bluebird. I have seen some grumbling online that her character does not quite fit, and I can only wonder what film those people were watching, because she is magnificent here, and Thomas Mann makes a lovely, understated foil as Lake.
Visually it is a treat, as Appalachia tends to be, all misty ridgelines and endless green, and it carries a calm americana soundtrack of longing guitar that suits the mood perfectly. There is a scene where Lake picks up a guitar and sings that is lovely, a turning point where Bluebird starts to see him as something more than a travelling companion. The dialogue is sparse, but what there is of it lands with purpose, and it carries the story more than enough.
What I did not expect was how much weight the thing carries underneath. Their rapport is playful and warm and touching, but you can feel that both of them are hauling something heavier along with their packs, and the film is far more interested in that, and in where it leaves them, than in any tidy romance. It goes somewhere braver and sadder than you might expect, and I will say no more than that. Four stars. This is a film worth far more than its ratings suggest, and I am glad a Blaze Foley song led me to it.
Maine will not find its way onto many year-end lists, and it has not, to date, troubled awards bodies in any meaningful way. That is partly a function of scale and partly of temperament: it is not a film that announces itself. But there is real craft here, a generous, attentive piece of filmmaking that trusts its actors and its landscape in equal measure, and understands that the Appalachian Trail, like most long walks, is as much about what you are walking away from as where you are headed. Some films are worth more than their ratings suggest. This is one of them, and it turns out a Blaze Foley song is not a bad reason to find that out.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2018 | Watched: 2026-10-01
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Maine (2018) on YouTube
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