- 7 weeks ago
Film Brain reviews the hit British film based on the best-selling book, an inspirational story that has taken a much darker turn after an article has revealed serious allegations about this supposedly true tale.
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00:00Hello and welcome to a very different episode of Projector today as Gillian Anderson and
00:03Jason Isaacs walk the salt path which has taken a darker turn after recent developments.
00:10After being swindled by a bad investment, Rayner and Moth Wynn, played by Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, lose everything in court, including their home which is repossessed.
00:35Around the same time, Moth is diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease called CBD, with a life expectancy of only a few years.
00:43They decide to walk the 630 miles southwest coastal path while camping along the route and relying on their weekly tax credits for limited funds.
00:52Their journey proves difficult, but the Wynn's begin to adapt and their bond becomes stronger for it.
00:58The salt path is, or perhaps was, a very British success story.
01:03In 2013, the Wynn's took their long walk around the southwest coastal path, which runs around Somerset to Cornwall to Devon and Dorset, and Rayner kept a diary of notes throughout their track.
01:14She would use these to write her memoir, which was published in 2018 by Penguin and became an absolutely enormous hit, especially in independent bookstores.
01:23The book has sold two million copies to date and has had two follow-up books, The Wild Silence and Landlines, with a fourth book, On Winter Hill, originally set to be published in October, now currently delayed indefinitely at the time of this review.
01:38Whether or not it does actually get published at all is a bit up in the air now.
01:43And of course, it was turned into a film adaptation, which released a few weeks ago in UK cinemas and has become the sleeper hit of the summer.
01:50Again, especially at independent cinemas where it's proved to be a major lifeline.
01:55The film is the feature directorial debut of Mary Ann Elliot, the acclaimed theatre director of War Horse and the curious incident of the dog in the night time.
02:03And I saw the salt path in theatres recently with the idea of reviewing it.
02:07But admittedly, I dragged my feet on doing a video on it because I didn't find the film all that engaging.
02:13And if I'm being really honest, I didn't think my audience would be all that interested in hearing about me talk about it.
02:20But sometimes procrastination pays off as the biggest twist in the salt path story is not on the screen or in the book and has taken a dark turn.
02:29In July 2025, The Observer released an investigative article about the salt path and I highly recommend you read their report,
02:36which has made several discoveries and accusations that I'll paraphrase throughout this review.
02:41Now, note that you will hear me say the word allegedly a lot because I need to cover my ass here for obvious reasons.
02:48The Observer identified the real names of the winds and alleged that when Rainer worked as a bookkeeper, she embezzled £64,000 from her employer.
02:58To pay this back, Rainer allegedly took a high interest loan with a distant relative secured against their home.
03:05This resulted in a debt that eventually led to them being taken to court and having their home repossessed.
03:11The Observer piece also disputed if they were truly homeless as they own a second property in France, which isn't currently habitable.
03:19But locals have claimed that they've stayed in a caravan on the land in the past.
03:23In response to these allegations and others, which I'll talk about later, Rainer Wynn has said that she's currently seeking legal advice and called the Observer story, quote, misleading.
03:32Here's a quote from her statement.
03:34The salt path lays bare the physical and spiritual journey Moth and I shared, an experience that transformed us completely and altered the course of our lives.
03:42This is the true story of our journey.
03:45Rainer Wynn has also released a lengthier response to the article and she claims the embezzlement dispute is, quote, not the court case in the salt path.
03:53She goes on to say that, quote, mistakes were made in the business, but she deeply regrets, which isn't really a denial.
04:01And also allegedly embezzling £64,000 goes well beyond the word mistake.
04:08Nevertheless, the Observer's allegations have caused a massive storm around the book and by extension the film adaptation as well.
04:15Penguin has also put out a statement claiming it did, quote, all the necessary pre-publication due diligence and until now, quote,
04:22had not received any concerns about the book's content.
04:26Number Nine Films and Shadowplay Features, who made the movie, have also shared the allegations are a matter for the book and its author.
04:33Quote, there were no known claims against the book at their time of optioning it.
04:37And they also did their own due diligence and that the film is, quote, a faithful adaptation.
04:43Now, I don't hold the filmmakers responsible for what they didn't know and I believe they were just doing their job in good faith,
04:49trying to bring a hit book to the screen.
04:52Nevertheless, these accusations have made me reassess the film under a very different lens.
04:58I also don't think you should feel bad if you're a fan of the book or the film.
05:02You were told a story was true and there was no evidence to dispute that until now,
05:06so you had no reason to believe it wasn't true.
05:09It wasn't your job as readers or viewers to find these things and the people's job it was have failed you.
05:15When we're told a story is true, we don't tend to be as critical of it, especially one of such hardship because it might feel insensitive to question it.
05:24But also you wanted to believe it because the salt path is a compelling narrative, particularly as it claimed to be true.
05:30The book and the film presents a story of resilience, self-reliance and overcoming adversity and the good nature of others.
05:38Who wouldn't want to believe in that?
05:41That's what makes these accusations feel so much like a betrayal.
05:44Audiences have had their trust and sympathies allegedly exploited and it corrows the positivity of its message.
05:51That said, it is worth noting that memoirs are usually a subjective truth anyway,
05:56because they're usually how the writer perceives the events or sometimes how they want the audience to perceive them.
06:03But sometimes that can be stretched too far.
06:08However, the appeal of the salt path, I think, also speaks towards British culture at the moment.
06:13There's been a definite shift towards quiet pursuits like nature walks and camping ever since lockdown.
06:19We've had a lot of travelogue television series with celebrities exploring the walking trails and reconnecting with the natural world and all of that stuff.
06:28But that's also been reflected in the kind of British films being made of late, like Timothy Spall going across the UK in the last bus,
06:35or the bizarre Jim Broadbent movie The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.
06:40So, the salt path is part of this sub-genre aimed at older viewers.
06:44And you get people who watch these things and they develop all these fanciful ideas like,
06:49oh, I'm gonna leave the big city and get a place in the country in this picturesque village and I'm gonna grow my own food.
06:56Or they'll watch some episodes of Canal Boat Diaries and go, oh, I'm gonna retire and live in a canal boat.
07:02And these are all very romantic notions until you hit up against a wall reality.
07:08Living like that is actually very difficult.
07:10It's hard work, especially if you're not prepared for it.
07:14But it's a very British kind of nomadic off the grid dream.
07:18And the salt path scratches that itch.
07:21There is a part of me even before the allegations that thinks this has been born out of the policies of austerity in the UK.
07:28Everyone's familiar with the fantasy of wealth being able to buy and do whatever you want.
07:33But this is like a perverse version of that, like a kind of aspirational austerity where you lose your material comforts,
07:41but are happier and freer for it.
07:44And then you become rich when you sell the book about it.
07:47So it all comes back around.
07:49That being said, the salt path makes abundantly clear that it isn't glamorous.
07:54And despite watching it in a scorching summer, I found myself bracing at the wind and elements.
08:00There's moments where dog walkers bang on their tent telling them they can't camp there.
08:04Or a sequence where they have to quickly wake up and pack their tent because the tide is coming in.
08:09And I know for certain that I couldn't live like that.
08:12The reward though is a lot of stunning scenery.
08:15And the salt path film does work as a travel log as there is some fantastic location work all throughout the film that is exceptionally photographed.
08:23One of the more interesting things the film does is that the opening 20 minutes of it is in 185 flat.
08:29And then you get this big vista down the hill and the aspect ratio widens out to 235 scope.
08:35The horizon opens up literally and symbolically.
08:39Perhaps understandably, the movie itself doesn't have a particularly strong through line.
08:43It's mostly episodic.
08:45Lots of little vignettes as they go from place to place, meeting people along the way.
08:49Most of whom only in passing.
08:51They'll show up somewhere and they'll get joined by a girl they sort of rescue goes off to see her nan.
08:57Or they go up to the top of a hill only to find the cafes closed.
09:01And then they get given food by an employee as she dramatically quits her job.
09:05But there isn't a lot of substance tying it all together.
09:09One weird little subplot is that Moth keeps getting confused for the poet, Simon Armitage, because he's a lookalike.
09:15And this culminates in a sequence where, in order to get money for food, he busks to a crowd pretending to be Armitage.
09:22Which, given the allegations of fraud, takes on an entirely different light I think.
09:27But given the film's themes of homelessness and poverty, it surprisingly doesn't lean into the moments of righteous anger in the vein of something like Ken Loach.
09:35There's bits like the winds being told they can't be given a house because Moth's condition isn't immediately fatal enough to qualify.
09:42Or a moment where an automated payment leaves them with just £1.38 in their account.
09:47But not a consistent sense of injustice.
09:50It would be a more substantial film if it was more critical of a system where any one of us are just a few bad days away from losing our home.
09:58I had chalked some of this up to Rebecca Lenkiewicz's script.
10:01But the way the film tries to avoid too many specifics with how the winds end up in their circumstances struck me as a strange weakness before and now seems a bit suspect.
10:12The film actually covers this even less than the book, which has a personified villain named Cooper.
10:17But the film drops this except for a brief moment outside the courthouse with a character that just exits immediately.
10:23If there's anything that keeps the film engaging, it's the performances of Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in the lead roles.
10:29Anderson struggles with the accent a little bit, but there's a lived in quality to their acting that gives the story a feeling of authenticity.
10:37Anderson is especially good in the scene where Bayless and police are knocking on the door to take their home away.
10:42And they're inside trying to cling to their last moments before they have to step outside and give it up.
10:48Just the agony and despair on her face.
10:51And The Soul Path is a love story that these two are absolutely committed to each other through sickness and health no matter what.
10:59Their characters face the absolute worst of times and losing that just reveals how much they deeply care and adore for each other.
11:08Isaacs and Anderson are good actors and they give the material credibility.
11:13More credibility than it allegedly deserves.
11:16One of the more troubling accusations in the Observer Exposé concerns Moth's illness.
11:20It's claimed in the book and film that Moth has CBD, corticobasal degeneration, a rare aggressive illness which is in the same family as Parkinson's disease.
11:30The life expectancy is around six to eight years usually, but Moth has now surpassed this by quite some margin.
11:36The film, as stated previously, is a very faithful adaptation of the book and this includes Moth's illness.
11:43At the start of the walk, he's clearly struggling physically, walking with a pronounced limp and unable to travel especially far.
11:50As the walk progresses, his physical symptoms begin to ease and disappear and he regains his strength.
11:57Later on, when they live with a friend during the winter, his symptoms begin to return and then recede again when they resume their walk in better weather.
12:06In fact, his symptoms begin to improve so much that he stops taking his medication.
12:11And when I describe it like that, some of you might be a bit suspicious because it does sound a bit miraculous.
12:19And while there are some people that do beat the prognosis, this idea that he's effectively cured by reconnecting with nature.
12:26Yeah, that has all the trappings of spiritualism.
12:29As the Observer points out, the sequel books follow an identical plot structure where Moth gets ill and then he gets better when they go for a walk.
12:37And the southwest coastal path is not a simple ramble.
12:41It has difficult and challenging terrain.
12:43That's something that's acknowledged even within the movie.
12:46But the idea of someone with a terminal condition with physical issues tackling it again seems a bit questionable.
12:53But perhaps most damningly, when the Observer presented their evidence to the charity PSPA, whom Moth had been an ambassador for,
12:59they terminated their affiliation with the book and the Wynns.
13:03In response to these allegations, Rayna Wynns has released letters from Moth's doctors.
13:07And it does obviously have some sort of condition.
13:10That's pretty clear in my opinion.
13:12But reading the letters, Moth's doctor does say that although they think it might be CBD, it was either atypical or, quote,
13:21this is an even more unusual syndrome, perhaps monogenetic.
13:26The books do feature a disclaimer that they're not meant to be taken as medical advice.
13:29But even so, the implications of the actual content are pretty clear.
13:33And these kind of ideas are bad enough in fictional narratives, let alone ones which are purporting to be real.
13:39Walking is good for you.
13:40There's no doubt about that.
13:42But apparently curing a degenerative illness that often leaves its sufferers unable to even walk.
13:48I'm not a doctor, but sceptical is a pretty big understatement.
13:54And others who have CBD, who have been recommended the book because of it or to take up walking,
13:59have been amongst those that have been most hurt by these allegations, as seen by the response and in the follow-up reporting.
14:06Both in the fact that they related to Moth, but also in the suggestion that they simply haven't walked enough.
14:12And when you're living with such a diagnosis, it just makes things even more difficult.
14:17When I first saw The Salt Path, I thought it was a fairly middling film that wasn't especially compelling,
14:23but it was at least anchored by two strong actors and was pleasantly hopeful and harmless.
14:28But if these accusations are true, it definitely isn't harmless.
14:32So what happens now?
14:34The Salt Path isn't the first memoir to be held under scrutiny.
14:37And often in those cases, they either disappear or get rebranded as fiction.
14:42That was the case for A Million Little Pieces.
14:44And that was debunked well before it was adapted into a film that only made clear just how unconvincing it was.
14:51But with these allegations in the air, a lot of the appeal and impact of the story is gone.
14:55And the story of an alleged embezzler is far less inspirational.
15:00And is it especially compelling on its own merits?
15:03Not really.
15:04The film has the performances and cinematography, but it retains a lot of the controversial elements of the book.
15:09Needless to say, I can't recommend this.
15:12Maybe I might have given it a pass before, but in light of the allegations, definitely not.
15:18If the book and film gave you hope and joy, then hold on to those things and just leave it behind.
15:25And if we've learned anything from this, perhaps have a healthy skepticism of things presenting themselves as the truth.
15:32The truth can be stranger than fiction, but if it seems too good to be true, it might well be.
15:39If you liked this review and you want to support my work, you can give me a tip at my Ko-fi page or YouTube Super Thanks feature, which is right below the video.
15:47Or you can keep a roof over my head with my Patreon, where you can see my videos early among other perks, including access to my Discord server.
15:54And you can also join YouTube memberships for similar perks.
15:57Or you can just simply like, share and subscribe. It really does help.
16:01Until next time, I'm Matthew Buck, Fading Out.
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