'Wild Life' Review: Clothing Magnates Turned Conservationists Return Chile to Itself in a Seductive, Slightly One-Sided Eco-Doc

'Wild Life' Review: Clothing Magnates Turned Conservationists Return Chile to Itself in a Seductive, Slightly One-Sided Eco-Doc,Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's 'Wild Life' honors Kris and Doug Tompkins' remarkable feat in rewilding millions of acres of Chilean land.

‘Wild Life’ Review: Clothing Magnates Turned Conservationists Return Chile to Itself in a Seductive, Slightly One-Sided Eco-Doc

Doug and Kris Tompkins’ dream sounded like a fanciful one. Seduced by a region of ravishing South American wilderness in which they found particular sanctuary, and wishing to protect it from any insensitive or unseemly development, they landed on a solution both simple and absurd-sounding: Why not simply buy as much of it as possible? Backed by the fortune they’d collectively amassed from the clothing industry — Doug as the founder of Esprit and The North Face, Kris as the former CEO of Patagonia — the couple successfully parlayed business tycoon status into an unprecedented scale of eco-activism: As one talking head notes in “Wild Life,” Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s soaring documentary tribute to the Tompkins’ romance and shared conservationist mission, they “could do anything, and chose to do anything.”

Not all Chileans, however, take such a rosy view of incoming billionaire Americans buying up vast swathes of the country in what they determine to be its own best interests. Over the years, the Tompkinses have faced sometimes hostile opposition from local politicians and protesters who deem what Kris terms “a dogged, relentless pursuit of beauty” a more imperial act of what one politico prefers to describe as “businessmen masquerading as ecologists.” To date, their work has resulted in the preservation and gradual rewilding of over 14.7 million acres of land in Chile and Argentina, now protected as national parks: a triumph of environmentalism and climate change resistance that is eminently noble at one level, but equally hard not to see as a manner of colonialism, however good-hearted, enabled by American capitalism.

It’s a conflict that this handsome, emotionally stirring documentary — directed by Vasarhelyi and Chin with the same balance of sweeping natural spectacle and heart-on-sleeve human feeling that they brought to their previous National Geographic releases “Free Solo” and “The Rescue,” albeit with less adrenaline-fueled material — never fully negotiates. “Wild Life” presents the Chilean side of its story via selected political talking heads, most notably former president Michelle Bachelet, who mostly concede and even celebrate the national value of the Tompkinses’ investment.

More skeptical views, however, are largely limited to archival footage, sparing the filmmakers and their chief subject — Kris, continuing the couple’s work eight years after Doug’s tragic death in a kayaking accident — much first-hand rhetorical combat. Resistance to their cause is somewhat too swiftly characterized as anti-American and, in one irrational case, anti-Semitic; complaints that their conservationism hinders economic progress in developing regions go unexamined. Viewers, should they be so inclined, can make up their own minds, but “Wild Life” could stand to challenge Tompkins a little more even as it honors her undeniable feat.

As it is, much of the film is given over to her and her late husband’s more personal story, detailing in shorthand their respectively adventure-seeking salad days and their separate ascendancies in the clothing industry — with Yvon Chouinard, Doug’s long-term best friend and Kris’s business partner at eco-conscious outdoor wear company Patagonia, on hand to braid their narratives until they met and married in middle age. Knowing that there are limited inspirational returns in stories of how the super-rich become so, “Wild Life” is smart to quickly move on to the more spiritual rewards of their relationship: Both burned out on business by the time they wed in 1993, they settled together in the mountainous Patagonian region that had earlier lent its name to Chouinard’s brand, and set about building — or in a sense, very much not building — their future in “land philanthropy.”

Theirs is a persuasively idealistic, starry-eyed romance, given emotional heft by achingly felt, self-narrated extracts from Kris’s diary, pulling from both before and after Doug’s untimely death, itself rather artfully dramatized via striking oil-painting animation. But it’s effectively a love story with a third partner: the soaring Chilean landscape that first brought them together on a climbing trip, captured by Chin’s own camera — a portion of the film is shot on an extended hiking tour of the region taken by Chin with Kris and her colleagues, though his on-screen presence in the film is oddly inconsistent — with all due awe and majesty.

In the face of these images, how can we not cheer the large-scale preservation — and indeed natural enhancement, as Tompkins funds its rewilding, including the reintroduction of assorted endangered animal species — of such a paradise? Tompkins further invites sympathy by pointing out that even her millions of acres count for little “when you consider what’s being saved versus what’s being destroyed — we’re on the losing team.” Sidestepping thornier questions of optics and ownership, “Wild Life” ultimately takes the side of nature over politics, and most viewers will follow suit.