Wild Life

Any recounting of the achievements of millionaire philanthropists Douglas and Kristine Tompkins must begin with three iconic American clothing manufacturers: the North Face, Esprit, and Patagonia. In the Sixties, Douglas founded the North Face, selling rock-climbing and camping equipment while his then-wife, Susie Tompkins Buell, created Esprit, the incredibly popular fashion brand (only Eighties kids will understand). Meanwhile, Kristine worked for Yvon Chouinard, who forged the clothing and gear mainstay Patagonia in 1973, where she became CEO. Douglas and Susie divorced, although he remained with Esprit until 1989. That is the millionaire part.

All involved are passionate outdoor enthusiasts and key figures in the California “dirtbag” climbing movement of the Seventies. Douglas and Kristine wed in 1993, hatching a plan to use their wealth to purchase large swaths of land to create national parks under private initiatives. That is the philanthropist part.

And this is Wild Life, the latest documentary from another husband-and-wife team, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, whose credits include Meru (2015), Free Solo (2018), and The Rescue (2021). And while those films revolve around life-threatening events and expeditions, Wild Life is a more subdued affair. It’s a biographical portrait of the Tompkins, yes, but its focus is geared more toward their conservation and rewilding efforts and, more poignantly, toward Kristine. Douglas was killed in a kayaking accident in 2015, and the film uses this as a framework her first ascent to a mountain peak, in the Pumalín Douglas Tompkins National Park in Chile, that her late husband named after her. The film mostly concerns the couple’s project of buying up acres of land in Chile to preserve, and the Chilean population’s understandable skepticism of negotiating with rich American fashion executives.

In the Nineties, the conservation movement was not as ubiquitous as today, especially the deep ecology philosophy of the Tompkins. So the idea of buying whole mountain ranges and valleys to just leave them be ran counter to the desires for upward class mobility through continued industrialization – specifically the mining of two of Chile’s most abundant resources, copper and lithium. And while the altruistic nature of the Tompkins’ intentions finally swayed the hearts and minds of the country, a more thorough examination of this process (and all the lawyers involved) would have been welcomed.

But this really isn’t a film that’s interested in that complexity. Wild Life is too busy sanctifying the ground that Douglas and Kristine Tompkins walked on, all 14.7 million acres of it. That’s the current count of land preserved worldwide, notes Kristine after explaining that, due to the ever-increasing human population base, an ever-expanding consumption rate, and dwindling natural resources, the planet loses 40 million acres of wilderness each year. And this is an aspect of Vasarhelyi and Chin’s film that should be noted because, for reasons that only my editor knows for sure (because he asks for them – Ed.), over the years I have reviewed a high number of environmental documentaries, and there is always a point in those films that veers into impassioned advocacy. This is absent in Wild Life. In contemplating the areas of protected land, Kristine describes them as little pockets of nature waiting to replenish the Earth after humanity has gone. A global array of petri dishes to culture the cells of wildlife, which is a beautiful and reassuring concept to imagine.