The Dark Divide

When a lepidopterist who’s an expert in his field doesn’t personally know what it’s like to go through the kind of transformation that all of his butterfly subjects experience, he sets out on a wilderness journey that provides him with that very metamorphosis. Filmmaker Tom Putnam’s fact-based story about the odyssey of Dr. Robert Pyle through one of the remotest wildlife areas in the country tells a tale encompassing a range of emotions, from laughter to tears to revelation, a picture highly reminiscent of films like director Jean-Marc Vallee’s “Wild” (2014). Though somewhat episodic at times, the overall narrative rings true to its mission and does so with beautiful cinematography, fine performances and an excellent score. When we all need to get on with our lives, stories like this give us a template to draw from so that we may all take flight.