TIFF 2024 'The Salt Path': Gillian Anderson, Jason Isaacs lead intimate love story told through an exceptional journey

An intimate love story starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, The Salt Path chronicles the real-life journey of Raynor "Ray" and Moth Winn. After being forced out of their home and Moth diagnosed with a terminal illness, the married couple in their 50s set out on a 630-mile trek along the English coast from Dorset to Somerset.

Based on Ray's book of the same name, the film, which made its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), shows this transformational journey for the couple. The film, directed by Marianne Elliott, is a beautiful story of resiliency, survival, nature and love.

For Elliott, who came to direct The Salt Path after an extensive career in theatre, she was reminded of Ray's book after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down theatre productions.

"I was in my 50s, I was looking into the abyss of, oh my God my career is over, and the book really kind of starts there, a woman in her 50s, but actually in a much, much, much worse situation," Elliott told Yahoo Canada. "And then she and her husband go on this incredible journey."

For Isaacs, he was particularly drawn to this love story and the inexplicable miracle that happened for this couple.

"The people that it documents are just so unforgettable and their experience is so profound, and so moving, and they're so unsentimental about these extraordinarily beautiful things that happened to them, because they happened through hardship and through suffering," Isaacs said. "I thought the story was beautiful and then I met them, and they are extraordinary people."

"Moth, the man I play, just radiates love and joy and happiness. He's solely concerned with making everybody else OK and comfortable, even though, for instance the first Zoom I had with him, he was documenting in an unguarded way the terrible indignities that his condition visits on him, and he was laughing and laughing. And when I watched the Zoom back, I was trying to study his accent, I realized I was laughing too, and I felt awful, but he wanted me to be comfortable. He wanted me to love them."

'Sex symbol' Gillian Anderson plays Ray Winn with 'no vanity'

In terms of collaborating with Anderson, Isaacs praised his costar as a "really smart, great actress."

"She's just a proper actress, you don't have to talk about it or think about it or practise it much, she just got it, and I hope that I got it too," Isaacs said. "In real life they are mostly concerned, Moth and Ray, with how the other person is feeling, and if we just did that when the camera was rolling, the audience might get some sense of it."

Isaacs added that Ray and Moth were "absolutely besotted" with each other, and that unbreakable link is something they tried to capture on screen.

"No matter how awful things are, no matter how much at some point in this film and in their journey they blamed each other for this terrible situation they're in, where they lost everything, the house, their money, the home, the future, and he was losing his life, throughout all that, no matter how estranged they felt, they are one person," Isaacs said.

Elliott was also quick to commend both Isaacs and Anderson for their work on The Salt Path, but highlighted that this is a surprising role for Anderson, in particular.

"Gillian was surprising, I suppose, because it's a part that you wouldn't necessarily think that she would be right for," Elliott said. "I mean, she's a sex symbol. She's just written a book about sex and I know people my daughter's age, early 20s, some of her male friends just think she's the hottest thing ever."

"But here she was playing this 50-year-old woman, warts and all, no vanity, feeling like she was at the end of her life and she'd lost everything, with true vulnerability. It was just glorious to see her be able to do things that she isn't often asked to do."

'It was a very intimate, intense journey that we were on'

While the environment for this epic journey looks beautiful on screen, there were also moments of brutal and treacherous weather that Moth and Ray had to endure to continue their trek. The reality of the environment carried over to the production as well.

"It was really pretty intense, because we had something like 29 days and we were out in the wilds of Cornwall and Devon, and ... we were really at the mercy of the weather," Elliott said. "Everybody was helping the crew take the camera up the hills."

"So therefore, it was a very intimate, intense journey that we were on."

While the terrain was also a difficulty for the actors, the reality that Ray and Moth actually went on this journey was always in Isaacs' mind.

"You couldn't allow yourself to feel sorry for yourself, ... because I'm playing someone with a terminal neurological condition, degenerative condition, ... he was really doing that," Isaacs said. "So when I get somewhere and they go, 'OK the next scene you're climbing up this hill of boulders.' I'm like, there's no way he does it with one leg, and they go, 'Well, he did do it with one leg.'"

"Sometimes it was very cold and very wet, or other times it was blisteringly hot, but it was always easy to remind myself that we were filming and they were living it."

But with the hardships of this path, paired with the beautiful connection between Ray and Moth, and their love and appreciation of nature, it's a beautifully nuanced story to dive into.

"You want to tell human stories so that people watching it can either recognize something about themselves or be led to hope something about themselves, or a cautionary tale," Isaacs said. "You just want something that resembles life, because so many of the stories that are told, and even many that I've told too, don't resemble life at all, and so we take nothing from them, apart from the fact that for two hours I have been distracted from my real life, and go straight back to it."

"But a beautiful story like The Salt Path and Ray and Moth's story together gives you so much to think about, so much to lean into."