Into the Wild

When I was 12, I encountered Peter Jenkins’ book, “Walk Across America,” and thought he was the coolest guy in the world.  I daydreamed about strapping on a backpack myself and seeing where the road would take me, and who I might meet.   Then in high school I read “On the Road,” which, of course, is the same kind of thing, plus a lot of benzedrine and all night driving.    The same spirit infuses “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s adaptation of the bestselling book by John Krakauer.   It is the story of a young man who, decides after college to burn his money and bum his way across the country, and then into Alaska, where he dies in an abandoned bus in the wilderness, probably of starvation.   Penn puts a heavy emphasis on the romance of the road, and handles the tragic end, softly, like he is filming the natural end of a long and eventful life.  Which he is, I suppose, in a way.

I would love to know how much it cost to make this movie – and how much of that money was Sean Penn’s.  It must have been a travel adventure of its own.  We travel from Georgia to the wheat fields of South Dakota, down the Colorado river into Mexico, then up along the California coast through LA and Slab City to Alaska.  It’s possible, and cost-cutting, to fake a location by filming on just the right backlot or backyard, keeping camera shots tight and close, and buying stock footage for establishing shots, but “Into the Wild” doesn’t use any of these tricks.   I don’t know this for sure, but I would bet each scene was filmed on location.  That’s a lot better way to spend money than, say, blowing up airplanes, in my opinion.

Emile Hirsch, who you’ve probably never heard of, dives deep into the role of Christopher McCandless (aka Alexander Supertramp,) and it’s a good thing, because he’s onscreen 95% of the time.  His performance is empathetic but enigmatic; at times he waxes on about how he hates all of society and just wants to return to nature, but then he treats people with such a generosity of spirit one can hardly understand what so turned him off to people in the first place.   Lucky for him, everyone he meets is good hearted and kind.   If the movie stumbles it’s in this seemingly endless parade of parent figures Christopher encounters.   Are people really this nice?   All of them?

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8xK3QyhNPs]

Jenna Malone plays his supportive though puzzled sister, and in voiceover tells us of a family life that might be what’s driving Christopher into the wilderness.   William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden don’t get much screen time as his parents, but pack a lot in to what they get, filling in the picture of controlling, angry, but very loving parents.    About halfway through the movie, everyone starts telling Christopher he needs to reconcile with/forgive/contact/return to his parents, even the books he reads by himself in the wilderness.   The tragedy of the story is not that he dies, but that he dies without ever repairing the breach between him and the ones that love him.

Sean Penn paints Christopher McCandless as a young man full of contradiction, but convinced that new experiences will save him.   His short life is so rich with experience, his death feels quietly inevitable, like the death of an old man, not a 24 year old.   Luck has been with him for a long time and through a lot.  He really should’ve died a hundred times before (especially on that river.  Yeesh.)  Finally, his luck changes.  So it goes, for all of us, at some point.

Recommended

• if you read the book.  I haven’t, but you can feel Penn’s reverence for it throughout.
• if you like travel movies, books, etc.
• if you’re a fan of great scenery shots
• if you ever took a year off after college to “experience life” – or wish you had.

Not Recommended

• if it’s going to bother you that the guy uh, doesn’t, um, live at the end.
• if this whole On the Road/See America/Experience Life thing is sickening to you.
• if when you think “A Sean Penn movie!”  you’re thinking you’ll see his handsome mug on the screen.   He directed it, silly.