Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Jul 23, 2016 8:01:58 GMT -5
Into the Wild
Dir. Sean Penn
Premiered September 21, 2007
When I began high school, Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild was assigned reading for the summer, and a quick read, but not something I was keen to revisit in movie form; revolving as it did around an apparent spoiled, selfish brat whose foray into transcendental exploration ended miserably. But I was wrong. Sean Penn’s film adaptation actually makes things a lot clearer, and not necessarily on purpose.
Into the Wild tells the story of Christopher McCandless, a straight-A student thinking about going into law when, immediately after graduating, he donates his life savings, disappears entirely from his family, and spends two years wandering the American west before dying, seemingly of starvation, deep in the Alaskan bush.
Krakauer’s book is investigative in nature, attempting to rigorously retrace McCandless’ steps, which it does admirably, before addressing the central mystery around his death, which unfortunately is not as interesting as the author thinks. The film eschews Krakauer’s point of view entirely, preferring to show almost the entire film from the perspective of McCandless himself, or Alexander Supertramp as he prefers to be known.
This is beneficial, as it eliminates the emotional barrier between the story and the audience, and for the most part enables you to take in the incredible imagery– though the film is not without the occasional retreat into comfortable middle-brow sensibility. Allegedly, director Sean Penn secretly admired McCandless and attempted to show him in a more sympathetic light. If that truly was his intent, it backfired spectacularly, but the film is better for it. Emile Hirsch, embodying McCandless in the round for the first time, makes concrete an insight that was lost in the book (at least to 9th graders)– this is not a man who is mentally well. His seeming brattiness as I saw it in the book quickly gives way to a kind of mania; his relentless calm and positivity is at once affable and deeply disturbing, and suggests that his demons go deeper than his background of privilege and familial strife.
If that sounds off-putting, don’t be mistaken. This is an incredibly humanistic film, enlivened by a who’s who of supporting roles. At least one critic at the time suggested Vince Vaughn get an award for playing an affable harvester/felon, while Hal Holbrook got a best supporting actor nomination as the lonely desert-dweller Ron Franz. Holbrook is undoubtedly terrific, but my personal favorites are Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker as a couple of not-so-old hippies (the film taking place in the early 1990s), and one-scene wonders Thure Lindhardt and Signe Egholm Olsen as two overexuberant Danish tourists on Lake Mead.
At the time it came out, Into the Wild was a slam dunk for the Oscars. A long, meditative true story, with a name director and a star-studded cast, anchored by a powerhouse performance from a young up-and-comer, and an original soundtrack by Eddie Vedder, newly anointed an elder statesman of rock with a history of contemplative, outward-looking music? In any other year, it couldn’t miss.
Unfortunately, it was 2007; for the calendar and for Hollywood, fall had only just begun.
Signs This Was Made in 2007
Being a period piece set in the then-recent past, it has its share of anachronisms, especially when McCandless goes to Los Angeles: he arrives on a BNSF railway train (BNSF didn’t exist until 1994); in the shadow of the Metro Building (1995), and passes by several orange buses (2004).
Additional Notes
Next Time: The Darjeeling Limited
Dir. Sean Penn
Premiered September 21, 2007
When I began high school, Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild was assigned reading for the summer, and a quick read, but not something I was keen to revisit in movie form; revolving as it did around an apparent spoiled, selfish brat whose foray into transcendental exploration ended miserably. But I was wrong. Sean Penn’s film adaptation actually makes things a lot clearer, and not necessarily on purpose.
Into the Wild tells the story of Christopher McCandless, a straight-A student thinking about going into law when, immediately after graduating, he donates his life savings, disappears entirely from his family, and spends two years wandering the American west before dying, seemingly of starvation, deep in the Alaskan bush.
Krakauer’s book is investigative in nature, attempting to rigorously retrace McCandless’ steps, which it does admirably, before addressing the central mystery around his death, which unfortunately is not as interesting as the author thinks. The film eschews Krakauer’s point of view entirely, preferring to show almost the entire film from the perspective of McCandless himself, or Alexander Supertramp as he prefers to be known.
This is beneficial, as it eliminates the emotional barrier between the story and the audience, and for the most part enables you to take in the incredible imagery– though the film is not without the occasional retreat into comfortable middle-brow sensibility. Allegedly, director Sean Penn secretly admired McCandless and attempted to show him in a more sympathetic light. If that truly was his intent, it backfired spectacularly, but the film is better for it. Emile Hirsch, embodying McCandless in the round for the first time, makes concrete an insight that was lost in the book (at least to 9th graders)– this is not a man who is mentally well. His seeming brattiness as I saw it in the book quickly gives way to a kind of mania; his relentless calm and positivity is at once affable and deeply disturbing, and suggests that his demons go deeper than his background of privilege and familial strife.
If that sounds off-putting, don’t be mistaken. This is an incredibly humanistic film, enlivened by a who’s who of supporting roles. At least one critic at the time suggested Vince Vaughn get an award for playing an affable harvester/felon, while Hal Holbrook got a best supporting actor nomination as the lonely desert-dweller Ron Franz. Holbrook is undoubtedly terrific, but my personal favorites are Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker as a couple of not-so-old hippies (the film taking place in the early 1990s), and one-scene wonders Thure Lindhardt and Signe Egholm Olsen as two overexuberant Danish tourists on Lake Mead.
At the time it came out, Into the Wild was a slam dunk for the Oscars. A long, meditative true story, with a name director and a star-studded cast, anchored by a powerhouse performance from a young up-and-comer, and an original soundtrack by Eddie Vedder, newly anointed an elder statesman of rock with a history of contemplative, outward-looking music? In any other year, it couldn’t miss.
Unfortunately, it was 2007; for the calendar and for Hollywood, fall had only just begun.
Signs This Was Made in 2007
Being a period piece set in the then-recent past, it has its share of anachronisms, especially when McCandless goes to Los Angeles: he arrives on a BNSF railway train (BNSF didn’t exist until 1994); in the shadow of the Metro Building (1995), and passes by several orange buses (2004).
Additional Notes
- About those retreats into middlebrow sensibility– something should’ve been done about those opening credits. They play over, and undercut, majestic cinemascope vistas of Alaskan wilderness, and it’s distracting as hell.
- Kristen Stewart appears in her breakout year as the furiously horny desert rat Nancy Tatro (trust me, that sounds a lot more interesting than it is).
Next Time: The Darjeeling Limited
