Into the Wild

[Icesickle]

Really suprised there hasn't been a thread about this. I love Sean Penn as an actor, but his movies are underwhelming. Looks like this is his "Passion" or "Unforgiven" though. I've seen several critics completely jizz all over it and come close to calling it an American classic, which piqued my interest, cause I had previously written it off as just a potential DVD rental.

Anyone seen it?

Sean Penn has molded one of the best movies of a bustling fall out of Jon Krakauer's best-selling Into the Wild. Krakauer told the true story of Chris McCandless, an honors grad from Emory University who walked into the Alaskan wilderness in 1992 to find himself outside the confines of estranged family, well-meaning friends and any governing impulse besides his own questing heart. If you read the book and pegged Chris as a wacko narcissist who died out of arrogance and stupidity, then Penn's film version is not for you. If, like Penn, you mourn Chris' tragedy and his judgment errors but also exult in his journey and its spirit of moral inquiry, then this beautiful, wrenching film will take a piece out of you.

Into the Wild represents Penn's most assured and affecting work yet as director and screenwriter, in the wake of The Indian Runner, The Crossing Guard and The Pledge. His connection to Chris is primal. Following Penn's lead, Emile Hirsch (Lords of Dogtown) gets so far into Chris' skin that they seem to share the same nerve endings. Over the film's enveloping two hours and twenty-five minutes, Hirsch gives an award-caliber performance of astonishing depth and humanity. Penn was insistent about shooting the film on the same locations that Chris traveled over two years, after he burned his driver's license and credit cards, gave away $24,000 in savings and set out to find his place in the world without a map. Penn uses narration from Chris' beloved sister Carine (Jena Malone) to reveal why he cut himself off from his affluent Virginia parents, Walt (William Hurt) and Billie (Marcia Gay Harden). Dubbing himself Alexander Supertramp, Chris lets his wanderlust take him to a South Dakota farm run by Wayne Westerberg (Vince Vaughn), on a scary kayak trip down to Mexico, and to a trailer shared by "rubbertramps" Jan (Catherine Keener) and Rainey (Brian Dierker). An unconsummated romance with underage Tracy (Kristen Stewart) in Slab City, an RV camp in the California desert, also speaks to his character. Chris' ache for connection is movingly portrayed in his relationship with widower Ron Franz (Hal Holbrook in his shining hour onscreen). And Penn makes the lack of that connection palpable when Chris heads to Alaska, enduring four months of isolation until his starved body (Hirsch lost forty pounds for the role) is found in an abandoned bus. Was it a death wish? Hardly. On a page torn from Taras Bulba, Chris wrote an SOS: "I need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone, this is no joke."

Penn, in tandem with the superb cinematographer Eric Gautier (The Motorcycle Diaries), captures the majesty and terror of the wilderness in ways that make you catch your breath. And Eddie Vedder's remarkable songs, notably a cover of "Hard Sun," sound like the voice of Chris' unconscious. Since his death, admirers have made the arduous trip to that bus. But Into the Wild celebrates the person, not the myth. Mistakes didn't make Chris unique, his courage did. Through Penn's unmissable and unforgettable film, that courage endures.

[Icesickle]

No one's seen this?

[ALASKA]

i started reading the book and lost interest in it because the kid seemed like a douche bag

[cascarrabias]

If you read the book and pegged Chris as a wacko narcissist who died out of arrogance and stupidity, then Penn's film version is not for you. If, like Penn, you mourn Chris' tragedy and his judgment errors but also exult in his journey and its spirit of moral inquiry, then this beautiful, wrenching film will take a piece out of you.

I didn't read the book, but I know I would fall into the first category. Rich kid had it all and threw it away to "find himself." No thanks.

[Icesickle]

I didn't read the book, but I know I would fall into the first category. Rich kid had it all and threw it away to "find himself." No thanks.

You must hate romantics then, cause it sounds to me like the kid was just following in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, Lord Byron, Whitman, Thoreau, etc. who all ventured out into the wilderness or put themselves in "extreme situations" to "find themselves."

[Trademark]

I'll check it out. but I think this kid falls in the same category as Wes Anderson and his super crew of hipsters...

[phil connors]

I just found out about this film and the book for that matter. I'm going to check both out this weekend.

[Spiccoli]

it sounds to me like the kid was just following in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, Lord Byron, Whitman, Thoreau...

yeah see thats where the problem starts...


anyways the book is a great read but i'm really not that interested in seeing penn's take on it. this might get watched if i find myself running into the opportunity solely because of emile hirsch. i see the dude developing into another river phoenix...

[FAZER]

I don't have anything to do tomorrow so I am thinking of checking this out. Some of y'all are making me not want to see it, but so far I'm still interested.

[Brougham33]

Did not like this film at all. Mostly because of what Alaska said, the kid seemed like a douche bag. That being said, and this is extracting whatever good I can from this thing, overall I don't even think the movie is about liking him or his path, more about sadness and tragedy and people, but told through the stupidty of one depressed douche bag.

Maybe not. I thought this film was all over the place. It is however shot beautifully, at first I was like "these are some nice shots....good job smarmy smug Sean Penn" but then after two and half hours of scenic shots, passages from Tolstoy or Walden usually followed by Eddie Vedder howling...I had it, I pretty much left the theatre hating the kid and this movie. I'm actually kind of shocked at all the praise this thing is getting.


spoiler...sort of




Alaskans don't feel much different:

Some Alaskans have negative views of both McCandless and those who romanticize his fate. McCandless was unaware that a hand-operated tram crossed the river a quarter mile from the Stampede Trail, while a nearby shelter was stocked with emergency supplies, as described in Krakauer's book. Alaskan Park Ranger Peter Christian wrote: "I am exposed continually to what I will call the 'McCandless Phenomenon.' People, nearly always young men, come to Alaska to challenge themselves against an unforgiving wilderness landscape where convenience of access and possibility of rescue are practically nonexistent ... When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasnג€™t even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail without even a map of the area. If he had a good map he could have walked out of his predicament ... Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide."[9]

Judith Kleinfeld wrote in the Anchorage Daily News that "many Alaskans react with rage to his stupidity. You'd have to be a complete idiot, they say, to die of starvation in summer 20 miles off the Park's Highway."[10]

[StormShadow]

I'm basically glad mccandless died and I think he was a faggot


having said that though, I'm definitely down to see what sean penn was able to do with his life story

[ALASKA]

I didn't read the book, but I know I would fall into the first category. Rich kid had it all and threw it away to "find himself." No thanks.

You must hate romantics then, cause it sounds to me like the kid was just following in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, Lord Byron, Whitman, Thoreau, etc. who all ventured out into the wilderness or put themselves in "extreme situations" to "find themselves."

he can be a romantic all day but he was a hypocritical self righteous prick. thats the problem.

[The Ivy League Nigga]

Very clunky movie. You know how there are books on tape, this was like a book on film. Not a very good adaptation for the screen, in my opinion.

The end became fairly compelling, though, from the moose on.

Agree with Stormshadow about being glad dude died. I mean I am not glad he died, but he kinda got what he deserved. He was a whiner.

[slimebucato]

Hated the book when I read it in high school. The way it was written made the kid seem like some sort of martyr or even christlike figure. Really irksome. The story isn't even that interesting to begin with. No interest in seeing this.

[cascarrabias]

So this movie is about a self righteous, hypocritical, inconsiderate, unreasonable doofus who believes he's right when everyone says he wrong.

It should be called Icesickle: The Movie.

[Icesickle]

So this movie is about a self righteous, hypocritical, inconsiderate, unreasonable doofus who believes he's right when everyone says he wrong.

It should be called Icesickle: The Movie.

OH SHIT. Got me.

[Icesickle]

9/10...maybe even 9.5/10. It's up there with Zodiac and Ratatoille as a film that will be remembered for a long time to come. I know this may be heaping it on too strong, but because of it's anti-establishment / neo-hippie storyline I could see this being a cult classic; a post-millenium Easy Rider. It's that good.

One common idea that's floating around about the movie that needs to be disspelled is that if you don't like McCandless you won't like the movie. Although you can tell Penn has a small soft spot for the kid, he also doesn't spare him any criticism and paints him as a self righteous prick from the outset (when he shoots down his parents graduation present) and has the narrarator (his sister) and the people that he meets question his motives and criticize him for absconding from his family. He pays for his self righteousness in the end, and pretty much comes to realize that while his quest had some merits, it wasn't worth letting go of everything he previously had.

There's two reasons why I feel this movie is so good. One is that while on the surface it's about McCandless's journey, it's moreso a tribute to America the ideal, America the land, and its rebellious, free-spirited citizens that are usually portrayed in one-dimensional caricatures in most films. It's about much more than a self-righteous college grad's failed journey into the wild; it's one of the most patriotic films to come along in some time. McCandless' anger and distrust with his parents and careerist society is washed away by a liberating adventure across America and his interactions with "salt-of-the earth" types like Catherine Keener's empty nest hippy, Vince Vaughn's farmer, and Hal Holbrook's lonely WW2 vet who accepted him and helped him out despite his at sometimes prick-like attitude. Calling a film like this patriotic seems odd, but that's only if you took patriotism to mean what the neoconservatives have narrowly defined it as. If you love America for what the people who first settled here cherished it for - its regenerating energy, the personal freedom and liberty that was possible here, its vast open frontier - than there's no way you can't view this film as a heartfelt ode to this country.

The second is Penn's take on the book. A lesser filmmaker would have filmed it in chronological order. But Penn's decision to cut back and forth between McCandless' break down in the Alaskan wilderness and his whole journey is inspired because it gave the impression that not only was McCandless' fading away, but his experiences - and that liberating, boundless American frontier that inspired countless adventurers, immigrants, and poets - were fading away as well. Finally, the cinematography (that shot of the seagulls flying into the waves was ) and the acting (Holbrook, Vaughn, Keener, and Hirsh all put in some of the best performances of their careers) were excellent.