Wasted potential

Rating: 3/10 (18 December 2007)

I went into this film with a certain amount of caution and it seems to have been justified. There are two reasons people seem to either love or hate this film, firstly the character's 'adventure' and ideals, and secondly the cinematography.
I don't think its fair to criticize the film over the ideals of Chris, it is there to tell his story. What I do have a problem with is how tediously Penn tries to make this point. The sister's narration, the letters to Wayne, the 'chapter' titles, they were all so painfully labored, as if there was some need to give us everything we needed to get from the film. This for me was the greatest weakness of the film; it lacked any subtlety in comparison to say Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy. What Penn seemed to aim for, and which Reichardt could achieve, seems lost in his inability to let things speak for themselves.
On the second point I do think the cinematography was beautiful, but I don't think it was used particularly well. There were a number of visual styles imposed across the film and for no apparent reason. There were also random shots, planes flying overhead, a lorry passing over the camera at a Batman villain-esquire angle, that did not sit well in the overall picture. It seemed to me that Penn was pulling off an amateurish attempt to make his film seem meaningful by overloading it with shallow symbols and as many visual styles he could get his hands on.
On a positive note, I thought the film had some real potential, but I'm not sure how much of this came from Penn. Any of the parts where Chris interacts with others were captivating and the relationships that were developed were beautiful. The story could easily have locked onto these with much greater enthusiasm and ignored the self-indulgent attempt at being 'art-house'.
Two films spring to mind as useful comparisons to how awful this film was, The Straight Story and Old Joy. Watch either of these and Into the Wild pales in comparison.