Wonderful - but ultimately the story of a misguided fool

Rating: 9/10 (20 October 2008)

As a film it's hard to fault Into the Wild. It's a fantastic piece of film-making - brilliantly directed and with a stand-out performance by Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless. With a superb narrative drive and accompanied by the wonderfully melancholic acoustic music of Eddie Vedder it's at times both moving and incredibly uplifting.
However, the film's weak point is the fact that it's based on a true story - and a real person - with the resultant constraint imposed on the ending. Because no matter how much Jon Krakauer or Sean Penn might try to romanticise the character of McCandless, they can't change the fact that he stupidly killed himself for no reason.
It's also hard to hide the fact that McCandless wasn't that nice a person. How much of his real character comes out in the film is open to question - but Hirsch's portrayal, when one analyses it, is really one of a spoilt, selfish, egotistical fantasist who shunned his parents simply because they argued a lot and because he was born out of wedlock.
At any one time there are probably thousands of white, middle-class young adults from western countries like McCandless who, having realised that the world isn't such a nice place after all, rail against society and pursue some form of idealistic path in life. Unlike most (who succumb to the realisation that some element of conformance is necessary to actually live in the real world) McCandless gained notoriety because his inexperience, naivety and arrogance ultimately resulted in his needless death. He ended up trapped in the Alaskan wilderness by a river which had risen since he had first crossed it. But had he simply taken a proper map with him he would have known that a crossing existed a mere quarter-mile away from where he originally waded across! Somewhat arrogantly, he thought he knew all he needed to know and paid for it with his life.
So in the end it's hard to sympathise with Hirsch's character. Which is a shame because had the ending been more uplifting - even if McCandless had somehow died for a worthy idealistic cause - this would be a truly life-changing film.