Strong Movie With Major Flaws

Rating: 6/10 (21 January 2019)

10 November 2007. Until the overly, emotionally wrought-movie's ending, INTO THE WILD held little in the way of redeeming value. Though gorgeous and visually stunning, Sean Penn is pretentious and overly excessive in his use of photographic and cinematic techniques. He unnecessarily tries to impress the audience with his apparent ability and knowledge of all the variety of camera work available to him. Unfortunately, the diversity and various uses of his art become a distraction in themselves and sometimes become story instead of the background. This jarring distraction becomes particularly apparent during the scene where Christopher McCandless visits a love tourist stop. In this scene Penn uses an almost documentary-style visual approach to the scene that is completely different from other styles he used in the other portions of the movie. It's use appears to more for showing off than really contributing to the story of the movie. The frequent scattering and non-linear, flashbacks, flashforwards isn't always a pleasant trip, making the audience having to twist and turn in ways that really detract from the main themes of the movie. Instead of allowing the audience just to immerse themselves into the story, they are forced into a roller-coaster ride of almost dream-like snatches of experience that never truly gel into a satisfying experience. Never is the audience allowed to truly grasp the depth of the McCandless' parent's transformation, from their beginning to their ending. Vince Vaughn, probably, has the most authentic, and delightful role in the movie, where his acting is on full display that eschews any of Vaughn's typical character stereotype. The fascinating threads that Sean does present are interesting with their continual focus on relationships throughout the movie that McCandless is exposed to. But unfortunately, these threads never truly succeed in revealing McCandless' depth of relational experience. For example, there are lukewarm inferences of emotional tragedy or regard with respect to McCandless but in another scene from another movie demonstrates how much is lacking in Penn's presentation of McCandless as a character's own emotional trial and self-absorption. In Dr. Zhivago (a book that McCandless actually reads in the movie) the audience is allowed to linger in a haunting scene of Dr. Zhivago's love leaving his life forever in a sleigh that becomes smaller and smaller until it's just a dot on the horizon before fading completely away as Dr. Zhivago desperately tries to climb up into the house's top window and look out at the last glimmer of his love life. The jet airplumes in INTO THE WILD, are much more effectively used in 24 Days After, a movie where a biological contaminated Britain is wiped out and it is only the airplumes overhead that suggest (not as in INTO THE WILD of civilization to runaway from) but civilization that saves. There is the moose killing that is so disrespectful of nature and the land. There is the reckless disregard for taking responsibility of freedom, taking advantage to not conform to the rules of society. Most of the movie appears to be an over-glorification of the wild, rugged, individual man seeking his own identity and freedom, yet, it avoids the more harsh realities that McCandless also likely experienced along the way, except for the very ending. Six out of Ten Stars. Revised 2/14/08.