Exceptional in every possible way

Rating: 10/10 (20 May 2008)

Sean Penn's Into the Wild is beautiful, staggering, thoughtful, a labor of love made by a filmmaker with real passion for the story he set out to tell. Like a Terrence Malick picture, Into the Wild transcends any conception such as "if you only see one film this year" and goes beyond the very notion of "Oscar-worthy". If one really has to say something on the subject, then Into the Wild should have shared the Best Picture award with No Country for Old Men, but that kind of thinking is besides the point because Penn's masterpiece is more than a movie, or a work of art for that matter: it's a life experience.
A rebel at heart, Penn clearly identifies, at least on a few levels, with the film's unconventional protagonist, a bright young boy named Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), whose astounding true story was first recounted in Jon Krakauer's book which gives the picture its title. Christopher had it all: loving parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden) and sister (Jena Malone), excellent grades and a most promising future. Then, one fine day the 20-year old college graduate decided that wasn't really what he wanted, took his law school fund and disappeared, setting out for a journey to the heart of America. "I'm going into the wild" the self-renamed Alex Supertramp wrote in his journal, and though he occasionally ran into people (Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn and others) he would connect with in a deeper way, that's where he really belonged: away from civilization, just him, his elementary tools and the pure, untarnished nature surrounding him.
Christopher's journey, which is carried out with just the basic resources one needs to survive (no cell phone or other gadgets), is a modern odyssey of sorts, a quest for something that was lost forever and won't be found in the near future. In a world like ours, where technology rules all, a choice like Christopher's would be met with disbelief and probably derision. That only heightens the intensity of the character's message, which is also what the director aims to tell us: we need to rediscover ourselves before it's too late. It doesn't matter whether we are young or old, as the protagonist touchingly teaches an elderly man (Hal Holbrook, the only cast-member to be nominated for an Oscar), the important thing is we give it a serious try.
To simply call this a film isn't enough: in one of the most amazing combinations of efforts in the history of movie-making, the story, Penn's soulful direction, Hirsch's painfully real performance (will he ever be this good again?) and Eddie Vedder's elegiac songs (an essential soundtrack for any true film-lover) merge into something that's almost too powerful to describe in words: you have to see it to believe it.
Into the Wild isn't an "easy" film: it will leave you very affected, possibly devastated, but also as enriched as one can ever be after seeing a genuine masterwork. It will ignite real thoughts about life instead of the phony reflections so many "issue movies" try to induce. It will hit the gut, the heart and the mind in equal measure, and once the initial wave of emotional overflow has passed you will feel immensely rewarded. Into the Wild does this because it isn't merely a motion picture: it is art, life, freedom and nature, all together in a mesmerizing piece of visual poetry.