Awful

Rating: 2/10 (12 September 2008)

How did the bus get there? Of all the questions (pseudo and real) that Sean Penn's latest film, Into The Wild, is so manifestly trying to provoke- and in a semi-retarded hippy-cum-tree hugger sort of way, this most basic and elemental plot point is never addressed. But, more on that later.
The film is based upon the 1996 nonfiction bestseller by Jon Krakauer, about a spoiled rich white suburban boy who basically commits suicide in the Alaskan wilderness, although he is so painfully unaware of the real world that he does not even know his own dark- almost Objectivist, impulses, and where they will lead. The book the film is based upon was a good read, even if one might question the wisdom of making a martyr out of such a delusional narcissist as Christopher Johnson McCandless (Emile Hirsch)- the 24 year old who starved to death on the aforementioned bus, after accidentally poisoning himself with inedible berries, in the middle of Alaska's wilds, after adopting the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp.
The lead character is simply annoyingly repellant- perhaps only Roberto Benigni's lead character, Guido, in the awful Life Is Beautiful, makes a viewer more actively root for the character's death. In that film the lead character is so annoying that one actually roots for the Nazis to kill him, and in this film McCandless is so pompous and the film so long (140 minutes, compared to a book barely over 200 pages) that, at the hour mark, one wishes he'd just die already, so one can vacate the theater. But, no relief will come for over an hour. But, as repellant as Chris McCandless, the character, is, the direction by Sean Penn- in his first truly big budget feature, is ATROCIOUS! Yes, Penn is a great actor, but his direction, and even worse screenplay, make this film a chore. Only some stellar acting, mostly by supporting actors, saves this film from total disaster. That so many people identify and sympathize with this unfortunately deluded and hollow young loser bespeaks how little they even notice themselves, and their own flaws, much less the many other McCandlesses that proliferate in cafes across the nation. Life is as real, both for the good and ill, in a New York City deli, a doctor's waiting room, or in a tenement, as it is on the peak of Mount Everest, riding the tube of a forty foot wave in Hawaii, or trekking through the Amazon. McCandless never learned this for no one seemed to care enough to even try to stop him. Of course, even had they, he was so selfish and uncaring of others' feelings, that he likely would not have been deterred. And, Penn would likely not have cared to make a film about such a character, anyway.
So, given the predetermined mess of this film, I return to the opening query- how did the bus, which the film refers to as 'magic'- thank you to The Who, get there? A Google search reveals the bus was fortuitously left by a highway construction company, decades earlier, to be used as a waystation for hikers, hunters, and campers. Since everything else in this film is so obvious, I just thought you'd want to know that and, also, to avoid this film. Thank me later.