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Rating: 8/10 (27 July 2009)

It's a fact that some images are so beautiful that justify the whole viewing of a film. That's what I thought of "Into the wild" the first time I saw it: I found it beautifully shot, owner of breathtaking images that tried to dissimulate its dramatic and ideological imperfections. I also thought of it as a film where ideology and drama where the same thing. Now, on a second viewing I've found a lot more, primarily because I was able to separate the dramatic part from the ideology. Ideologically, I still think it's pretty basic, but it's so dramatically powerful that it buries the ideals, or something like it. We worry about the fate of a character whose life choice (which involves living by himself in Alaska with the sole company of nature and nothing else as a final destination) has been defined by an ideal –a philosophy- and yet I find the places he goes to, the things he witnesses and the characters he encounters, more interesting than the words he speaks and the quotes he cites from a dozen books.
This is probably because there are hundred guys out there who want to do what Chris McCandless (a phenomenal Emile Hirsch) did, for the same reasons too; but it's his life that Sean Penn decided to show on screen, and his work as a director is so dedicated that we have to end up caring. Penn faithfully adapted Jon Krakauer's homonymous book and personally interviewed the McCandless family to give full life to a side that the book may have left untreated. Chris relationship with his parents was difficult, he had to live many lies for many years and he could only find comfort in his sister Carine. Jena Malone plays tenderly this role that has her more as a narrator than someone with a physical presence. But that's enough for the viewer to get and idea of who Chris really was, without the philosophy included, something Carine didn't understand completely.
And that's also enough for Penn. With Malone's voice, Eric Gautier's ("Diarios de Motocicleta") photography, Eddie Vedder's powerfully sang songs and the accurate casting for the marvelous supporting characters; the director commences the journey. Shot entirely on location and without the use of risk doubles whatsoever, "Into the wild" emerges as a liberating road trip, and one that Sean Penn, eternal rebel, probably did (or would have done for that matter) when he was young. If the man was younger, I bet he would have also starred the film.
In part, this is why the movie also has a documentary feel, with honest moments of Hirsch almost improvising and looking at the camera that give a sense of intimacy; with conversations overheard, or observed from a distance, as if being closer meant prying. The sceneries, all beautiful and not only admirably shot but also shot with admiration, seem as something discovered for the first time; and some people who appear to describe them are surely from the whereabouts.
I don't really know if Chris actually learns anything in his journey, his ideals being so simple (something questioned by the people he meets) and him being so stubborn. He feels there's nothing new to be learnt, but what does occur to him is that he discovers. He discovers the places we experience with him, places of extreme materialism, places of extreme misery, and the balance; he discovers, with Jan (Catherine Keener, brilliant) and Rainey (Brian Dierker, very natural) that one person can have an enormous impact on others, even if it's for a few days; he discovers, with Tracy (marvelous Kristen Stewart, watch how she can't take her eyes off of him) that there's a room for romance even if we don't want it; and that one can be someone's last chance for happiness, as an old man (Hal Holbrook) expresses.
These things are all the same, and conversations in the film are few because this time images say more. The construction of the film works that way, and works well because it shows us its moment of total silence -the days Chris spent in Alaska living on a bus- combined with the rest of the story, so that it doesn't become tedious to watch it all at once (we've all seen "Cast Away"). Remember that Sean Penn is an actor, and his film has the dramatic power to survive on images only; but he knows without words we wouldn't be able to feel the way every character feels about Chris, regardless any philosophy: we don't want him to go away.