Penn almost comes up with a home run

Rating: 8/10 (21 October 2007)

Sean Penn delivers his best film, and in watching the film it's obvious why he wanted to do this one. One renegade celebrating another. Hirsh is great - he would be a great Steve Prefontaine, if that hadn't been done 2x already - and he's backed up by great performances from Vaughan, Keener, and especially Holbrook (who gets my nod for best supporting actor award.)
The picture is part "On the Road" part "Wild Fang" part "Don Quixote." What interested me the most was the view of the soft underbelly of America that McCandless inhabited. Penn seems to hold that population in special regard, but it's easy to see why McCandless turned away from them as well: dropped out but aimless. McCandless was on a mission. Test himself to the limit and compete with Mr. Grim Reaper in the wild on a personal basis. Such arrogance has it's appeal.
Penn has to make a choice about how to explain McCandless. 1. Don't explain, just show. 2. Explain too much and ruin it. 3. Do a bit of both. He chooses to do no.3, but doesn't quite pull it off. Not that there can be a definitive explanation, we all know this guy's been psycho babbled to death by bloggers, it's just that he chooses to go the "family environment" path, when that seems to pat for my taste. Granted he got the family's permission to go this route, but do families really understand themselves? I found the sister's voice over intrusive after awhile and wanted Penn just to get on with it.
Penn does drum gently on McCandless' insistence on abandoning his family completely, possibly out of respect for the family, possibly out of fear of showing judgment, and in doing so too mildly I think he misses the opportunity to set a harder moral tone. Is there really anything wonderful about total self absorption? But I'm glad that Penn insists on telling us that McCandless wrote he was "lonely", and that the brilliance of creation is wasted if you can't share it with someone human.