One hell of a young man

Rating: 9/10 (22 September 2007)

Sean Penn's 'Into the Wild' is a passionate and faithful evocation of Jon Krakauer's book about Chris McCandless. It's the troubling and complex story of a young idealist and seeker who was also a rebellious child and beloved brother who gave away his $24,000 savings to Oxfam after college, went off in an old Datsun and left his family behind, and disappeared for two years wandering the country, only to be found by hunters dead of poisoning and starvation in an abandoned bus in the wilds of Alaska.
It's been said as a criticism of Penn's movie that it isn't as neutral about McCandless as Krakauers's book. It is true that Emile Hirsch as Chris, who called himself Alexander Supertramp on the road, is such a joyous and appealing character it's hard to focus on the arbitrariness and foolhardiness of the young man. Hirsch gives his all. He has shown his knack for playing bad good boysparticularly in 'Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys' and 'Lords of Dogtown'and for playing wild misfitsin the little seen 'The Mudge Boy.' This is the first great role he's had, and he deserves it. His work is a wonderful melding of "negative capability" and generosity. It comes naturally to him to embody exuberance, boldness, and joy. If there was something off-putting or stern in the real-life McCandless, it's not very noticeable in Hirsch. But Hirsch's enthusiasm makes sense of the great adventure and self-discovery this story recounts. (Sadly, McCandless never seemed more ready to embrace life, and to overcome all his doubts about people and family, than right near his end.) All the faults McCandless had and mistakes he made made are there in the story as Penn tells it; if he has altered facts (and necessarily left some out), he hasn't done so to make the young man's plans seem clearer or his choices wiser, and the movie is replete with specific detail.
'Into the Wild,' true, is itself a little on the wild and loud side, with its occasionally obtrusive Eddie Vedder soundtrack, it's insanely vivid characterslike the young Danish couple on the banks of the Colorado, Vince Vaughan's intense, grinning grain farmer, Hal Holbrook's fabulously sad, shut-down old widower. There is another kind of overload in the occasional use of split screens. But it all unfolds very much as Jon Krakauer's book does, with interludes at the "magic bus" where Chris met his doom constantly intercut with episodes from his travels earlier during his two wander-years. And incredible episodes they are: roaming with a warm hippie couple; illegally and hair-raisingly running the Colorado rapids in a kayak; working in the big grain elevator and loving it; riding the rails and loving that too, till he's caught and beaten; escaping a flophouse in L.A.; staying with old Mr. Franz (Holbrook), learning from him how to engrave leather belts and persuading him to climb a mountain; and then off into the hostile snow country with a big back pack and sheer will. Many voiceovers from Chris's sister add more about the sibling relationship than was in the book; the family "fearlessly" cooperated in the film-making. McCandless's stern NASA honcho dad (William Hurt) and uptight mother (Marcia Gay Harden) are as unappealing as he saw them, but are not overdrawnor underrepresented. Among other things Sean Penn's film is a remarkable balancing act.
It's obvious this story had to be made into a movie, and it's hard to imagine how anyone could have done it better than Penn and his fine cast. All Penn's directorial efforts have been heartfelt and earnest, but this of his films thus far is his greatest artistic success and has the widest appeal. Into the Wild is a good balance of the emotionally wrenching and the thought-provoking. It contains so many themes and poses so many questionsabout youth, about time, about responsibility. Chris isn't to be confused with Herzog's 'Grizzly Man'. He's aware of the danger of nature. It's just that he has the hubris of daring to approach it with too little knowledge and experience, knowing the risk, and taking it. And indeed he might have made it and gotten back out, but for two or three terrible mistakes. Nature is unforgiving.
Chris McCandless was unforgiving too. But if he read the romantic Bible of his own life lived in those intense two years and lived to tell of them, the film suggests, he would have learned to love and forgive. He was bright, talented, passionate about life, a seeker or rare moral fervor who read and thought and recorded all that happened in those last days. His death was sadly premature. But there are signsthey're clear in Krakauer's bookthat he made an impact on the world he inhabited and the people he met. Vince Vaughan's character shouts, "You're one hell of a young man. You're one hell of a young man!" He died terribly alone. But maybe the tree that falls in the forest is heard after all. "Quant'e' bella giovanezza," goes an Italian renaissance verse, "Che si fugge tuttavia." How beautiful is youth, which flees straightaway. McCandless' story embodies those lines.
'Into the Wild' seems more moving and thought-provoking than any other recent film, and may be destined to become some kind of classican 'Easy Rider', some have said, for our times. It's about society and nature, about family, about idealism and aloneness; most of all it's about the dangerous, heartbreakingly brief and beautiful romanticism of youth. In those two years, Chris McCandless lived a whole, remarkable, life. And Sean Penn has captured those two years for us.