Interpretation of Words

Rating: Null/10 (19 May 2008)

I saved this movie for a special occasion, a time when I was sensitive to the written word.
Its because I know Sean Penn and his blind spots. Its because I knew that this will appear as a celebration of a special soul who discovers the purity of life through simplicity, or nature, however you handle this sort of sublimeness.
And I knew that it would make me unhappy, because it will have been extremely effective at telling that story, but it is one that I will find unsatisfactory.
Why isn't important, other than to say that it demeans the human spirit to pretend it is so thin. And if it matters, it isn't fair to any lost, broken soul like this poor dumb kid to turn his pain into something glorious because we are afraid ourselves.
Regular readers of mine know that I get frustrated when there exists a fine reading experience, and then it is made into a book and people think somehow that if the events are conveyed that is sufficient. Its because reading is a sacred thing. Cinema, when handled well, is too. And so is that special state where the mind is attuned to whatever elements of nature you see. Its that attunement, that process, that "shifting into" that matters.
Penn understands this. He's a serious artist. He knows that this is a film not a story. And it is about the word, the written word, not some likable runaway. It starts well, and with this notion, us seeing the words from his journal in the foreground, the images mere annotation. One of the hardest things to do in film is to start. You have only a few moments to create a world.
Throughout, we have a constant battle, a battle of words with images. The images nearly win, or so it seems. The end has our hero escaping the words of the idealistic books he carts around to see, actually see something transcendent. We are supposed to go along.
But here is where the words govern, they shape and control. The first level of course is that this is a movie made from a book. It is a book written by a man whose job is to weave the notion that ascetic communing with nature is the purest of pursuits. Its got enough truth and tradition near it to allow it to create a powerful fiction. This boy's life wasn't important or interesting. What made him the target of Krakauer's book, was because he was a writer, and left documents.
Its like the great Antarctic Scott expedition who perished for much the same reason, and were celebrated for precisely the same reason: they left compelling journals until they died. So we have Krakauer's words, fabulated and extending the boy's words. And these are based not on any internal vision, but on the words of others who he not only read, he carried books into the wild instead of food.
So three layers of words, each one stepping closer to an idealism of nature while using notions and media further removed.
The final irony of course is that he dies because he misread a word in a reference book on edible plants (as it happens in the film).
Words matter in this film. They control the story as they run into the wild and incidentally carry this guy and the others he encounters, all obviously written not born. Penn could be a really important filmmaker, and here he comes really close to making a film about the compromises of film.
Penn has only a few times where he crosses the line for me. They all have to do with the segments concerning the parents. One is particularly egregious. We are told that his dad was a smart enough man to be hired to engineer communications for NASA satellites. When we are told this, we see a NASA-supplied clip of a rocket being launched. That clip and its cousins have been seen countless times and is semiotically loaded. Its a shorthand for "high tech" whatever that means. Its a problem for two reasons.
One is the simple rule of overshowing. The cinematic effects here depend on the visions coming from the outside, slowly permeating that shell of consciousness. Penn does fairly well on this, avoiding the Carroll Ballard effect of human-manufactured natural ideals. But it depends on consistency, and he breaks it here. It takes a good 20 minutes to recover.
But the other problem: the irony is that satellite communications isn't about rockets and power. Its about isolation, desolate vacuums, sterile modes, the inability to touch. It also happens to be cinematically accessible through some other stock footage, and when appropriate, folded into the images of winter and bus... and writing.
Emile Hirsh is very good. He's been now in three expertly edited films, and I mean truly cutting edge.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.