“Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought. I am not me any more. At least I'm not the same me I was.”
-- Ernesto Guevara de la Serna from The Motorcycle Diaries
“I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace.”
-- George Hanson from Easy Rider
“If you want something in life, reach out and grab it.”
-- Christopher McCandless from Into The Wild
It is very fitting that Sean Penn’s adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction bestseller, Into The Wild, is being released on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Sean Penn has created one of the most vivid cinematic journeys of self discovery about American open road. Into The Wild has a Kerouacian undercurrent. How can it not? Christopher McCandless seems to have a little of Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise in him. It is to Sean Penn’s credit as a director that he never gives McCandless a deliberate Beat imitation. The film is not the work of a hack trying to rip off what has come before him-- not at all. The film feels as fresh and alive as anything to come out in recent American cinema. Into The Wild has the discovery urge of Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries, the naturalistic beauty of Jean Jacques Annaud The Bear and the fatalistic charm of Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man.
McCandless never feels like a carbon copy of someone else. Through Sean Penn’s direction, Emile Hirsch gives him a contagious curiosity that spreads to the audience. We are eager to see where his journey takes him next. With each new chapter, we wait to see what will unfold for our reckless hero.
Emile Hirsch has given splendid performances in other films-- The Dangerous Lives Of Altar Boys, The Emperor’s Club, Alpha Dog, Imaginary Heroes and The Lords Of Dogtown benefited from his presence. He tried too hard to be Tom Cruise in the Risky Business clone; The Girl Next Door, but it as Christopher McCandless where everything comes together-- a career defining moment. It is here where Sean Penn’s directing talent shines. He has always been a gifted and talented actor. There was never any doubt about his range. Yet with his directorial debut, The Indian Runner (1992), another side was shown. David Morse, Charles Bronson, Viggo Mortenson and Dennis Hopper benefited greatly from Mr. Penn’s direction. In The Crossing Guard and The Pledge, Jack Nicholson played characters he used to play in such films as The Last Detail and The King Of Marvin Gardens. Sean Penn, the director, wants to give his actors the deepest and most meaningful performances of their careers. As a result, his work has only gotten better.
We travel from box to box. We leave our homes to spend our days in another confinement. Christopher McCandless possesses a Bukowskian rage against the standard American Dream-- perhaps his is an extreme redesign of the American Dream. He wants to get back to back to nature-- following the words of Jack London, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy and the other great writers he discovered during his college education. When he graduates from college in 1990, he wants to say goodbye to routine life. The impulse to rebel is evident from the earliest moments after his graduation from Emory University in 1990. He wants to rip apart from his middle class existence. At a graduation dinner, his parents, Walt (William Hurt) and Billie (Marcia Gay Harden) offer to buy him a new car. He rejects this gift as soon as it offered. We see that there has always been tension between father and son. Chris has other notions at hand. He gives his parents the bait of attending Harvard Law School. They buy and this gives him time to go on his great adventure into the great vast American Wilderness. Christopher was not meant to get a law degree or an MBA. He is an adventurer at heart. He has played the game for too long. He has done everything that is expected of him. Now is the time for him to live.
Sean Penn tells the film in a series of flashbacks. The film’s narrative is broken, but not in the usual way of Alejandro González Iñárritu films. Sean Penn begins at the end, but giving us a vivid series of flashbacks which never confuse us. Christopher’s sister, Carine (Jena Malone), provides a very useful voice over narration. Through her, we get a sense of what Christopher is going through and the effect it has at home on her family. What we learn from her narration is at times shocking and ultimately fills in the keys of this man’s life. As Carine, Jena Malone does not have the same amount of screen time as in Donnie Darko, The Dangerous Lives Of Altar Boys, Saved! and The United States Of Leland, but her contribution is just as powerful. The film is divided into chapters and has the words of Christopher’s letters to his friends appear across the screen in bright yellow capital letters. Once Chris has left his old world behind, he adopts the pseudonym, Alexander Supertramp. This is the point of no return; he rejects material possessions and human attachments. He sends the remainder of his college fund money to a charity and burns the money he has. Alexander is on the road to his paradise-- his great Alaskan Adventure.
Alexander Supertramp’s two year journey takes him across the country and finally to Alaska. His journey takes him from South Dakota to Southern California to the Sea Of Cortez and then to his final destination. He meets a variety of people along the way. They shape his life, but in many ways he shapes their lives as well. Everyone who encounters Alexander/Christopher seems a better person at the end of their encounters. His rejection of his parents and their way of life leads him to seek out parental surrogates. His parent’s troubled marriage convinced him to seek something different. A traveling hippie couple, Jan (Catherine Keener) and Rainey (Brian Dierker), act as his parents on the road. Vince Vaughn’s Wayne Westerberg seems like the wild uncle he never had and Hal Holbrook’s Ron Franz is a grandfather figure to him in the film’s final chapter. The scenes with Ron are very touching-- some of Hal Holbrook’s best work in recent memory. His friendship with Kristin Stewart’s Tracy is interesting. He meets her in the Slab City section of the film where he reunites with Jan and Rainey. She is quickly enamored with him, but he is such a solitary creature. She is the most available girl in recent memory, but he does not think it is a good idea. Instead, they perform a duet at night. She is an accomplished musician with the guitar. He plays the keyboards. Each of these characters and their segments demonstrate Christopher’s humanism, free spirit nature and his let the chips fall where they may attitude. It is the antithesis of what his life would have been had he not gone on the road. It is this carefree attitude that will be his undoing in the end in the Alaskan Wilderness. His lust for adventure, his risk taking and his fresh outlook on life spoke very deeply to this viewer.
We know what is coming throughout the film; his demise is a staggering and tragic ordeal. His recklessness will lead to his end. It must happen, but we do not want it happen. Hirsch has inhabited and created a vivid character. A real life persona who seemed to have a little bit of Jack Kerouac, Jack London, Ernesto Guevara and other free spirits within him. Eric Gautier’s camerawork makes everything look beautiful. Alaska is as majestic, mysterious and dangerous as Christopher has anticipated. Eddie Vedder’s songs are a welcomed addition to an already blissful soundtrack. We are not the only ones who like him; Sean Penn’s admires this character greatly. Who knows? He might have played this part many years ago. Penn’s film has an uncompromising magnificence. McCandless lived his life his way. The same can be said for Sean Penn and the films he has directed and his activism outside film. The director and the material are a perfect fit. This goes beyond anything he has ever done before. Into The Wild is one of the great American road films of our time. This is a journey worth taking.
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