Into the Wild (2007)

Casting aside all modern conveniences and living off the grid is one of the more alluring daydreams of American youth, particularly in a go go go society that seemingly has everything down to the next bus stop mapped out for us over the next sixty years. Throwing it all away is a romantic notion, particularly when you’re a college student, it’s late at night and an attractive little thing is asking you what you plan to do with yourself, suddenly you’re an adventurer and you’re casting aside the whims of consumerist, greedy American society.

I was afraid of Into the Wild. Sean Penn is a brilliant blunt instrument of an actor, and his last film behind the camera, The Pledge, was an intense, impressive piece of work, but Into the Wild had the potential to nurture every element in Penn that has been offputting for the last few years, including his work in Mystic River. I was afraid Penn would be too focused on being the great American Artist to consider the story rationally, and would deliver a bit of rich liberal guilt porn that decries a society that loses a Christopher McCandless, and conveniently overlooks the self-absorption and self-righteousness that is inherent in the young man as well.

Except Penn hasn’t made that movie. Maybe he’s too saavy an artist to fall that far into the rabbit hole, maybe the material inspired him to dig deep, either way (or neither way) Penn’s Into the Wild is a beautiful, rapt, free form piece of near expressionism. But it’s not naive or dewy. Penn’s greatest achievement here is a balancing of a nearly impossible tone. The film sympathizes with McCandless, understands him, but doesn’t totally buy into him. McCandless (embodied by Emile Hirsch in a performance as tricky in front of the camera as Penn’s is behind) interacts with a great many people in the film, and we see the same barely checked resignation in nearly all of their faces. They recognize the pain and the revolt, but there’s also fear, they were able to put away their childish things in time (maybe) but will McCandless? Most of us know the outcome of the story before we get to the theatre, and Penn knows we know. A palpable dread hangs over the entire film, especially the second half. This is a coming of age awakening story where the awakening doesn’t occur until the death bed.

Further complicating matters is the fact that McCandless’s desperate actions (burning his IDs, donating all his money and abandoning his family to hit the road) do initially benefit his life. McCandless meets a variety of people and experiences a variety of things that he would have looked back on fondly had he survived. His problem was excess, and pride. Like the society he criticized, like the parents he left without any thought as to the pain his departure would inflict. Penn avoids the easy way out even here, because McCandless’s fleeing is shown to have an affect on his parents (William Hurt and Marica Gay Harden) that is not entirely negative. McCandless was right to think them hypocritical and closed off, and his absence punctures that.

Penn’s film, like the character, is gloriously unshackeled, free from the tethers of the three act form that is supposed to dictate most movies. Most road movies feel like an excuse to crank the greatest hits over a montage of driving around, this one truly follows it’s character, and revels in the joy of the initial freedom (which, of course, makes the comedown that much worse.) Penn’s film is roomy and generous; with a quiet visual poetry that feels like Terrence Malick only imbued with a greater sense of urgency and restlessness.

All of the performances are wonderful, but I would like to take the time to second the popular notion that Hal Holbrook steals the end of the movie. Holbrook is normally the baddie, a movie’s black heart, but here he’s the accumulating, unavoidable love that McCandless is wrongfully trying to free himself from. McCandless claims to want to find a more honest life, free from all the typical artifice (and this is partially quite valid) but what he really wants is a life free of the messiness that goes with being human. The other people in McCandless’s life (among them Catherine Keener and Vince Vaughn) see this and trust that he will snap out of it. Holbrook, better acquainted with life’s fragility, has no such patience. Their final scene together is a heartbreaker.

Into the Wild is easily Sean Penn’s best movie as a filmmaker so far, and it renews my interest in his films in front of the camera as well. One can’t make a movie this strong, this introspective, without looking at themselves at least accidentally as well. See this one if you haven’t already, it’s one of the best films of the year, and this is shaping up to be one hell of a year.

★★★½

Posted on November 5th, 2007 in 2007, Reviews, Drama |

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