Vintage

When I first watched Into the Wild I was not prejudiced by misgivings concerning Sean Penn, who I categorically regard as an asshole.  However, I didn’t know he had a hand in this film until it was over. 

Into the Wild recounts the life of Christopher McCandless, a student-athlete at Emory University.  The story is told from the view of sister who speculates as to what her brother experienced on his road to eventual damnation.  In apparent response to a materialistic, manipulative, and domineering father, McCandless destroys his identity, which include all of his credit cards and embarks on a cross country drive in nothing but his piece of shit car.  His goal is to live alone and off the land in Alaska.  But, before we get into all that, back to Penn.

I am honest enough to say since I never met the man personally I cannot, with a hundred percent accuracy, verify the sentiment that Penn is a first class asshole as being true.  Maybe he is a great guy to punch out the paparazzi with?  Nonetheless, what impressions I receive through the media, like his rowing a boat in the streets of New Orleans post Katrina help build Exhibit-A (A as in asshole).  Like I said, I didn’t know he directed and wrote the screen play until the rolling credits and now I think I am changing my mind on Penn.  Into the Wild is deeply moving and therefore it could mean that Penn is deeply moving on a certain level.   

Maybe it is the way Penn seems to harbor anger at a world that has put him up on the high mountain so he can see the ocean better than most, much like his main character in Into the Wild, Christopher McCandless.  But, how could he direct as well as write the screen play for a film that is this deeply moving, disturbing, tragic, yet fun, thought provoking, longing, wistful, appreciative and moving.  It is hard to call a guy a jerk who hits those notes in a film as broad and as deep as Into the Wild runs and rings.  I am more inclined to re- label the “A” in Exhibit-A to mean artist.   

But enough about Penn because this film is about Christopher McCandless, a real life boy who lost his way and abandoned his college educated comforts, the trappings of his prideful and conservative parents, and “Headed West young man” and then North, to his death in Alaska (we don’t have spoiler warnings.  Read at your own peril).  Into The Wild is based on a true story account by Jon Krakauer.  They say Penn stayed close to the source material, though the 1996 book was unread by me.

Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless captures this young disturbed man to a tee.  His acting was as long as the plains, big as the sky and as crisp as an Alaskan morning.  There was so much pent up pain inside his performance and his enthusiasm for the oneness of nature was heartfelt.  Too bad nature killed him and he never saw nature didn’t embrace him like a wildflower rather it devoured dispassionately. 

There are a several other recognizable names in this film in subtle gentle roles.  William Hurt as Christopher’s domineering and controlling father, who ostensibly drove him out into the wild.  As always Hurt is great in professorial sort of way, serious and versatile.  I was pleasantly surprised by Vince Vaughn as Wayne Westerberg a hard working farmer that takes the boy in as a hand on his corn farm and drinks with him on occasion.  Vaughn was surely not the Vince we know of Swingers and Jennifer Aniston fair.  He was colorful and populist – a blue collar working man at ease with the simple pleasures of his role in life.  This is a movie where he loses himself in his character and he comes off like an everyday Joe that we might want to down a few beers with ourselves. 

Sean Penn aside, I must admit I didn’t like this movie at first because I didn’t know what I was in for.  In fact I totally misread what I thought I was going to get.  A lot of my misconception had to do with this young dude I met at the local coffee shop.  Based on what he told me, I thought I was in store for an outdoors adventure film about a playboy that eschews the trappings of comfort to take on fabulous scenic vistas as he romps across the land in HD glory (I still can’t believe that was this guy’s impression).  That is what I thought I was in store for.  Boy was I (he) wrong. 

I was greatly discouraged when McCandless fell in with a bunch of hippies who had all the disdain in the world for society and civilizations if you ask me.  It was here he seemed to stumble upon commune-like happiness, which sort of put me off.

I was not in the mood to be told how all of us are schmucks for trying to make a living amongst our peers.  I didn’t want to be lectured about how man is evil and civilization is a bad idea, that poverty is a virtue and that those that propel this flawed society are villains.  I thought the movie was heading that way and I was disinterested because of it.   I also thought this McCandless needed a good bath.

But, I began to see this movie much differently when McCandless meets up with Ron Franz (Holbrook), a lonely grandfather type living out in the deserts of the Midwest who worked his whole life in the military, kept a clean home, a neat workshop and seemed to view with apprehension the missions and goal of McCandless.  Hal Holbrook by the way was deserving of an Oscar for his touching portrayal of this lonely man that was willing to take in this lost boy as a grandson. 

When Franz connects with McCandless, the boy was too sure of himself and Franz knew it.  I loved the advice given by Franz after McCandless tells him about how great life is living out in the desert.   “Out here in the dirt,” Franz looked at him weirdly. 

There is a memorable scene where McCandless convinces Franz to climb a rocky bluff to star out onto the horizon.  Franz agrees and I loved how his foot slipped on the way up and kicked a rock down the sandy hill. Immediately, there is a quick cut to McCandless who seems to have a moment of doubt.  After all, what if the old man fell down the hill and got killed?  What would that do to McCandless and his philosophy?  This doubt is a tragic harbinger of greater danger to come later. 

But, alas Franz makes it up the hill and shares a moment with the boy.  He loves the boy but McCandless must go on his doomed quest to live in Alaska and walk “Into the wild.”  Franz seems to recognize a lost soul and it would seem to redeem part of him to set this boy on the right path.  Franz seems to realize that for all of life’s problems, the love of humanity underpins our true happiness.  In fact, he says something to the effect, “God’s light shines the greatest when you forgive…” confirming he sensed the boy’s hidden anger and deep hurt at the hand of his parents.  I would ad that if you hate humanity and what humanity is in all its forms today, then you can never truly find happiness because you can’t escape the beings we are, what we have become and where we appear to be headed. 

Besides Franz, McCandless is helped along the way by a nice hippie couple who also sense something tragic could befall the boy.  If you ask me, the only thing that could have saved McCandless was a good ass kicking from a loved one but some birds fly different patterns and McCandless was one of them.

So toward the final quarter of the film, he is in Alaska.  Here I loved the scene where he kills a large animal and watches with some sense of realism as nature in all its glory sends flies, maggots, insects and what other critters to devour the carcass.  Nature is relentless and doesn’t care, does it? 

It was here that McCandless realized perhaps his true happiness stemmed from the journey to Alaska and not having arrived per se.  In fact, for all its natural splendor a feeling that nature can be empty and indifferent to man seemed to take hold of him and realized it was the “sharing” of his experience with others that had really brought him the freedom he so long thought would be perched like an Owl on a tree in Alaska. Instead freedom and happiness happened along the way with the help of strangers. 

It was surely sad to watch the boy die at the end, having realized his nature paradise was perhaps the greatest emptiness of all because it was devoid of humanity, which is a part of nature he never fully appreciated.  His fading memories as he watched the beauty of the Sun shine from behind clouds was not a recollection of all the beautiful vistas, ocean waves crashing against rocks, star filled skies out in the desert.  Instead, he recalled his parents embracing him after he came home and contemplating if his parents ever witnessed the same splendor that he was doing now on the day of his death.  And what does that tell you about Sean Penn? 

Matthew J. DeReno is managing editor of CoolFilmz.