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Title: Into The Wild
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Parents, there is some mild female nudity and some language. Otherwise though not much else. Recommended for ages 14 and up. |
Once in awhile I’ll be talking to a friend, and we’ll be complaining about our life, our jobs, and the fact that we’re just a couple of people drinking a Pepsi and not really doing anything useful with our lives. At one point the comment “I wish I could drop all of my responsibilities and just take off and see the world.” Neither of us ever do that, but it’s fun to think about at the very least. Christopher McCandless was a man who actually decided to cut up his credit cards, burn his social security number, and traveled the world as a homeless man under the name of Alexander Supertramp (though he claims he's not homeless, just "free from homes"). At one point he even burns the money he has, claiming that “when you’ve got money you start being cautious in life.” He left home without a word, and through his travels helped more people then I think he ever intended to help (if that was indeed the goal in the first place).
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“Into The Wild” is an account of these travels, and a documentation of this extraordinary life that was lived by this man. Academy Award winning actor Sean Penn not only directed the movie, but wrote the screenplay as well. As a side achievement he also spent years in negotiations with Christopher’s family to get the rights to make the book into a movie. They were hesitant. I don’t blame them. While a book was published it was a very personal book. No one expected it would actually amount to much, and besides, most of Christopher’s story was told through third party sources, with the exception of some first hand memoirs that were discovered in Christopher’s notebook he wrote in on a daily basis. With such non-narrative collection of stories, it’s amazing Penn found a way to film it at all.
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But film it he did, in one of the more aspiring movies of the year. Christopher does come off as a bit of a jerk at times. He leaves home without any warning, never writes to his sister who worries about him on a daily basis, and decided to live in Alaska without any hunting or living experiences. He was an educated student who managed to get into Harvard, so he doesn’t come off as stupid, just inconsiderate. At the same time though, we watch this man with a certain amount of envy. Here is a man who throws all his responsibilities away, walks the Earth as a free man, the way we all say we would do if we had the chance. Christopher says that “a career is just a glorified prison and a diploma is just a piece of paper.”
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When he says it like that who am I to argue? Christopher meets several noteworthy individuals, most of which need his help, they just don’t know it yet. In every way this is an uplifting and spiritual movie, one that is bound to be up for several Oscars come next year. So why not a full four stars? Well, truth be told, as good as this movie is, it drags. And it doesn’t even drag because it’s too long, it drags because the movie makes the (near) fatal mistake of putting in chapter cards. I’ve complained about this in previous reviews, and I really wish film makers wouldn’t resort to using them. Nothing will make a movie feel longer then it is then seeing a “Chapter 1, 2, 3" and so forth across the movie.
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Movies are not books to be read a little at a time, and chapter titles gives the impression that we would actually leave the movie after a couple of chapters and come back when we want to finish it. We won’t, and while those titles are there I start to get relentless after awhile. Strangely enough, if it weren’t for the chapter titles this might have been an instant classic. Then again, though I give Sean Penn a lot of credit as an actor, but he’s still Sean Penn, which means logic doesn’t always come into the picture. Still, I would have hoped it would have come into this picture at least.
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