Starring Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden and William Hurt, Into The Wild explores the world of Christopher McCandless who abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness.
The photography is of the sort you'd find in any half decent nature documentary, with cloying emphasis placed firmly (and sometimes clumsily) on the idea that our neglectful, selfish and not to mention rampantly capitalist ways are destroying the planet.
Even in its harrowing final moments, it reaches a spiritually transcendent pinnacle - the idea of ending one long, strange trip and plummeting into an even-greater unknown with both fear and elation. A stirring American drama of comfort and conflict.
Without diminishing the deep transcendentalist yearnings of its young hero, Into the Wild builds to a climax of profound human connectedness, profound human pain.
Crafting his meditation on the men who answer the call of the wild, Sean Penn's adaptation is heavy on mood and ambiance but sadly lacking in depth, giving up on the wider comparisons to focus fully on McCandless, who may not be up to the scrutiny.
The movie tries its hardest to celebrate the impetuousness of its hero and the exhilaration of his accomplishments. Mostly, though, it just reminds you of the severity of his mistakes.
Matt's Movie Reviews
July 06, 2010
An uplifting and enriching cautionary tale about one man's spiritual adventure on the road and in the wilderness.
As [Hirsch] struggles with the elements, his increasing frailty and the cinematography's increasing grandeur mesh in a way that's at once iconic and wrenching.
