With sumptuous cinematography and a free wheeling structure that matches the subject matter, Into The Wild, based on the book by Jon Krakauer, is utterly absorbing.
This is quite an achievement because, given the subject matter (a wealthy student spurns his family’s comfortable life and gives away all his money in order to travel the U.S.A., meet real people and find himself), this film could have been an overly righteous environmentalist/anti-capitalist drone. Luckily, director Sean Penn (a person overly earnest to the point of parody) recognises the problems in his protagonist’s outlook and makes sure that those inconsistencies are visible to all.
Our hero, Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) is both a symbol of hope and purity and a bundle of naive folly. For every moment of Kerouac / London inspired romanticism there is a underlying dash of Werner Herzog style reality. Most obviously apparent in McCandles’ struggles with nature it also rears it head in human form. Whilst the family that has been left behind is dysfunctional in every sense, the characters encountered along the road are free in ways that McCandles will never be. Whether it be harvester Wayne (Vince Vaughn) or surrogate father-figure Ron (Hal Holbrook), these people are trapped by their lives but deal with their problems and responsibilities without running away. Penn even confronts McCandles with a scene in which a return to a city environment skates the fine line between affirming his philosophy and flushing it down the toilet.
That this film was virtually ignored by the Academy at this year’s Oscars is completely baffling – it is an assured and intelligent work that is confident enough to question it’s own assumptions, made by a director who continues to go from strength to strength.
8/10
