Into the Wild
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Movie Reviews of Into the Wild
Movie Review: What's the point
Summary: 2 Stars
What a self indulgent little twrip. I found nothing at all endearing about this character. What a waste of 2.5 hrs.
RWF
Movie Review: WOW!
Summary: 5 Stars
I had heard about this real story watching a TV talk show that the author appeared on and it intrigued me. While it starts a bit slow the depth of it soon comes through and you are right there with CHristopher Johnson McCandless. A sad tale about a young man who has the right idea but doesn't prepare himself enough. Especially for one so bright and full of life.Movie Review: KS Movie Buff
Summary: 4 Stars
A compelling story! I've wondered time to time about the "why" behind these characters we've all run across in life. I thought the director did a great job in asking us all to really question the way we've chosen to live and have compassion for those that choose differently. The movie did drag a little in parts and I did wonder how much of it really was true, but overall, worth watching.Movie Review: Stuff of Dreams
Summary: 4 Stars
Sean Penn as a director is at least as interesting as is his work from acting and this movie proves it once again. It is the true story of Chris McCandless, wonderfully portrayed by Emile Hirsch, who, graduating at 22, seems to have a very promising future ahead of him being admitted into Harvard Law, but instead chooses not to fulfill his parent's dreams for him but pursue his own. In doing so he wanders through the US after leaving behind his worldly goods, including giving away 20000 dollars of savings to charity.
He breaks off all contact with his family and in the voiceover of his sister we gradually are handed pieces of the puzzle that lead him to do so. After more or less 2 years the trip ends in Alaska, after we've enjoyed a number of his interesting encounters with other people and many beautiful landscapes that made me want to pack my bags right there and then for another one of my cross country hikes.
The development of the rather naive Chris is both fascinating as well as moving and Penn treats his journey as a classic novel, even up to dividing his movie into chapters with titles like "birth" or "adolescence", for those who weren't quite clever enough to pick up on it.
What annoyed me the most about the movie was the music, which tries too hard to convey a certain atmosphere which distracts more than makes you focus. Penn seems to forget at times that old lesson that less is more and that the story is so powerful, it doesn't need this artificial boost of sentiment, but I guess being American, he just couldn't help himself, it is a national affliction after all.
However it's one of very few issues I had with the movie that signifies a marvelous contribution with full adherence to the rules and laws of a traditional road movie.
It's obvious that Penn has a lot of respect for this intelligent young man whose mind lives in his treasured books of writers like Tolstoy and Thoreau from whom he receives his life's lessons that serve to fuel his dreams of a pure and uncompromising life far away from anything materialistic and the corrupting influence of society. Unfortunately our hero is not able to see that all his philosophizing and travelling is just a self-deception to avoid dealing with the legacy of the dysfunctional past with his relatives and rather embrace a romantic philosophy of life in general and himself in particular. It is tragic that he eventually paid such a high price for this delusion.
Until quite far into the movie Sean Penn doesn't take any critical distance from his subject but rather chooses to immerse his movie in romantic notions and atmospheric photography and rather trite repetition of the same adolescent ramblings.
As a viewer however this doesn't bother you at all and on first viewing you're eager to embrace the dramatic events and dreams of youth, passion and hope that we all want to catch again, even though at a certain point we learn that, though not an illusion, at least for those that have not yet sought refuge in misanthropy (a flight just as effective and opposite to the one Chris McCandless took), there is a more noble, though less attractive on the outside, heroism in defying the mud of day to day life in the mist of it rather than seeking oblivion in the remote wilderness. It's a little too easy and a bit like giving up of whom we are in our most fundamental level of being: a social animal. Chris McCandless too, in his last note, in one of his treasured books between the printed lines that so inspired him, comes to this conclusion and it is truly a heart breaking moment in the film.
Movie Review: Independence taken to the extreme
Summary: 4 Stars
I may have liked this movie for different reasons than some of the other reviewers. I didn't necessarily find it inspiring or particularly beautiful, but I did think it was very intelligent, thought provoking, consistent, and well directed/acted. It's basically a film about independence and freedom, and how those can be terrible, isolating things when taken to the extreme. For those who thought the minor characters were too distracting, try to think about them in that context.
It's almost like the minor characters are there to warn the main character that even though living your own life is great, a lack of human interaction makes that freedom painful. These are lessons he fails to realize at every turn, whomever he meets, (instead he feels like he is there to enlighten them) and this selfish interpretation of independence is his tragedy.
Think about why he dies: not only has he tried to do everything himself, which is a mistake on this kind of trip, (again, there were warning signs, like he should have figured this out when the moose killing thing went bad) but he's either so devoted to his dream or so frightened to go back and face the family he's running away from that there is nowhere to run to anymore. I guess living by independence means dying by it.
There's a key scene in the middle, where he goes to the homeless shelter in LA, then sees himself getting sucked into the upper middle class hypocrisy he hates. Even though this is irrational -- if he can strike out on his own with a backpack, he can also do so in a more socially integrated way -- he turns away from going back to his old name. He does realize eventually that it was a mistake, but like all tragic figures, it is only after it is too late to change anything.
I think most people knew a guy like this in college, the upper middle class "rebel" who could have done anything and then took to the road after graduation, but eventually came back to sell out and work on wall street. maybe that's why this book was so popular -- because this guy took it to the extreme and he died, thus reinforcing others' decisions to rebel a little, but then run back home to mommy and daddy. Put in that way, the people who like the book and film for these reasons don't come across so well.
Truly a provocative and interesting film -- those are just my thoughts, but I think you should see it and decide for yourself.