Into The Wild
Directed by Sean Penn
Starring Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Jena Malone, Hal Holbrook, Catherine Keener
Rated R

One thing about writing movie reviews is that you don’t want to give away “spoilers.”

Also, I really don’t want to resort to “reviewer clichés,” you know, the ones that are always found in the blurbs in the newspapers.

Well, I think both of these rules may have to be ditched for my review of Into The Wild.

Going into the film, most all of the audience knows the story, especially since it’s being promoted as “the life and death” of the young Christopher Johnson McCandless, who graduates from college, gives away his savings for law school, turns his back on his parents, assumes a new name, and goes on a journey for the truth.

For those of you who don’t know the story and haven’t figured it out by now, here comes the spoiler.

His sojourn ends in an abandoned bus in the Alaska wilderness, dead of apparent starvation.

McCandless’s story was told by Jon Krakauer in the book also called Into The Wild. Sean Penn, among others, was touched by the book and sought to make a film about the story. Penn wrote the screenplay with the cooperation of the McCandless family (in fact, the sister of Chris McCandless provides the narration) and the film was made with Penn behind the camera.

Now, to lapse into critic-speak, it is stunning, breathtaking, moving, and an Oscar contender for Penn, actor Emile Hirsch, who portrays McCandless, and cinematographer Eric Gautier.

As McCandless roams the deserts of the west, the wheatfields of the Dakotas, and the wilderness of the Last Frontier, the scenery is a visual delight. However, the strong acting of Hirsch, and a great supporting cast including Hal Holbrook, Jena Malone, William Hurt, Catherine Keener, and Marcia Gay Harden carries the story past what could have been either a maudlin treacle, or a unbending manifesto about society.

While the film does celebrate McCandless’s spirit of adventure and his search for the truth, it also shows that he indeed was hoist with his own petard. His hubris allowed him to get stuck in the Alaska back-country with little means for survival, and he then finds out what he was searching for too late. It shows how one with ‘piss-and-vinegar’ full of idealism can do, both good and bad, with the best of intentions.

The family he leaves behind, it turns out, was not an idyllic place. The McCandless family allowed Penn to portray them without sugar-coating. Hurt and Harden are quite convincing in their role. There was a danger their roles could become two-dimensional caricatures; however, their acting adds another dimension to their characters.

It is not a perfect film. Vince Vaughn is…well…Vince Vaughn and he seems a bit over-the-top and out of place in his role. Some of the other characters aren’t as well developed as they could have been, and you are left wanting more of the relationship between Holbrook and Hirsch.

Still, Into The Wild is a work of quality and distinction and you are well served to see it on the big screen, where the rich and lush panoramas of desert, farmland, and wilderness will be displayed in their full glory.