Author: Daniel Arkin
Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, which was released on DVD on Tuesday, is a rhapsody of the open road-a panorama of the American landscape framed by exuberance and sorrow, a gonzo travelogue of the gypsy life, a tragic folk odyssey. It was also one of the finest films of 2007, a lyrical and poetic masterpiece. Academy Award voters were not nearly as impressed.
When the Oscar nominations were announced on the morning of Jan. 22, few omissions from the slate of contenders were as glaring as that of Into the Wild, a film championed by critics upon its release and viewed as a moderate success in its limited theatrical run. Of course, most film aficionados take the Oscars with a grain of salt-New York Times movie critic A.O. Scott, for example, wrote in a Feb. 24 article titled “Are Oscars Worth All This Fuss?” that “the Oscars may be harmless fun, but the idea that they matter is . . . ridiculous.” Even so, the absence of Into the Wild from the major categories-including the illustrious Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor honors-was seen by many Wild proselytes as an indefensible slight.
Some of the great laureates of the movies-from Welles and Hitchcock to Kubrick and Altman-were never conferred Best Director statues, just as some of their finest efforts-from Citizen Kane and Vertigo to Dr. Strangelove and Nashville-lost the Best Picture distinction to trite box office successes and forgettable studio fare. Nominations are fickle and winners are arbitrary. This is not to discount No Country for Old Men, which bucks tradition and happens to be a superb film. Nevertheless, many fans of Into the Wild endured the otherwise tepid award season with a grudge to bear. With the Oscars behind us, reappraisal is in order.
Into the Wild, adapted by Penn from author Jon Krakauer’s 1996 nonfiction bestseller, tells the story of Emory University graduate Christopher Johnson McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a young man as boldly romantic as he was indulgently stubborn. Disillusioned with his bourgeois upbringing, Reagan-era excess and dysfunctional parents, McCandless wrenches himself from society and sets out on a bohemian, rough-and-tumble trek to Alaska. Eschewing $24,000 of life savings, as well as his prized yellow Datsun, McCandless ambles through the yellows and oranges of the Southwest, hitchhikes to South Dakota, canoes solo down the crags and canals of the Colorado River and ultimately ends up in the Alaskan wilderness equipped with a canon of tattered paperbacks. After four months of ascetic solitude, McCandless dies in the back of an abandoned school bus on the Stampede Trail, having possibly ingested toxic seeds.
In rough outline, the plot of the film may sound like a conventional cautionary tale to defiant rebels without a cause. On the contrary, Penn’s film is an uncommon work of art, as entrancing as 2001: A Space Odyssey in its ethereal splendor, as rhythmic as the folk ballads born in the heart of America, as textured and nuanced as the classic literature McCandless parsed like madman.
The electrifying and elegiac soundtrack by Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder lends the film the feel of an epic musical without actual production numbers, like watching a nature documentary infused with grunge rock and wistful guitar solos in place of rote narration. The rugged “Hard Sun” soars with iconoclastic energy. “Society” is a sincere requiem for a decadent life left behind. “Tuolumne” is a fleeting rupture of finger-picking sorrow. “Guaranteed,” which won Vedder a Golden Globe for Best Original Song, is nothing less than the sad heart of the entire film compressed into five minutes. (Academy voters recognized three numbers from the Disney musical Enchanted in the Best Original Song category, overlooking Vedder’s work. A song from the Irish musical Once later took home the award.)
Hirsch’s performance anchors the movie in cathartic wonder-he trudges up mountains and bounds down streams with a priceless Cheshire Cat grin-that is simultaneously inspiring and uncomfortable. Although we revel in his adventure, we also cringe when McCandless refuses a map for his snowbound sojourn.
In translating Krakauer’s account to a visual medium, Penn has the sensitivity and acuity to pick up on both sides of the Chris McCandless enigma. When Hirsch stares straight into the camera in one shot, defying the fourth wall principle of film, his wide-eyed gaze seems to pierce into your very understanding of movie watching.
Hirsch is surrounded by a cast of strong supporting players-Vince Vaughn is a bundle of manic comic energy as a shady grain dealer who mentors McCandless, Catherine Keener is a warm presence as a maternal hippie he encounters in his travels and William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden manage to straddle the line between colossal heartbreak and quiet implosion in their roles as his parents. But the film’s emotional center belongs to the extraordinary Hal Holbrook as an aging retiree who temporarily takes Chris under his wing. Holbrook (who received one of the film’s two nominations in the Best Supporting Actor category-the other was for Editing) has a scene with Hirsch in his Jeep at the start of the third act that just may be the most wrenching, heartbreaking moment in film last year.
Into the Wild-available in both a single disc and a two-disc collector’s package-may end with a soul-crushing, senseless death, but its boldness, ambition and energy will reaffirm your faith in the road ahead for film.
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