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Into the Wild | 
 enlarge | Director: Sean Penn
Actors: Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Jena Malone, Brian Dierker
Studio: Paramount
Category: Movie
This item is no longer available
Rating:  232 reviews
Sales Rank: 3224
Genre: Adventure
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: Video On Demand
Running Time: 149 Minutes
ASIN: B0016OLC5Q
Theatrical Release Date: September 21, 2007
Release Date: August 29, 2008
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| Customer Reviews: Read 227 more reviews...
 A Wilderness of Adventure and Emotions--Sean Penn Crafts One Of The Year's Best Films December 31, 2007
K. Harris (Las Vegas, NV)
146 out of 157 found this review helpful
When I read Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild" approximately ten years ago, I was mesmerized by the tragic real-life tale of Christopher McCandless. But as much as I loved the book, I never even thought about a film adaptation. Maybe that was shortsighted of me. Recounting McCandless's life and reconstructing it with minimal data and much introspection, "Into the Wild" succeeded as a cautionary adventure of idealism gone awry. Much of McCandless's life was lived alone and much of his story was pieced together though brief encounters or recovered writings. So what was a thoughtful portrait on the page never really seemed like it would translate to the screen--certainly not with the same impact. Luckily, though, Sean Penn thought otherwise. Adapting and directing Krakauer's fine book, Penn has fashioned a sad, funny and exciting film with tremendous emotional resonance.
An affluent and likable young man, McCandless graduated with honors from Emory University and then set a course to redefine his life. Abandoning his family, friends, and material possessions--McCandless assumed the pseudonym of Alexander Supertramp and set off to explore the world in its most innocent form. Living off the land and experiencing nature, fellow travelers, and much adventure--McCandless was looking for a modern day utopia and sought to discover his real self as he cast away the corruptions of modern life. Touring the country for two years, McCandless's exploration was to culminate in an Alaskan sojourn--where he would commune with "the wild." His aspirations can be viewed as both admirable and delusional--but that is part of the complexity of McCandless's life. As much as you want him to succeed, you realize there can be no happy ending with the expectations he has in place.
Penn's "Into the Wild," thus, depends on evoking a McCandless that you will care about--either because you commend his pursuit or because you want him to come to his senses. And it really works in combination. In a dynamic performance, Emile Hirsch transcends his previous work and becomes a full-fledged leading man. Hitting all the right notes, Hirsch creates a character who evokes our sympathy, our frustration, and even our laughter. McCandless meets a lot of companions on the road, and Hirsch makes it easy to see why he was so accepted. A great role--Hirsch meets all the emotional challenges and also makes a physical transformation that is a both startling and powerful. His great work is matched by a roster of big names including Vince Vaughn, William Hurt, Jena Malone, and Marcia Gay Hardin (among many others). But Catherine Keener and Hal Holbrook are real stand-outs--their adoptive relationships with Hirsch both challenge him and make him understand (eventually) that life is not meant to be lived alone.
If there is any flaw in the film, it exists in the book as well. We can only know so much about McCandless from the resources available. He had a heightened sense of injustice particularly when it came to the "untruths" or perceived wrongs perpetuated by his family. Nothing presented, however, can explain how his relatively normal dysfunction blossomed into such an extreme world view. This secret is in McCandless's mind alone.
"Into the Wild" works as a character study and a gritty drama, but also as an adventure. The scenery and photography are breathtaking and the action sequences are well executed. There is much genuine warmth and humor in the film as well. It was a fully satisfying film experience, to me, and has many quiet moments that have stayed with me. Highly recommended for serious adult audiences. KGHarris, 11/07
No man is an island... January 8, 2008
Jerry (Pacific Northwest)
31 out of 38 found this review helpful
This is the best and most underappreciated film of 2007. I suspect that come oscar time it will garner an award or two, possibly Best Director for Sean Penn and Best Supporting Actor for Hal Holbrook. I'm not holding my breath for Best Picture however as it's ultimately a bit too bleak and the main character too unconventional to be an easy sell to the Oscar crowd. I absolutely loved everything about Into the Wild, most especially Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless who is amazing (and amazingly photogenic) in his most impressive and challenging role to date. It is very true to the book and whether you feel it is the sad chronicle of a misguided youth or the ecstatic tale of one guys search for ultimate freedom, one couldn't ask for a more perfect adaptation. One is left regretful that McCandless only realized his epiphany too late..."Happiness is only real when shared."
Superb Film about Looking so Far for Something that is So Close April 29, 2008
Kendra
32 out of 41 found this review helpful
Into the Wild is one of those movies whose images stay with you after the screen goes dark. This is a tribute to the subject-- a tragic and confused young pseudo idealist, Christopher McCandless-- and Sean Penn and his crew.
McCandless has just graduated from Emory University. He's bright, well-liked, talented, the world is his for the taking-- it seems. Then he chucks it all, burns his money, abandons his vehicle, donates his graduate school fund to charity and hits the road. He's a leatherfoot, hoofing all across the country from Atlanta to South Dakota, on to California and finally to his goal of the utopian loner's dream world of "Alaska". Alaska is quoted here because it represents far more for McCandless than just a remote place full of emptiness and nature. It represents the "wild" - that gorgeous and challenging place where he can find himself, or so he thinks.
He's on a wild goose chase with himself but doesn't quite understand or realize it. He thinks he's stuffing life and experience and learning into all the time that he has-- he's abandoned everything including his sister and parents. In fact, he refuses to communicate with them at all. Their heartbreak, worry, fears, and frustrations are with us the viewer at all times and we wonder (as do a few characters in the film) silently, "how can he do this to them"?
Chris hits the road hard. He takes odd jobs, and goes from frustrated relationship to the next one. But they always are frustrating because he simply will not give of himself. They aren't frustrating for him, but for those who want to befriend him. His search for personal meaning is truly little more than an avoidance of his own personal demons, mostly from his parents' history and rocky marriage. He is surrounded by love, people who want him, his company, his brilliance and soft, caring approach to the world. He is attractive to others, but he loathes himself somehow. In the wilds of the Alaskan wilderness he thinks he will find what he is looking for and he does, but not in the way that he expected.
Again and again, people that Chris meets offer their friendship to him and sometimes their love. But he cannot accept it. Something in him prevents him from accepting love or truly giving it. Perhaps it would be contrary to the loner path that he'd chosen?
This is a sad story, so beautifully filmed. The acting is spot on, too.
Hal Holbrook plays an old man with a painful secret of his own. He knows that Chris and he are two of a kind and need each other. We in the audience also know this. Holbrook is Chris' chance for stability and a home, the true path to insight for someone whose core issues are built upon a perceived betrayal and lack of love from others, mainly his parents. It's a hard moment for the viewer when Chris walks away from Holbrook abandoning another fortunate opportunity for healing and happiness, but it is not so hard for Chris whose focus is solely on getting to his personal nirvana that he understands and expects Alaska to be.
Alaska is a beautiful but challenging place. Superbly filmed, it is easy to see how Chris would want to be there, challenge himself and try to find himself, alone-- try to find a way to fit in with others which is truly the issue-- alone.
The exact cause of Chris' death is not fully known. The book's author and Penn both make the case the McCandless accidentally poisoned himself. But later tests on the suspected plant material recovered from his camp site cast serious doubt on this theory as no poison was found. According to the diaries that he left behind he had decided to return to civilization but a raging river full of spring melt prevented him from doing so. He stayed in his camp, wasting away. But only a mile away was a perfectly usable crossing, and less than half a mile away was a still part of the river where he could have fished to his heart's content with only his hands as the fish were so plentiful there. But he did neither and apparently chose to stay and face his demons and his new understandings alone.
It is not clear if Chris is a hero-- the lone introvert heading into the wilderness akin to Thoreau to find the "truth", or rather a spoiled city boy with only ignorance and dreams and personal pain and perhaps some mental illness driving him on.
The locals in the wilds of Alaska often speak of such people who come to Alaska to find themselves, swollen with pride like the rivers full of melting snows. And they have little respect for them, as they tempt fate and the extreme wilderness and usually lose.
McCandless affected everyone he met in a positive way. His writings are those of a young man still trying to understand but so deeply haunted by something he could only identify at the very end that was at the heart of his troubles. The tears of his parents, his friends, and even his own at the end are palatable in this beautiful film by Sean Penn.
This is a deeply troubling story of someone who so needed help, was offered it-- but would not or could not accept it.
The world is full of Chris McCandlesses going about their daily routines. And perhaps this is why his story has such resonance for so many. He chose to break out of the life he was living, a life that gave him no comfort or solace-- and stride into the unknown to find one that worked for him. It may be a loner's story or a vagabond's tale, but there is a universality about the demons that haunted Chris, and his single-minded yet unfortunate response to them.
There is no glory here, and little to reflect upon but the pain of someone who is unable to stop, unable to find another path-- until his dream of Alaska and the wilderness with all its perils was met and its lessons pulled from it at whatever the cost. This is a superb film.
Supertramp's magic bus March 30, 2008
H. Schneider (wechselhaft)
16 out of 20 found this review helpful
Who are you? (who,who? who, who?)
It seems the hero of this beautiful and sad film did not get the chance to find out, nature killed him before he made it.
Don't blame nature alone, the man clearly had a death wish and provoked the danger that beat him in the end.
A young man from a well to do but not entirely harmonious family decides to drop out and become a hippy, a tramp, a hobo, a hermit. He hates society but finds friends wherever he goes. Well, apart from Alaska. He hates the concept of 'people', but people seem to love him and hate to lose him. In other words, he is one heck of a selfish monster, this nice guy.
He calls himself Alexander Supertramp and even makes a half-hearted and obviously brainless effort at getting new ID papers with that name. Purpose is to make himself unfindable to his folks. He ends up as an Alaskan hermit in an abandoned old bus wreck.
His mind is formed by Thoreau, Jack London, Tolstoy. The time is early 90s. I have not read the book, which was a 'non-fiction bestseller', so I would not know if the movie could have been better. As it is, I liked it a lot.
Best Movie I Have Ever Seen September 25, 2007
J. Preble (Manhattan)
13 out of 16 found this review helpful
Into the Wild is an incredibly touching film that portrays the limitless beauty and power of forgiveness. Despite the flaws of those around him Chris realizes in the very end that "Happiness is only reall when shared." Thanks to the superb performances by Emile Hirsch and his costars Sean Penn has masterfully portrayed a universal story that will surely melt many years of bitter resentment in more than a few hearts. Some of us who also possess the same burning compulsion as Chris to undertake the hero's journey will be particularly inspired by the movie. I myself was deeply moved to tears and filled with a fuller sense of compassion towards all. I appreciated how Chris's intense inner turmoil and search for himself was explored as in the Southern California Bar scene. The road weary, homeless, vagabound Chris finds himself transfixed as he stands watching the carefree revelers in the sidewalk cafes. Then he pictures his own face among theirs winking at him with a cavalier smile but he turns away knowing that this tantalizing dream cannot be reached until he not only meets head on the untamed wild but also climbs the cold mountian within his heart. I can honestly see that this is my favorite movie of all time.
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