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November 04, 2007
I WROTE THIS REVIEW IN TEN MINUTES . . .
. . . SO DON'T BE MAD IF IT'S TERRIBLE.
I read INTO THE WILD this Summer and, like everyone else, was struck by the ambiguous and questionable heroics of the protagonist: was he a suicidal, arrogant misanthrope who deserved what he got, or an inspiring visionary with the misfortune of living a disorderly natural world and a time that sees him as, well, a suicidal, arrogant misanthrope? Chris McCandless’ story is fascinating for the same reasons as are such seemingly disparate texts as MOBY-DICK, FIGHT CLUB, THE BEACH, and THE SUN ALSO RISES. When McCandless announced, in one of his last letters, that he was venturing “Into the Wild,” it wasn’t just a pretentious mission statement; it was culmination of everything of everything he had lived for up to that point.
Krakauer leaves my big question mostly unanswered, though he does recognize the conflict. We tend to admire the spirit and iconoclasm of guys like McCandless and his hero, Henry David Thoreau, who don’t have much truck for Ipods, digital watches, and air conditioning. McCandless, however, could have used a grocery store and a refrigerator.
Sean Penn’s movie of INTO THE WILD has many of the same flaws as Sean Penn himself. It is often humorless, often over-dramatic, and prizes big moments over subtlety. Penn, my least favorite of all the great actors, has never been much for levity. His persona reminds me of Julius Caesar’s description of Cassius:
“Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit
That could be moved to smile at any thing.”
Even in FAST TIME AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, he seems like a really serious guy playing a stoner. He has moments of quirk and humanity, in films like SWEET AND LOWDOWN and the underrated SHE’S SO LOVELY, but often he gives us compellingly dark portraitures of tormented men: THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON, DEAD MAN WALKING, 21 GRAMS, and his (I think, annoying) Oscar nominated turn in MYSTIC RIVER. And let’s not forget that Penn is married to one of the most stunningly beautiful women the world has ever produced, Robin Wright (who, I argue, has aged wonderfully and without the aid of any plastics.)
So it’s unsurprising that Penn’s INTO THE WILD is a movie after his nature, his peculiarly somber personality, and his own tendency for cultural removal. But I was impressed while Penn clearly loves McCandless, as I did, he does not turn him into a messiah crucified by the centurion of culture. McCandless, in book and movie, is a free agent, and his free-ness that makes him wonderful is precisely what does him in. This is cause for catharsis; Penn gets that right.
Penn has a nice way of filming nature without giving into sweeping IMAX shots. He doesn’t ponder the beauty of a sunset so much as he has his character recognize it. The performances are all excellent. Emile Hirsch*, as Chris, has a tendency to mug and brood a little too much (just like Penn), but he is a charismatic and thoughtful version of the character we met in the book.
So I recommend INTO THE WILD; if I didn’t, I’d be very very upset that someone botched up this truly compelling book. But I’m not.
* - Apparently, Hirsch is playing SPEED RACER in a Wachowski-brothers version of the film. Wonder if the brothers W (one half of whom is a cross-dresser, or had a sex change, or something) will imbue this ridiculous bunch of kitsch with a complicated mythology and post-structuralist philosophical overtones? Don't be surprised if this ends up being the HEAVENS GATE of the TV Cartoon remake genre.
AFTERTHOUGHT . . . (meaning, after the ten minutes it took to write this)
It just hit me that the perfect director for this movie would have been Werner Herzog. Who else can best capture the sublimity of nature? I'm curious as to why this was never considered. Box office? Well, Penn's version isn't exactly doing big numbers. So why couldn't they have let Herzog have a crack at it?
| By Andytown | 01:10 PM
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