Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I've heard good things about this flick and I really like the trailer. However, I do not know the source material, so hopefully I'll escape some of the pitfalls that Fabfunk couldn't by being a huge fan of the original book. It's a completely valid place to come from, of course. I just hope my experience with this flick is better than Mr. Funk's was. Here's his thoughts! Enjoy!

Hey Harry and Mori,

I didn't think I would feel like this, but I may be all alone in hating "Into The Wild". It was one of the most anticipated moves of the fall for me, and I was intimately familiar with the source material, not to mention a fan of Sean Penn's previous film, "The Pledge". But as I sat in the theater as the only dry eye in the house, I couldn't help think that this was a drastic misappropriation of the source material, that being Jon Krakauer's gripping, fascinating book.

Full disclosure- the first time I read "Into The Wild", I was homeless for slightly less than two months. So, more than most, I related to the idea spread forth by the book's tragic protagonist Chris McCandless, that life had never been so exciting as it was when he was penniless. I didn't have it as rough as McCandless- thanks, abandoned Byrd Stadium- as I wasn't homeless by choice and I was earning enough to eventually afford my own place, but then again, I wasn't taking that dangerous leap that McCandless was by voluntarily recreating the ethos of "Walden". Whatever the case, I understood the freedom and adventure of living by your teeth every day- the fact that I enjoyed it far less than McCandless appeared to only speaks of my own common shared insecurity with the "real world" as well as his own quixotic journey.

If anyone's read the book, they know it's kind of a peculiar tome to adapt. It reads almost like a dual detective story- why did the young McCandless forsake everything in his life to head into the dangers of the wilderness? And what exactly was his journey- did he ever discover what he really wanted before he was found dead two years after his initial trip? The latter point is observed through accounts from those that had encountered McCandless during his adventures, a collection of people who remarked at how odd it was for a boy of that age to be wandering alone by choice, considering his noted intelligence and likeability. What sticks out in the book is the arbitrary nature of his journey- he struck out without warning, surprising friends and family, and seemed to have no pattern or plan as to what he would do after reaching the wilds of Alaska. The eyewitnesses constantly make remarks in the book as if to say, "What was it about that boy that seemed different?" when the real answer was probably they were stunned that they encountered a stranger so young in some of the deadest places in the country that could actually spit out entire sentences and not sound like an invalid.

Sean Penn, however, makes a series of miscalculations in adapting what's probably an unadaptable book. For one, in making the story cinematic, one has to turn the narrative from secondhand accounts into firsthand recreations, hypothetical representations of McCandless' journey from his eyes. The tragedy of the book is that, considering how little we know, we realize McCandless is essentially unknowable for readers of the book- a few eyewitnesses can never really communicate to us who McCandless really is. Penn doesn't seem to understand how to keep his character's true motivations hidden from the viewer, and instead documents the story of an easy-going youth, keeping star Emile Hirsch onscreen for close to the entire runtime.

As he makes his trek, we see flashes of his early life, which results in the film's biggest misstep- McCandless' family. His sister (Jena Malone) is given a hunk of voiceover in an attempt to explain how little she really understands about him aside from a series of profundities about his character. But most damning are his parents, played by William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden. The way the early bits of the film occur, they come across as capitalist pigs who don't seem to understand why their son wouldn't be enamored with the graduation gift of a new car. They are as distant to him as can be, and don't seem to understand that their son is a sovereign explorer from the heart, Hurt with his characteristic WASPy disinterest and Harden with the biggest of her several "Mom" helmet head haircuts she's worn over the years. Early on, there's a reference to the nastiness of the household, as the friction between mother and father is explicated by McCandless' sister. But by the third of fourth time it's mentioned, and a scene of spousal abuse appears in case you didn't get it, and it almost feels like Penn is reaching, looking for a way to explain McCandless' motivations. Random shots of George Bush 1 over the news seem to signify another reason, though they are minor, somewhat flippant insertions that take you out of the film's fairly insular universe.

Surely Penn, a man of strong far left principles in real life, would understand that no one needs a crutch of a reasoning to embark on a preposterous-seeming journey. When he embarked on that dangerous trip in New Orleans to rescue trapped citizens (regardless of whether you think it was only a photo op), does Penn believe that he did that because something in his life triggered that Pavolvian response? Isn't it enough that people were dying and it was the right thing to do? It's as if he doesn't have enough faith in his abilities in his abilities as a filmmaker to declare, "He went into the wild because he needed to be out there. Believe me."

McCandless' interactions seem equally bloated to Hollywood standards, a curiosity considering the difficulty and uncommerciality of Penn's previous films. Here, he's been turned from the charismatic, Herzogian wild man of the book into some wisdom-spouting combination of Forrest Gump and Billy Jack. He first meets a hippie couple of the rocks, and it doesn't even take ten minutes of screen time before he begins to repair their relationship (naturally he reminds them of... well, you can guess). Later, he bumps into drunken temporary boss Vince Vaughn (distractingly doing "Drunken Vince Vaughn" and providing strategically-placed comic relief), nobly turns down sex with a gamine 16 year old (Kirsten Stewart- please eat a cheeseburger, girl) and breaks bread with sexually liberated Swedish tourists (who boogie to MC Hammer- I confess, I don't get why. Time and place?). We get an end-film montage of these people long after we've met them, somehow to signify that, as McCandless slowly starts to die (spoiler, but duh) in some way they mght all be thinking of him at the same time. Penn shows restraint in not showing them mouthing the words to the same song, so, y'know, credit where credit's due.

The only confrontation that registers his a kindly old man that he stays with and attempts to challenge. Played by Hal Holbrook, he develops a kinship with the adventurous McCandless, and at the heart of McCandless' journeys, they spends a large portion of time discussing their differing philosophies. At the point where it's time to say goodbye to each other, the old man has enormous difficulty parting with a youth that's given him a new purpose in life, but mostly given this elderly loner the gift of generous company. Hal Holbrook plays the man, and he does more with his sad eyes in his scenes than any of the actors in this film have done with their whole faces throughout their careers. Okay, that sounds ridiculous, but Holbrook is that good- it's really beautiful work from him.

Holbrook is one of many strong attributes this film has that will probably garner the film a lot of positive notices from people other than me. The score features original songs and arrangements from Eddie Vedder and Kaki King, and they're pretty great and generally unobtrusive. And, superficially, it's hard to get tired of the striking outdoor photography- while I didn't feel close to much of the dialogue or characters, the wordless moments of natural beauty in this film are glorious. But Penn doesn't seem to truly believe in the story- in McCandless' last days, we have some information about him through diaries he had kept, but giving him a pre-death character arc to complete feels too canned and too simple an answer for what was a complex young guy and a hauntingly unresolved story.

-Fabfunk

P.S. Cronenberg reads AICN and he thinks I have an obsession with Viggo Mortensen's "big hairy balls". Blew my mind. www.filmlinc.com