Sean Penn’s film ‘Into The Wild’, his adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s bestselling book, ‘Into the Wild’, is one hell of a movie, it really does get inside one’s skin.
The film tells the true story of a young, suburban, middle class man, Christopher McCandless, who completes his university degree and then basically goes AWOL. He decides to go into the country, and explore nature, with his ultimate goal being to explore Alaska. As per Lord Byron’s poem, ‘I love not men the less, but nature more’. ‘Into the Wild’ charts his experiences along his journey.
Watching the film the feeling is more astonishment than anything else. How could someone that young and bright make such choices in his life, to spend the best years of life living out in the wild?! It’s a natural thing during the film to ask for answers! The main thing that one comes up with is that he just desperately needed to get away from his parents and their expectations.
It is one of the sad points of the film that never once during his whole journey did McCandless try and contact his family to tell them he was ok. It was like the ultimate rejection.
One of the memories I have kept from ‘Into The Wild’ is the picture of distress of Christopher’s father as time goes on, and there is no word from his son. There is even a scene where we see William Hurt’s character looking pathetic on the street, outside his home.
By Christopher’s acts he leaves his parents and his caring sister as broken people!
Its amazing how powerfully, the character of Christopher’s sister, comes across in the film. We see her so little in the film and yet her voiceover comments during the film have a special poignancy.
There are some colourful characters that Christopher meets during the film. Chrristopher keeps on running into a middle-aged hippie couple that he gets on with, and they share a special friendship. The woman especially has a soft spot for him…and there’s one scene when they go swimming together whilst the husband looks on that was moving. Then there was the scene where she gives him a farewell present. The performances of the two actors playing the hippie couple were great.
Christopher meets an elderly guy at a local township who befriends him, and tries to get him to be moderate in his views however Christopher can’t be changed from his fateful course though their friendship is solidified!
The main image that I got from the film was the way that Christopher lives out most of his days in an abandoned bus, eking out an existence of sorts….killing animals to live on. The picture of reading his books, his Thoreau and so on…..
The ending is just so terribly sad! No need to go into it!
There’s another scene that haunts me. That is the scene where the camera pans from far away at Christopher, and we hear him yelling out, ‘come on animals, where are you, I’m so hungry!’.