Review of Into the Wild (2007) by Jennetp — 05 May 2011

This film is painful to watch and, once seen, hard to forget. Both of the perspectives visible in the user reviews--McCandless as fool AND McCandless as visionary--inform Penn's directorial choices, from the retrospective structure of the film to its dense, emotionally complex episodes, each a gem of casting and ensemble acting.

Emile Hirsch so inhabits McCandless that it's almost spooky, and, though the entire cast is strong, Holbrook and Keener give performances of exceptional sweetness and dignity. "Into the Wild" is, on one level, about a young man who starves to death amid abundance, and so is the story of an idiot.

At the same time, it is the story of a man beginning to see the psychic and social costs of abundance and to yearn for a time when enough was enough, a true idealist who walks his talk. His tragic flaw is not his longing for vanished frontiers but his attempt to recreate them in his own mind, believing individual ignorance a fair approximation of their mysteries.

Those who have lived in Alaska (or any extreme environment) may ridicule or condemn him, but McCandless grew up in Virginia, where nature is more pastoral theme park than "red in tooth and claw." Moreover, he is exactly the age at which many of us indulge in foolish, life-threatening behavior, as the cost of auto insurance for 20-somethings attests.

What's sad is the waste: though his folly is more principled than the average youth's bender or car crash or fall from a Daytona Beach balcony, he doesn't get the second chance that most of us enjoy, the chance to learn, say, the difference between independence and isolation.

Or--and this is for the users who profess simple amusement at the film--the difference between ignorance accepted as a cognitive stage and ignorance celebrated as a cognitive goal.