In 1992, Chris McCandless, a promising young college graduate, was found dead by some moose hunters in the Alaskan wilderness, marking a tragic end to an extraordinary American adventure. Jon Krakauer’s best-selling book Into The Wild – and its splendid new film adaptation by writer-director Sean Penn – reveals a Bright Young Visionary, driven by familial dysfunction, a scorn for consumer capitalism and a gorgeous, unsullied idealism. For some, McCandless is a real life Holden Caulfield, and Emile Hirsch’s compellingly complex portrayal – the best performance from a young actor since Edward Norton hijacked Primal Fear from under the noses of Richard Gere and Laura Linney – is a wonderfully fitting tribute to the Last Great American Wanderer.
For others McCandless was a spoiled and misguided yuppie brat. Tellingly when Krakauer first published in Outside magazine what he would ultimately expand into a book, many readers wrote in rather unkindly suggesting that McCandless had simply got what he deserved.
Sean Penn and his young star are rather more forgiving, though Into The Wild certainly allows the folly of youth to shine through. Leaving his tormented parental home – hell, his parents are played by William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden, so you know there are teeth marks on the couch – Chris gives away his $25,000 in savings to Oxfam and ditches his car for a life on the road. With volumes by Thoreau and Jack London to hand, he hooks up with ageing hippies (Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker), a grain-elevator operator (Vaughn) and, most touchingly, a retired widower (Hal Holbrook) who wishes to adopt him.
Fans of Lost America will lap up such backwaters as Oh My God Hot Springs and Slab City. As he has previously demonstrated with The Crossing Guard and The Pledge, Mr. Penn takes a rare delight in such lesser-spotted landscapes. His cinematic grammar perfectly mirrors McCandless’ own romanticised view of nature, and the director lovingly invests every detail with a Malick-inspired visual poetry. In the young man’s wilderness, to paraphrase Thoreau, the filmmaker sees the preservation of the universe. The similarities to Badlands and Days Of Heaven are made all the more pronounced by Jena Malone’s voice-over. Playing Chris’ forlorn sister, she affects the same somnambulist tones that dictated Lukas Moodyson’s recent installation film Container.
The effect is hypnotic and all our preparation for the inevitable comes to nothing during the final heartbreaking scenes. Like their intriguing subject, Messrs. Penn and Hirsch have fashioned a superb meteor, with every atom in magnificent glow.