Genre: Biography / Drama
Duration: 148 minuten
Country:
United States
Directed by: Sean Penn
Stars: Emile Hirsch, Catherine Keener and Marcia Gay Harden
IMDb score:
8,0 (701.152)
Releasedate: 11 September 2007
Into the Wild plot
"Into the heart. Into the soul."
Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) gives up his life and heads for the Alaskan wilderness. He discards his map of the area, and his food supply seems to be nowhere near sufficient. A story about the pull of nature and complex relationships between a father and son.
Actors and actresses
Christopher McCandless / Alexander Supertramp
Billie McCandless
Walt McCandless
Carine McCandless / Additional Narration (voice)
Rainey
Jan Burres
Wayne Westerberg
Tracy Tatro
Ronald "Ron" Franz
Mads
Reviews & comments
IH88
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- 9903 messages
- 3205 votes
“Happiness only real when shared.”
You sometimes have those films that last two and a half hours, but where time flies by (or stands still for a while). That is the case with Into The Wild. The story, the unparalleled visuals, the music by Eddie Vedder, the voice-overs and the direction by Sean Penn make you feel like you are sucked into the film and before I knew it an hour had passed.
Chris is a somewhat difficult person to fathom, but I did have the feeling that I was looking at a real person with all his positive and negative characteristics. One minute you're looking at a know-it-all and naive 'know it all', and the next you're watching a fragile young man who has embarked on his perilous journey completely unprepared. One viewer will find him an inspiring figure and the other a naive and stupid young man. I'm leaning towards the latter, but that doesn't mean I think Into the Wild is a bad movie. On the contrary, because I don't have to like or understand a character to find his adventure intriguing. A mixture of personal circumstances, social isolation, a thirst for adventure and the love of nature made him decide this life, and that is enough for me. Sean Penn's non-chronological narrative also helps with that. Just like the acting of Hirsch, Jena Malone, Hurt, Harden and Hal Holbrook in a great supporting role at the end. And the cinematography and music top it all off.
Translated from Dutch · View original
baspls
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- 4118 messages
- 1673 votes
Into the Wild is an interesting film by Sean Penn in which we see the Romantic theme of Weltschmerz and Authenticity-search elaborated in the form of a naive adolescent boy from an elite American family who wants to go 'the wild' to live. When I watched it, I regularly thought of Maslow's Pyramid: only someone who is offered everything on a silver platter gets so many secondary needs to push themselves off and to live authentically and 'freely'. As noted earlier, Christopher's view of living "in the wild" has very little to do with wilderness in many ways (hamburger baking at McDonalds and sleeping at the Salvation Army, for example). He finds it immoral to be given everything in an oppressive society, but not to use facilities intended for the real poor and to take the life of animals in his path, while in his privileged position this was not necessary at all.
The film was recognizable in certain respects (both from myself in the search for authenticity and from peers who feel trapped in a certain way and have an urge to travel). In the end it became clear to me that Christopher is a victim of his own naive and otherworldly view of things and the same contradictions that the 19th century Romantics encountered in their quest for authenticity. In the end he has to pay for this with his life.
Translated from Dutch · View original
De filosoof
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- 2615 messages
- 1792 votes
The timing of Canvas to re-broadcast this film 50 years after Woodstock, an event that is currently receiving a lot of attention, seems no coincidence: the protagonist is a kind of neo-hippie who, like the earlier hippies, seems to be mainly driven by rebellion ( against materialistic parents and society) and the desire for freedom (from civic morality and obligations) and authenticity ('being yourself'), perhaps with a romantic desire to become one with God or nature. With the hippies it started with free love and drugs, but that is not what our apparently asexual hero is about: he is on a purely spiritual quest for his true self and leads a highly religious, ascetic way of life in which he denies himself everything. But he does give everything he has to others, so that those others see in him a kind of Jesus. But unlike the hippies, he does it all alone – reflecting the individualism of our time that even he can't seem to escape from – and that loneliness makes his end all the more tragic.
It is a beautiful film, especially because of the many poetic reflections and wisdom, but it is also long-winded because there is not much tension or dramatic development and especially the middle part of the film has little poetry or philosophy, so that I do not get higher than four stars.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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