Although I hadn't chosen to see this film (it was the alternative option left over when the screening of the film I had intended to see was cancelled due to technical difficulties) I was very glad I did: it was moving, beautifully-filmed and compellingly watchable. Sean Penn is really making his mark as a director with this one, though it's not his first project. A quick check on IMDb tells me that he has previously directed a film called The Pledge, which I have heard of but not seen.
Into the Wild is based on the true story of an idealistic young man who turns his back on the materialistic, uncaring society of modern America to discover some hard-won truths through living in the wilderness as a tramp without possessions. The frequent date markers that punctuate the film like chapter headings remind us that this is a tale of hard fact, but they do not spoil the intensely personal, even lyrical, quality of the narrative as it is presented to us. The philosophical musings recorded by Chris in his diary are counterpointed by the voice-over of his sister describing the effect of Chris's unexplained disappearance on the family as the weeks and months of his absence stretch into years. This gives a different perspective on events, and frames Chris's story in a way that adds depth and humanity to what might otherwise seem a rather cold and bleak fable about moral alienation. One of the saddest things about Chris's story is that, in his attempt to reject the shallow and superficial values of his parents and of conventional society, he unwittingly rejects much that is good and genuine in the people he meets. As one relationship after another reaches a dead-end, we wonder whether Chris is really making progress or whether he is actually re-enacting an early experience of isolation which he is fated to relive: replacing one form of lovelessness with another, perhaps more profound. As he heads off to Alaska, gradually withdrawing from human society, we share his exhilaration at first, rejoicing with him in the beauty of nature, but eventually realise that he has reached an impasse.
The literary allusions are many (and telling) in this film. Chris is an avid reader, which won him outstanding results at college: graduation was for him the last stop on the road of conventional living, and the first main scene of the film. We see him absorbed in Tolstoy and assume that he is heavily influenced by the Russian writer's depiction of idealistic youth in the character of Levin from the novel Anna Karenina. He also reads American Romantics such as Thoreau, whose celebration of the purity of nature must have been key, as well as Jack London's The Call of the Wild. Chris himself, we learn, was planning to write a book based on his experiences. The 'magic bus', an abandoned wreck which he finds by chance in Alaska, becomes a cosy library for a while, where he unpacks his books and rereads them by the light of the wood burner miraculously provided for his comfort. There is something hollow and brittle about this existence however, and Chris's gradual realisation of this makes painful viewing.
Chris is in many ways a charismatic person, and certainly manages to charm many of the people he meets along the way: a couple of hippies who become like surrogate parents for him, a young girl who sings for him at the travellers' commune where he sells books for a while and who falls in love with him, a lonely old man (an ex-soldier) who wants to adopt him. In this respect, Chris resembles the animal campaigner Timothy Treadwell, immortalised in Werner Herzog's recent film Grizzly Man, which has much in common with Into the Wild. There's even a bear encounter in this film, which makes the similarity even stronger. Both films explore the moral vacuum at the heart of modern life, and ask questions about what values people can (or should) live by in this secular age. The joy and elation which these characters living on the edge - Chris and Timothy - experience seems to come at too high a price.
There was some fine acting in this film (William Hurt as the father was particularly moving) and this helped to make it very absorbing. My one criticism was that the cutting back and forth in time became a little confusing and contrived at times. Whilst flash-backs and chronological telescoping can be effective ways to tell a story, as devices they can seem fussy if over-used. Overall, though, this was an excellent film.
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