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The story of Christopher McCandless is a sad and controversial tale. McCandless was a young man from Virginia who became discontent with society and his parents and fled the binds of monetary dependence and the structure of society to become a vagabond who traveled to Alaska to spend time in solitude and search his soul for answers to his inner torment. McCandless used the alias Alexander Supertramp as he crossed the country and avoided having his true identity discovered and eventually reached his destination. He never returned from the Alaskan wilderness near the Denali National Park. Some view the tragic death of McCandless as a heroic and brave endeavor that brought about his end because of unforeseen circumstances. Others view the young man´s fate as a result of stupidity and consider his time in the Alaskan wilderness as more suicide than adventure.
Director Sean Penn takes the viewpoint that McCandless is a figure of tragedy and weaves the words of Jon Krakauer´s book entitled "Into the Wild" into a poetic film that romanticizes the misadventures and journeys of Alex Supertramp into a spiritual journey. McCandless modeled his philosophies from the literary words of Jack London and Henry David Thoreau. His desire to embark on the Alaskan journey was perhaps directly due to Thoreau´s discussions about purchasing a farm to support himself during a period of time to write novels and his novel Walden, which discusses a life of simple existence in the wilderness. Thoreau and literature´s impact on McCandless is echoed in the narration of MacCandless´s sister Carine (Jena Malone), which drips in poetry and fanciful words. Penn paints a vision of McCandless that is of a highly intelligent man with a well thought out plan and a desire to live his dream, though ultimately fails due to circumstances beyond his control.
What Penn failed to portray in his film is that McCandless was not fully prepared for his Alaskan adventure and a little better information and a map would have saved the young man´s life. Just a few miles upstream was a bridge crossing over the flooded river and civilization was less than twenty miles away. McCandless was not experienced as a hunter and ill prepared to prepare his kill for preservation. Penn does take a moment to show McCandless getting information on how to prepare fresh game to avoid maggots, but the direction taken in the film suggests that warmer weather was perhaps the blame of his meat going bad and McCandless being left without meat nourishment for a length of time. He is portrayed as a capable hunter that runs out of game, and not as an amateur hunter that is not properly versed in finding his prey. Time is spent showing McCandless preparing for the physical rigors of his adventure and reading up on edible berries and other such skills needed to survive.
The director also suggests one popular hypothesis towards the death of Christopher McCandless was that he ate poisonous berries or seeds to nourish himself and this forced him into the weakened state that eventually caused his demise. This possibility has been debated as to whether or not it did occur. The contrasting belief is that McCandless simply died of starvation when he was able to collect enough food to maintain the needs of his body. The film does not wander towards the possibility that McCandless raided emergency aid stations and took food supplies from them to help him survive and between the flooded river and the hard to detect poisonous berries; Sean Penn is certainly among those that view McCandless as a romantic character who met an unlucky end.
The other side of the argument is that McCandless was a young man who could not cope with the ills of society and was angered at the fortitude of lies that his parents´ marriage was built upon. McCandless is believed to have went into the Alaskan wilderness as a naïve and ill-prepared person who cared more for his isolation from a world he desperately wanted to escape from and less for his own well being and safety. McCandless appeared to have been a wanderer who traveled from one existence to another and took employment as he needed to provide money to continue further towards his goal or purchase a kayak and travel from Arizona to Mexico. He thumbed his way across the nation looking for new challenges and new life situations and made a few friends along the way on his path to suicide.
I personally feel content to settle for the notion that McCandless was a disenfranchised young man who was unhappy and needed to flee his upper-middle class background for a life independent of a career, responsibility and long-term relationships. He was on the run from society and could not adjust to the rigors and trials of daily life. McCandless was a strong-willed individual with a huge heart that cared too much for people and this allowed society and modern life to tramp on his emotions and feelings. This aspect of McCandless was nicely conveyed by Penn and nicely acted by Emile Hirsch in the title role. He helped a lot of people on his journey find themselves and helped them discover a more peaceful and fruitful existence. I have no doubts that a man with the intelligence and heart of McCandless could benefit others in this manner.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, McCandless was too young to venture into the world into the manner in which he did. The harsh realities of modern life was perhaps too much for the college graduate to cope with and he set out to take part in a care free life and enter an environment where only he could coexist with Mother Nature and aside from the elements and wildlife, McCandless could control everything around him. For him, it was the perfect escape and he was driven towards this isolated utopian existence through the words of writers such as Thoreau. He certainly put a lot of thought into his adventure, but he wasn´t prepared enough for the dangers that awaited him and while he thought well enough to mark his trail with a knitted cap, McCandless didn´t have the foresight to take a map with him as a backup plan of finding his way.
The film romanticizes the man who became Alexander Supertramp and focuses on the poetry and the humanity of a frustrated youth with a misguided case of wanderlust. The film portrays the various relationships realized by young ´Alex´ as he travels from the East Coast to the West Coast and makes a pit stop in Mexico along the way. While Penn may have been in awe of McCandless´s spiritual journey and determination, he respected the friendships and life lessons taught by Alex along the way. The characters of Rainey (Brian Dierker) and Jan (Catherine Keener) become surrogate parents to the wandering youth and show more concern towards Alex than his parents ever did. Both Dierker and Keener nail their performances as middle-aged hippies who live from their motor home and travel towards a life in a hippy commune in the West. Kristen Stewart is a lovely young lady who entertains as the hopeful, but young, love interest for Alex.
Hal Holbrook and Vince Vaughn are two other strong supporting actors in the film. Vince Vaughn portrays businessman Wayne Westerberg who employs McCandless at his grain farm and provides a further learning experience and temporary lifestyle to McCandless as he makes his journey across the country. Vaughn is the consummate ´best friend´ as an actor and provides one of the only true friendships realized by McCandless as he travels towards Alaska and Wayne is someone that McCandless wrote to during his Alaskan adventure. Anytime a ´best friend´ role exists, Vaughn is perfect.
However, it is veteran Hal Holbrook who really shines in this film as a grandfatherly figure for Christopher McCandless. The 82 year old actor brings the character of Ron Franz to the screen as one of the last voices of reasoning for McCandless and a retired man who finds a new life after befriending McCandless during the final long-term stay by Christopher. Franz allows McCandless to spend his nights at his home and the two find a genuine friendship which results in McCandless opening up Franz´s eyes to a life that can still contain adventure and having the old man propose to adopt McCandless and offer him a better life than what he had with his parents. The performance by Holbrook earned him an Oscar nomination and the actor delivered an honest performance that bore a lot of heart.
The actors tapped to depict the McCandless family deliver a performance that shows the turmoil left behind by Christopher, but also a caring determination to find their wayward kin and a desperation fueled by fear of unknowing and a yearning desire to know that Christopher is okay. William Hurt is Walt McCandless and Marcia Gay Harden is his wife Billie McCandless. They are strong as an uppity set of parents who are loving, but dysfunctional and do not quite have their priorities where they need to be. They squabble, fight and love in their performances with believability. Jena Malone serves as Christopher´s younger sister Carine and it is this character that assists in providing narration that looked into the soul of Christopher McCandless and at the cancerous depression that ate away at his soul. It was the narration of this character that pondered what was going through the mind of Christopher and although it was a little too soaked into the poetic words of authors cherished by Christopher, the narration served its purpose.
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[release]22631[/release]