Into the Wild (Sean Penn, 2007)

[Jem]

Official site:
http://www.intothewild.com/

IMBD
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758758/

[flyonthewall2983]

I could have sworn I posted the trailer for it here.

[portnoy]

[hot_locket]

I saw this about a month ago at the South Dakota Film Festival (yes, there's a South Dakota Film Festival). I loved it, personally, but that's about as in-depth a review as you're likely to get from me, as I don't yet particularly feel quite up to par with the level of discussion that usually goes on on this forum.

[kaujot]

Eddie Vedder trying to be Bob Dylan killed it for me.

[miless]

I thought that the film had some great moments (generally those with a more "experimental" style) but altogether didn't really cohere. I think that the reason it didn't work for me is due to my opinion of the main character being an idiot (who deserved what he got for his stupidity).
I also didn't find him charming (as everyone in the movie seems to... and the people I've talked to who have seen it). Instead I found him to be a naïve kid who spews the same "intellectual hippie garbage" that every liberal arts college student does (the same with a movie like Waking Life).

I was also an extra on the film (I got a sweet $170 for wearing a cap and gown last summer)... not that that matters.

edit: and yes, Eddie Vedder was fucking annoying (as always)... the music would have been a hundred times better without is dreadfully trite singing over it.

[Chris]

I was disappointed by Penn's film adaptation of Into the Wild. On the positive side, I found Catherine Keener's performance as Jan Burres completely convincing. I enjoyed the Vedder soundtrack, and I thought certain cinematic elements were beautiful (though not always serving to the storyline) such as the night shots in L.A. However, there was a lot a didn't care for. The voice over narration by Carine McCandless (Jena Malone) didn't work for me because the story was not hers to tell, and the narration together with the rapid cutting within scenes and the frequent temporal shifts left me unable to identify with either Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch) or the viewpoints of the characters that Chris met along his way as I was able to do with, for example, the supporting characters in Agnès Varda's Vagabond (1985). Being unable to identify with any of the characters, I was left in the position of an outside observer and here Penn failed to make much of this position either. For example, Penn did not use the camera to show us anything that Chris failed to figure out. Krakauer's book makes clearer that the magic bus was not as isolated as Chris believed it to be, and that the seasonal river that cut off Chris's planned departure route could have been crossed upstream. Penn could have unobtrusively shared this information with the viewer, but chose to withhold it for the purpose, I suspect, of romanticizing Chris's adventure.

[David Ehrenstein]

Went to a special screening of Into the Wild last night, which is already in release and whose regular press previews I missed. Glad I waited cause this was truly special. It was at Paramount in the big room and there was a performance of the songs afterwards by Eddie Vedder. Sean Penn presided over the evenign with his star, the indescribably delicious Emile Hirsch. Oh how I'd love to adopt Emile! He's so beautiful I couldn't imagine having sex with him at all -- just kissing, cuddling and running my fingers through his hair He's a great actors and a very smart and polite young man. Got a chance to talk with Sean Penn for just a moment. I asked him how he came to choose Eric Gauthier as DP and he said it was because of The Motorcycle Diaries AND the fact that Gauthier was his own camera operator. I am a Gautheir Fanatic as a result of his work -- almost entirely hand-held -- on The Greatest Motion Picture Ever Made (If y'all know me you know the title by now.) I SHOULD have asked him about Gus' plan to star him as Harvey Milk but I was distracted by the presence of someone else at the screening and reception --


RINGO

He was there with Barbara Bach, sitting a few rows behind me. The sound of his voice was like hearing a very, very old childhood friend who I hadn't seen in eons. It was like a dream. I was too overwhlemed to go near him. He watched Eddie Vedder -- who sang "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" at one point -- with great enthusiasm.

Anyhoo, Into the Wild is not to be missed.
And Eddie Vetter does not suck.

[John Cope]

I am a Gautheir Fanatic as a result of his work -- almost entirely hand-held -- on The Greatest Motion Picture Ever Made (If y'all know me you know the title by now.)

You're not talking about Pola X are you? God forbid. Savage Souls? Les Destinees Sentimentales? I could accept those, though I don't think they were shot with much hand held...

Just please don't say Irma Vep.

Wait! I've got it. It's Son frere, right?

[domino harvey]

Gus Van Sant, so it's got to be Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

[jesus the mexican boi]

La Ehrenstein is referring to Ceux qui m'aiment prendront le train, as borne out by cette liste.

[David Ehrenstein]

Mais oui!

[Antoine Doinel]

Saw this tonight and enjoyed it quite a bit. While the film doesn't quite amount to the transcendal experience it wants to be, Penn crafts a fine performance from Emile Hirsch and there are tremendously powerful scenes and cinematography. What I appreciated most was that Penn didn't over-romanticize McCandless' retreat from civilization and he displayed the lives of those off-the-grid largely free of charicatures (except for the European couple).

However, I will say that Eddie Vedder's songs were terrible. They over-articulated the themes of the film and were just plain dull. At times Vedder seemed to try to be channeling Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan who shined on the Dead Man Walking soundtrack.

[David Ehrenstein]

Vedder didn't annoy me the way he did you. But you're quite right about the romaticism. Penn goes right to the edge -- then puts on the brakes.

What's heartbreaking about the story is that Chris had numerous opportunities to be happy with other people, living lives WAY apart from the one he'd turned his back on. But he never stayed put -- always strove for a goal that was his own obliteration.

[gubbelsj]

Goes without saying, I guess, but beautiful location shooting. I was especially pleased to see footage from Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, one of the jewels of San Diego County (even if most of it seemed to be taken from nearby Ocotillo Wells). And while I worry that the Salton Sea is starting to become the eccentric-by-default location for too many uncreative filmmakers and theorists, the fact that Niland's Salvation Mountain made it into the film was quite nice. I've been out there, climbed around the paint-glopped structure itself and clambered inside the little altar caves Leonard Knight has created. 112 degrees in the shade, -140 feet below sea level. Truly one of the more bizarre places in the US of A. And ranks right up there with the Watts Towers as the finest example of what outsider art / architecture is really all about.

[Argonaut69]

Looking back on the films I've seen this year, Into the Wild remains my favorite of 2007. I had a few very minor qualms that were nixed when I read the Krakauer book which clarifies some of the details of the story.

I am so pleased that both Penn and Hirsh have signed on to Van Sant's new Harvey Milk bio. After seeing their work in Into the Wild, I feel even more hopeful about that project.

[SalParadise]

May I ask, how did Enchanted get three best song Oscar nominations, while Vedder's amazing work got nothing? If some of you didn't think of much of his music I think you should have a listen again, a beautiful album.

[knives]

Because Enchanted had good music? I haven't heard any of his recent music outside of this movie, but if that's really where Vedder went I'm glad I stopped listening.

[bottled spider]

I like the structure of this movie, alternating between Christopher's

SpoilerShow

fatal

Alaskan adventure and the period leading up to it, advancing chronologically within each time frame. The effect of cutting back and forth between the progress toward the realization of a dream and that dream going awry is powerful. It's good narrative strategy too. However exciting it would be to go into the wild alone, merely watching someone else do it could grow tedious. And the preceding journey by itself, though eventful, could be too structureless. Intercutting solves those potential difficulties.

Another biopic I admire that employs a similar structure is an obscure Canadian film Bethune: The Making of a Hero. I suppose there must be others though. Is there a name for this structure? "Flashback" isn't quite right.