Reviews > Into the Wild

In To The Wild is the story of this dude who is pissed at his parents and at society in general so he heads off into the Alaskan wild to find a more suitable way to live. Suitable to him. He has his own ideas about how things should be. He’s a very opinionated, idealistic dude and he only wants to do things his way. His way or the highway except in this case he’s the one hitting the road.

I’d recently read the book and enjoyed it so I was looking forward to the movie. Plus it’s directed by Sean Penn and he is totally the goods. Great director. He’s like Clint Eastwood. Everything that he touches is gold. Really though, I liked the movie quite a bit more then I enjoyed the book and it’s a pretty good book.

The kid is played by the dude who was the star of Alpha Dog, Emile Hirsch and he does a good job of showing Chris McCandless’ charisma. See, over the course of his trip he befriends lots of people, rather lots of people take care of him for short periods of time. The weird thing is that they actually want to take care of him more.

One of the dudes he runs into, played by Hal Holbrook wants to adopt him. At first I thought that he wanted to, you know try some gay stuff with him. He’s SUPER friendly to McCandless and asks him to stay the night and all this. Seemed like the start of a homo-erotic come on but it turned out to be more paternal then pederast and quite touching in the end. (that wasn’t meant as some kind of play on words. I meant touching in an emotional way.

I think what made the movie better then the book was Jena Malone’s narration. I love Jena and am always happy to see her in a movie. In this one she play’s Chris’ kid sister and her youthful appearance and voice help to get across her loss. She really misses her brother. She’s totally upset that in all the time he was missing that he never stopped to drop her a line. She can understand him trying to punish their parents but can’t understand why he’d hurt her too. I’d never hurt you Jena. I’d treat you like you deserve to be treated. Well.

It’s long though so be ready for that. I think that it clocks in at 2 hrs and 39 mins. That’s a long time. I had to take a pee break during the joint which I never have to do. I got a bladder of steel yo, but the lemonade which was really good by the way ran through me quicker then my usual Diet Coke. I recently gave up Diet Coke after I heard Warren Ellis say that the only people who drink it are fat. I looked around and noticed he was right. So, I made a switch to lemonade which actually has more calories but at least it has some vitamin C or whatever.

Overall I give it a hardy thumbs up. It’s long and kind of depressing but also thought provoking and ultimately a very personal story. That’s usually the best kind. I can’t really get with McCandless’ deal but think I understand what he was looking for. Freedom. Society is very restricting but it sort of has to be to protect us from the crazy dangerous people out there. The problem is that in trying to do that, those of us who aren’t going to hurt anyone are kept from doing lots of things that might make us happier people. It’s shitty but that’s how it is and I can’t blame someone for running away from it all.

Beyond that though and at the heart of the matter is his wanting to distance himself from his parents. There is a part of all of us that prolly wants to hurt our folks. It’s really easy to be resentful of all that they give us. To confuse their generosity with the feelings it causes. It’s hard to except things. Even if they come from people who love you.

Our parents hurt us all the time. My dad once said to me that “You might grow taller then me but you’ll never be bigger then me.” Who needs to live with that kind of shit on our shoulders? I know that he didn’t mean to hurt me, maybe he did. I don’t know. But I’m a parent now and am very much afraid of saying things that’ll stay with my daughter like that did with me but I’m sure that I will. I’m only human, just like my Dad is. Just like Chris’ Dad is.

That’s something that’s really important to know but that you don’t realize till you are actually in your folk’s shoes. They seem invulnerable and godlike but when it’s you being the parent you realize that you don’t know shit and that your folks prolly didn’t either. The sad thing is that Chris died of foolishness before he could learn that lesson and start growing past his problems. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing here.

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