Into the Wild (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)
Starring: Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Jena Malone, Brian DierkerDirector: Sean Penn
Studio: Paramount
MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Running Time: 148 minutes
DVD Release: March 4th 2008
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DVD Review
This is the true story of Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch). Freshly graduated from college with a promising future ahead McCandless instead walked out of his privileged life and into the wild in search of adventure. What happened to him on the way transformed this young wanderer into an enduring symbol for countless people -- a fearless risk-taker who wrestled with the precarious balance between man and nature.System Requirements:Running Time: 148 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/COMING OF AGE Rating: R UPC: 097361316949 Manufacturer No: 131694
User Reviews
The Wrong Director for the Job - Rating: 2/5
You have to think of this as a film loosely inspired by Jon Krakauer's book about a young man's search for truth and freedom on an adventure that led him into the wild. Even that book, as carefully researched and well-written as it is, is wildly speculative and, in the end, is more of a meditation on that search and on what drives some of us to make it, than it is a biography of the one who called himself Alexander Supertramp. Sean's Penn plays fast and loose with the historical record, inventing and/or re-inventing characters and relationships and rewriting or outright deleting parts of Christopher McCandless's adventure that don't fit Penn's script even to the point of refashioning the terms of his demise. I was disappointed and yet deeply affected by the film when I first saw it. I then read Krakauer's book and that deepened my disappointment and left me wondering how (and why) Penn had gotten it so wrong. Watching it a second time, now, I am left simply with this sense of a lost opportunity. There's an interesting and important story to be told here, but Sean Penn is not the director to tell it.
What's the point - Rating: 2/5
What a self indulgent little twrip. I found nothing at all endearing about this character. What a waste of 2.5 hrs.
RWF
WOW! - Rating: 5/5
I had heard about this real story watching a TV talk show that the author appeared on and it intrigued me. While it starts a bit slow the depth of it soon comes through and you are right there with CHristopher Johnson McCandless. A sad tale about a young man who has the right idea but doesn't prepare himself enough. Especially for one so bright and full of life.
KS Movie Buff - Rating: 4/5
A compelling story! I've wondered time to time about the "why" behind these characters we've all run across in life. I thought the director did a great job in asking us all to really question the way we've chosen to live and have compassion for those that choose differently. The movie did drag a little in parts and I did wonder how much of it really was true, but overall, worth watching.
Stuff of Dreams - Rating: 4/5
Sean Penn as a director is at least as interesting as is his work from acting and this movie proves it once again. It is the true story of Chris McCandless, wonderfully portrayed by Emile Hirsch, who, graduating at 22, seems to have a very promising future ahead of him being admitted into Harvard Law, but instead chooses not to fulfill his parent's dreams for him but pursue his own. In doing so he wanders through the US after leaving behind his worldly goods, including giving away 20000 dollars of savings to charity.
He breaks off all contact with his family and in the voiceover of his sister we gradually are handed pieces of the puzzle that lead him to do so. After more or less 2 years the trip ends in Alaska, after we've enjoyed a number of his interesting encounters with other people and many beautiful landscapes that made me want to pack my bags right there and then for another one of my cross country hikes.
The development of the rather naive Chris is both fascinating as well as moving and Penn treats his journey as a classic novel, even up to dividing his movie into chapters with titles like "birth" or "adolescence", for those who weren't quite clever enough to pick up on it.
What annoyed me the most about the movie was the music, which tries too hard to convey a certain atmosphere which distracts more than makes you focus. Penn seems to forget at times that old lesson that less is more and that the story is so powerful, it doesn't need this artificial boost of sentiment, but I guess being American, he just couldn't help himself, it is a national affliction after all.
However it's one of very few issues I had with the movie that signifies a marvelous contribution with full adherence to the rules and laws of a traditional road movie.
It's obvious that Penn has a lot of respect for this intelligent young man whose mind lives in his treasured books of writers like Tolstoy and Thoreau from whom he receives his life's lessons that serve to fuel his dreams of a pure and uncompromising life far away from anything materialistic and the corrupting influence of society. Unfortunately our hero is not able to see that all his philosophizing and travelling is just a self-deception to avoid dealing with the legacy of the dysfunctional past with his relatives and rather embrace a romantic philosophy of life in general and himself in particular. It is tragic that he eventually paid such a high price for this delusion.
Until quite far into the movie Sean Penn doesn't take any critical distance from his subject but rather chooses to immerse his movie in romantic notions and atmospheric photography and rather trite repetition of the same adolescent ramblings.
As a viewer however this doesn't bother you at all and on first viewing you're eager to embrace the dramatic events and dreams of youth, passion and hope that we all want to catch again, even though at a certain point we learn that, though not an illusion, at least for those that have not yet sought refuge in misanthropy (a flight just as effective and opposite to the one Chris McCandless took), there is a more noble, though less attractive on the outside, heroism in defying the mud of day to day life in the mist of it rather than seeking oblivion in the remote wilderness. It's a little too easy and a bit like giving up of whom we are in our most fundamental level of being: a social animal. Chris McCandless too, in his last note, in one of his treasured books between the printed lines that so inspired him, comes to this conclusion and it is truly a heart breaking moment in the film.
