Young adventurer goes off the grid

By Soren Andersen, for the Northwest Guardian

It’s difficult to imagine anyone better suited to write and direct “Into the Wild” than Sean Penn. The story of an independent-minded young man who chose to divorce himself from American society and venture far into the Alaskan wilderness on a journey of self-discovery obviously resonated deeply with the fiercely independent-minded Penn.

Penn has a reputation as an artist who stands apart from the crowd, who disdains the perks of fame and devotes himself unreservedly to his craft.

His sense of identification with Christopher McCandless, who walked into the wild and never came back, is palpable throughout the picture.

Penn spent a decade trying to persuade McCandless’ parents to allow him make the movie, which is based on Jon Krakauer’s best-selling 1997 account of the young man’s fatal odyssey. His obsessive dedication to bringing McCandless’ story to the screen mirrors his protagonist’s dedication to forging his own path and going where his spirit moved him.

In his early 20s, McCandless went outward, to remote parts of the U.S.: to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, to California’s desolate Salton Sea, to the overwhelming vastness of Alaska’s backcountry. And going outward he journeyed inward. By losing himself, he tried to find himself, tried to find meaning in his life outside of and beyond America’s consumer culture.

Spurring him on was his desire to get away from an unhappy home life where friction between his cold, authoritarian father (played by William Hurt) and his unhappy mother (Marcia Gay Harden) made for a poisonous emotional environment for their son and his younger sister (Jena Malone). So he left.

A gifted middle-class college graduate, he gives away $24,000, money intended for graduate school, to charity. He burns his Social Security card. He burns his cash. His ditches his car in a remote location. He sticks out his thumb. He goes off the grid and leaves no forwarding address.

His parents are frantic. His parents are clueless. His parents have lost him. He’s gone, gone, gone.

Emile Hirsch does remarkable work in the central role. In a performance built largely of silences, particularly in the Alaska sections, he conveys the complexities and contradictions of McCandless’ character. He’s kindly yet remote, self-reliant, stubborn, principled, confused and, ultimately, unknowable.

He’s a close observer of the behavior of others. He possesses a sense of curiosity and compassion about the people he meets along the way that intrigues and beguiles them. They’re drawn to his mystery and also to the empathy they sense within him. Among those intrigued and beguiled are a wheat farmer played by a cheerful Vince Vaughn, an aging hippie vagabond played by a contemplative Catherine Keener and a prickly but goodhearted reclusive old man played by Hal Holbrook. They’re people who, each in their own way and to varying degrees, have set themselves apart from society, and they recognize a kindred spirit in McCandless.

All of these people have unexpected depths, and Penn, a keen student of human relationships, carefully and unhurriedly explores those depths.

The picture is most moving, and haunting, during its Alaska sections, where the pull of all that vastness and solitude draws McCandless inexorably toward his fate. On foot, in the snow, through rivers and forests and ultimately to an abandoned bus that serves as a Spartan shelter in his final days, he is at once overwhelmed and exalted by the splendid isolation that envelops him. (Eric Gautier’s cinematography captures that isolation in a manner that inspires awe.)

He is as far from his former comfortable life as it’s possible these days to get. He is completely on his own. He has achieved something very close to a state of grace. It comes at a high price.

Was it worth it? Penn leaves the question dangling, unanswered. He leaves it for everyone who sees the picture to draw his or her conclusion.

But by the end you do know one thing for sure: You’ve been taken on a journey like no other into the questing, restless heart of an uncompromising man.

Into the Wild

Director: Sean Penn

Cast: Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Hal Holbrook and Catherine Keener

Running Time: 2:20

Rating: R, language, sexual situations, nudity, brief violence