The Ravyn’s Nest

“The core of mans’ spirit comes from new experiences.”

It’s not very often a film manages to utterly surprise me.  It’s even less often when it manages to utterly stun me.  Living in an age of cookie-cutter cinema and cut-and-dry, predictable blockbusters, it’s usually pretty easy for the knowledgeable movie-viewer to know exactly if he or she is going to like a film before it ever starts.  From high-budget, low-brain summer blockbusters to low-rent, high-quality “indie films,” there are very few surprises in the movie-making business.  This is not to say that the art is necessarily gone.  Simply that there’s only so much that is left to surprise anymore.

And then, you find a film like Into the Wild.  And you wind up surprised.

Based on the true story of Christopher McCandless, the Sean Penn-written and -directed film was released with little hoopla into a handful of theaters in September of last year.  It made a modest $18 million dollars, which was enough to recoup it’s budget but not much else, and garnered some awards attention.  Still, it was a film easily missed, including an Best Supporting Actor Oscar Nomination for Hal Holbrook and a Golden Globe win for Best Song.  Despite the awards recognition, it was a film easily missed.  However, missing this truly does mean that you’re missing out on a great, amazing story of the human spirit.

McCandless (Emile Hirsch), the son of a NASA engineer and his business-partner wife, leaves college and proceeds to forsake Harvard Law School.  Instead, he give the remainding $24,000 of his college fund to charity, burns all the money in his wallet, destroys all his identification, and sets off on a trip to live in the wild, on his own, without telling anyone where he’s gone.  Along the way, while his dysfunctional family suffers at the loss, he shares life experiences with hippie-esque drifter Jan (Catherine Keener) and her boyfriend Rainey (Brian Dierker), works in South Dakota for a grain farmer Wayne (Vince Vaughn), discovers a bond in Southern California with retiree Ron Franz (Holbrook), and eventually makes his way to Alaska, where he spends four months in the Alaskan wilderness.  All of these experiences shape his life, and he leaves his mark on each of these people as much as they touch him.

Sean Penn has directed before, but never a film such as this.  With Into the Wild, Penn, who no one can argue is anything but an extraordinary actor, proves how deft he is as both a writer and a director.  He never takes the obvious or predictable road, never villainizing or invoking hero worship of any one character, even Christopher.  This is not a huge-budget movie, but under Penn’s touch and cinematographer Eric Gautier’s vision, the film has an epic feel.  It takes place in the parts of America that are far from the board rooms, the taxi routes, the “civilized” parts of the country, and the landscapes are truly beautiful and amazing.  It’s a credit to Penn’s vision that we’re able to see this.

If it’s Penn’s vision that brings the film to life, it’s Emile Hirsch’s truly amazing performance as Chris that brings the character to life.  Hirsch has quickly developed his reputation (in my mind) as the most underrated actor in his age bracket.  Shia LaBeouf may be getting all the big roles, but for my money, Hirsch is proving, with roles in such films as Lords of Dogtown and Alpha Dog that he’s a face of the future.  Christopher is his best role to date.  Hirsch invokes such a sympathy for the character, yet makes him fallible and all too human.  Christopher’s transformation throughout the film is breath-taking and a sight to behold, and it’s because of Hirsch that we’re treated to this.  If this film had failed, a large part of the blame would have fallen on Hirsch; and conversely, as it did succeed, he deserves the lion’s share of the credit.

The supporting cast is also great.  Catherine Keener as Jan takes on the mother role that Marcia Gay Harden’s Billie McCandless doesn’t provide until it’s too late.  Hal Holbrook, the deserving Best Supporting Actor Nominee, does likewise as a father, where William Hurt’s Walt McCandless fell short.  All four of these fine actors shine in their roles, and what are essentially smaller roles become multi-layered and complex, and even when you hate Walt and Billie, you feel for them.  And that makes them real.  Vince Vaughn is good as Wayne, though it’s a bit jarring to see him in a role like this, and is the only person in the cast who is unable to transcend his own persona for the role.

This is not a perfect film.  At 148 minutes, it does feel that long a couple of times.  It can also be argued as to be perhaps overly sympathetic; McCandless is not a particularly loved name in Alaska for several reasons, and I can’t find it in myself to disagree with some of them.  I think the largest sin this movie has is its very existance; the argument has been made that the idea of a film about McCandless’s life goes against everything the man himself stood for.  While this may or may not be true, it’s difficult to watch Vince Vaughn in a film where the very theme is about casting off that which binds you to your life, all the material possessions you own, and living freely.  Ultimately, this is a minor sin, because Into the Wild is not a film that was ever going to make big money.  Penn knew it, Hirsch knew it, everyone did.  This is a film with a message, a film with something to say.  And the ultimate theme of the movie, I think McCandless would agree with.  So while it’s not a perfect film, it is a film that stands on it’s own as one of the best, and most surprising, films of 2007.

“If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.”

True words.

–Jer