MOLI VIEW™

When I pulled Jon Krakauer's bestselling book Into the Wild off the shelf a few weeks ago, I did not anticipate reviewing Sean Penn's filmic interpretation. I simply wanted a good read.

I'm damn glad I got my hands on the book first. Krakauer's depiction of Christopher McCandless — the privileged, romantic young man who marched into the Alaskan wilderness in 1992 to find himself, and wound up starving to death in an abandoned bus — is so brilliantly layered and nuanced that it set my expectations for the film unreasonably high.

Not only did Penn's take on the story meet those expectations, it gave sparkling, believable life to the dormant subtext.

McCandless was not a kook. A likable, intelligent kid, he was desperate to find a way to define his life that didn't include his controlling parents and their moneyed careerism. Penn articulates the 25-year-old's desire for literal and spiritual freedom with the same subtle grace as Krakauer, painting him not as a fool or a martyred saint, but as a naïve idealist in search of something that can't be found on a map.

The film is loaded with great performances. Hal Holbrook is mesmerizing as aged widower Ron Franz (the last person to spend significant time with McCandless before his demise). Though Holbrook's time on film is brief, his emotional portrayal is letter-perfect. In fact, almost every character in the film is represented exactly as I'd imagined them from the book — testimony to Krakauer's gifts as a storyteller and Penn's restraint as a director.

Previous Page  1  2  Next Page