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4.235.200.162
S P O I L E R S galore!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
First off, Hirsch has an amazing resemblance to Eddie Vedder. Add to that the fact that Vedder sings several songs during the "action" and... almost seemed like a Pearl Jam MTV video.
Lots of poor background scenes involving William Hurt, as the cold Dad, and some old woman that looked vaguely familiar as the uninvolved Mom.
Sob.
Supposedly, the young man was driven to distraction and wandering by these cruel parents but, outside of a shouting/shoving match, I failed to see anything very terrible.
Mom and Dad... fought!
Poor kid.
I love Catherine Keener but the poor thing wasn't given much to do except mouth truisms and look hippie-ish.
The other cameos also were non-remarkable with the notable exception of Hal Holbrook who made me wish he had done more film work, lately: he looks like he won't be with us much longer.
The film?
Well, it works as a kind of road film.
Any pretensions of art vanish with the overly pretty cinematography and overbearing, omnipresent SOUNDTRACK!
Hirsch is okay but in many scenes he proved he is a superb mimic. Leonardo-lite. The grin. The vocal inflection. In one scene, poorly lit, he even looked exactly like him, filmed from the side.
Anyhow, if you'd like to spend a few very long hours (couldn't we have done with a bit less of those repetitive Keener scenes?) this could be your film.
Two 1/2 stars (out of five).
Follow Ups:
pretty much nails it.This is a story about a charismatic but supremely selfish, overly priviledged, fatally naive young man. I felt a strange resentment toward him from early in the movie.
It is a remarkable and dramatic story that never got its cinematic feet under it. In spite of its length - 2+ hours - it seemed as much a collection of sketches as a fully realized character study. Continuity and character cultivation were confounded by the ill-defined "wanderment" of the lead.
To be fair, maybe it was not intended as a character study. In that case I'm still uncertain how to view it.
Hirsch had to look good and hit his marks. That he did. Little more. I never really learned what it is about his character that is so attractive and apparently inspirational to those around him.
Whatever it was - his idealism, his sense of freedom and independence, his physical beauty - was remote, and to great extent consciously so. McCandless' adeptness at avoiding the larger dangers of the world, physical and emotional was only popishly developed or justified.
Even the events and time leading up to death were drawn so briefly and sweetly, giving poetic lie to what must have been for McCandless a realization of excruciating clarity and horror. A realization that the detachment he had been blithly cultivating produced harsh, irrevocable results.
This is a thoroughly American film. It wants our sympathy and easy admiration above all. I suspect that's from the influence of the McCandless family.
I think the most honest and apt line in the whole film was Hal Holbrook's when he declared, "You're living in dirt."
Holbrook was fine and natural. I liked the young girl who fell in love. As you say, Catherine Keener is not well shown here although she is not used against type.
I haven't seen 'Hollywoodland" yet but I suspect this film and that are of the same ilk, notwithstanding your admiration for Affleck. There probably is some relationship of type with, oh, say "The Motorcycle Diaries". These are not my favorite kinds. Too much is known going in.
I'm glad to have seen it but am not enamoured. Yes, 2 and 1/2 stars.
I wonder now when we'll see the film story of John Walker Lindh? I think he and McCandless are cut somewhat from the same cloth.
the line; he was a religious zealot.
McC died by accident, from a careless mistake no experienced camper--- not to mention outdoors-person-- would make. A tenderfoot attempting to rough it in Alaska is "asking for it." He should have stayed "down under" and lived the hobo life. Or not. We can escape into solipsism and egoism merely by shutting ourselves up in a small room.
Agree on the girl: she has a future and it's not in singing (please?).
The film did have those divisions from childhood to maturity which I found a bit heavy-handed: the story should have been sufficient to communicate it.
I think Hirsch did very little with a long film in which he was on camera the whole time. He just seemed so... ordinary.
And that's what the film tried to do: portray the guy as just another kid that was wandering and looking for something. Not long ago, an entire generation did that. A lot of kids still do though they choose drugs as their vehicle.
You know, if McC hadn't died, his story wouldn't be worth telling.
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