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In Reply to: RE: "Into the Wild," so many problems yet... posted by tinear on October 20, 2007 at 14:21:50
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.
Edits: 10/21/07 10/21/07 10/21/07 10/21/07Follow Ups:
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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