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The debate over whether
Chris was a highly evolved truth seeker or a vengeful and self destructive
personality is not answered either in the book or the film. Ever looking
for the real McCandless, Penn fills in the gaps with a semi-idealized version
but since the only knowledge we have of the real person is from Chris’
journals, letters, novels and poems, and the thoughts of his sister Carine
(Jena Malone) narrated in voiceover, who he was remains maddeningly elusive.
In spite of Chris’ ultimate discovery about the true nature of happiness,
Into the Wild is not a message film but a voyage of discovery in which
a headstrong young man gradually acquires the wisdom to reach out to others,
even to his parents in a fevered dream. More than a story about a return
to nature, or a white middle class youth’s protest against his parent’s
values, it is a search for authenticity in a world that has forgotten what
truth looks and feels like.
Chris is engagingly played
by Emile Hirsch who had to ride the rapids of the Colorado River and lose
45 pounds in the process of making the film. He brings a quality of instant
likeability to his role, though at times he skirts around the edges of
the character without fully inhabiting him. The film is divided into four
chapters that signal Chris’s growing maturity. It begins in Alaska, then
flashes back to the two-year journey that brought him to this point. Along
the way, he gives away his $24,000 inheritance to charity, burns all of
his money, abandons his car, changes his name, and hitchhikes across the
country and up to Alaska, never once communicating with his distraught
family.
It was part of Chris’
contradiction that he rejected human relationships, yet was able to give
of himself to those he met along the way. He makes a friend of Wayne (Vince
Vaughn) his boss as a farm worker in South Dakota, an 81-year old retired
veteran (Hal Holbrook) who offers to adopt him, a 16 year-old singer-songwriter
(Kristen Stewart), and a pair of aging free spirits Rainey and Jana (Catherine
Keener and Brian Dierker). These contacts appear to be genuine but McCandless
keeps his distance. When Jana tells Chris about her own son who ran away
and hasn’t been heard from in two years, he seems curiously unmoved and
is silent when Jana tells him how children are often cruel to their parents.
Backed by original songs
by Eddie Vedder that never seem discordant, Into the Wild is a beautiful
film that should be remembered at Oscar time, if only for Hal Holbrook’s
masterful supporting performance. Though it occasionally lapses into clichés
such as Chris telling Tracy that “If you want something in life, reach
out and grab it” and melodramatic scenes where the sun emerges from the
clouds just at the right moment, the film has a grasp of the grit of life
and ultimately becomes transcendent. While we may rightly view Chris’ short
life as a tragedy, but as Albert Einstein says, “the real tragedy of life
is what dies inside a man while he lives”.
Whatever else could be
said about Chris, and as a parent I am appalled by his cruelty in refusing
to contact his mother and father or even his sister for a period of two
years, to him life was a game that was only worth playing 100%. Those who
refuse to take risks in life may stand in judgment of McCandless and call
him stupid, yet some have forgotten what it is like to be young and some
never knew. He made mistakes, serious errors of judgment, yet in the end
I am reminded of what George Bernard Shaw says, “I rejoice in life for
its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid
torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn
as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." Chris
McCandless life was a candle that burned brightly on both ends, then flickered
and died but what he has passed on to us is a splendid torch.
GRADE: A-
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