In April, 1992, Chris McCandless began hiking along the Stampede Trail, near Denali National Park, Alaska. Carrying few provisions, including a .22 rifle, a bag of rice and a book on the local flora and fauna, he soon discovered an abandoned bus and made it his base camp. For almost 120 days, McCandless lived off his rice, small game and birds, and edible plants that grew in the area. On September 6, 1992, his body was found by a group of hikers. He had been dead for almost two weeks.
An adaptation by Sean Penn (who wrote and directed the film) of Jon Krakauer’s book by the same name, Into the Wild chronicles McCandless journey beginning shortly after he graduated from Emory University in 1990 and proceeded to donate his savings - $24,000 - to Oxfam. The film follows his adventures of the next two years as he drives westward, abandons his car, and hitchhikes his way through California; his work in a grain elevator in South Dakota, where he first begins to talk about an Alaska trip; his kayak trip down the Colorado River all the way into Mexico, ultimately winding up in the Gulf of California; and the people he met and befriended, all the while traveling and living under a pseudonym - Alexander Supertramp.
More dramatization than actual documentary, the film does stay close to the facts that are known about McCandless and his two-year sojourn, during which time he had no contact with his family, friends, or anyone who would have known him as anything other than “Alex.” Emile Hirsch, who I last saw in The Girl Next Door, puts in a great performance, as does Hal Holbrook as Ron Franz, an older man who befriends McCandless right before he leaves for his “great Alaskan adventure.”
I suppose the oddest thing is that, for whatever reason, this movie managed to get under my skin. Maybe I recognize the headstrong personality in myself. Maybe it’s the idea of doing what you want to do, rather than what others expect. Maybe it’s as Morgan says - that I see he was satisfied with his life when there’s so much dissatisfaction in my own. I don’t know.
What I do know is that McCandless has been written and talked about as everything from a suicidal kook, to a modern day Thoreau, living life away from the corrupting influence of society. And any story that manages to draw so many opinions from opposite ends of the spectrum deserves to be known.
-K
