Like many young men cursed with a priv­i­leged life of edu­ca­tion and time to think for them­selves, Chris McCan­d­less (Emile Hirsch) wanted only a vaguely defined “truth” and to not have to rely on any­one. Syn­the­siz­ing his read­ing of Henry Thoreau and Jack Lon­don, he imag­ined for him­self a life of self-sufficiency in the wilder­ness. So McCan­d­less dropped out of soci­ety in the sum­mer of 1990, leav­ing behind all con­nec­tions what­so­ever, includ­ing his legal name and iden­tity. Despite his absolutely clean break, he never seemed to view this trans­for­ma­tion as per­ma­nent; he men­tions more than once that he may write a book when he “comes back.”

Inter­est­ingly for a young man, he also seems to make a point of avoid­ing even tem­po­rary female com­pan­ion­ship. He rejects the friend­ship of Jan (Kather­ine Keener), and aban­dons his younger sis­ter Carine (Jena Mal­one), the per­son with whom he appar­ently had the clos­est bond. Carine nar­rates the film, with total sym­pa­thy for his beliefs and actions. But even she points out that he acted with “char­ac­ter­is­tic immoderation.”

The Rough Guide to Self-Actualization

McCan­d­less died alone in August 1992. He remains a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure (should his asceti­cism be admired, or was he a fool?), and his soli­tary death the sub­ject of an intrigu­ing mys­tery (was he really trapped with food poi­son­ing, or did he allow him­self to die slowly as a form of pas­sive sui­cide?). This film inter­pre­ta­tion of his story does make it clear that he was a priv­i­leged kid who hadn’t truly suf­fered. While drink­ing with new buddy Wayne (Vince Vaughn), he lets slip his ado­les­cent belief that one of the worst forms of tyranny in the world is “par­ents.” As we see, his par­ents (Mar­cia Gay Harden and William Hurt) are all too human and not half as mon­strous as he imag­ines. So per­haps his adven­ture was more than an ide­al­is­tic reac­tion to mere money, soci­ety, and mate­ri­al­ism. He was also run­ning away from the “free” things that liv­ing in soci­ety affords, what every­one craves in life: fam­ily, friends, and lovers.

Hence the title

A note on the music: just as McCan­d­less looks back­wards for lit­er­ary inspi­ra­tion, he also has anti­quated taste in music for a kid liv­ing in the early 90s. His new name for him­self, “Super­tramp” puns on the clas­sic rock band and his new lifestyle. He chris­tens his new and final home, an aban­doned bus, after The Who’s “Magic Bus.” For the music of the film itself, direc­tor Sean Penn drew upon two musi­cians that made names for them­selves in the early 90s: Pearl Jam’s Eddie Ved­der (who con­tributed songs to Dead Man Walk­ing), and guitarist/composer Michael Brook. Vedder’s songs for the film were released as an album, but Brook’s excel­lent score is also avail­able dig­i­tally.

Into the Wild is yet another in a long series of films I’ve seen recently that are based on books I haven’t read (The Kite Run­ner, No Coun­try for Old Men, The Name­sake, The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James, etc.). But even so, I believe I can detect a few rem­nants of the film’s prose ori­gins as John Krakauer’s book:

• the film is bro­ken into “Chap­ters” with onscreen titles
• voiceover nar­ra­tion
• the visual device of super­im­posed text from McCan­d­less’ own jour­nals pro­vides a sec­ond “voice”
• episodic feel — but that’s jus­ti­fied by the events/phases of his jour­ney — he keeps mak­ing clean breaks every time he comes close to set­tling in somewhere

Offi­cial movie site: www.intothewild.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

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