Under The Banner of Disappointment

Friends,

I went out to see the movie film version of Into the Wild tonight at the Maverick 4 Cine. And, I was underwhelmed and glad I only had to pay five dollars for me and Emily to see it.

For those unintiated, the story is this college graduate named Chris McCandless falls desperately in love with Tolstoy and other Russian writers whose names I cannot spell (oh, and he loves Thoreau, too). Because of that love for those writers, it motivates him to eschew all the trappings of his wealthy life in Virginia and go live the enlightened hobo life tramping across the country. Along the way, Chris takes on the pseudonym Alex Supertramp, and goes on wacky, enlightening adventures, then gets to Alaska and starves to death in a hunter's shelter.

Oh, I didn't ruin anything for you by letting you know he's going to die. While the movie may try to tease out his death, but thing is with a movie like this, it can only end with killing the protagonist, otherwise, what do you got? You got nothing. You got a kid who goes camping, grows beard, and goes home if he doesn't die. La-dee-friggin-da. So, the feller croaks. Sheesh, that sound remarkably cold hearted since this is non-fiction, but it relates to this point where I have a problem with the movie in relation to the book.

Now, lookit, in the book, Krakauer puts a lot of himself in there, and it was smart to edit all the Krakauerness out of it to trim the narrative to just McCandless. However, the biggest problem of all in this movie...they forgot to show how stupid the kid was.

The way this movies unfurls, McCandless comes across as an eccentric wanderer who leaves this happy glow behind him. He's like that TV show Kung Fu, but with much less actual kung fu...a bunch of traveling, and a bunch of people feeling happy as a result and then he wanders off to the next adventure to touch more hearts. And in the book, the kid is gregarious, well-liked, charismatic, but ultimately a little bugnuts crazy, self-centered, and the spewer of elitist idealistic bullshit philosophies. The book does an excellent job showing this immaturity of thought in McCandless and how foolish he was deep down...the movie, however, believes in the McCandless bullshit and makes it feel like he's really onto something, like all of his travels were really apart of some great spiritual quest, and we all should shake free our bonds of materialism and go run off to Alaska. It fails to see McCandless as a kook. Yes, they have parts of him being eccentric, but it completely misses the boat on portraying him fully.

Maybe this is a question of point of view in the film versus point of view in the book. The movie is squarely in McCandless's hands, so perhaps that's why we're made to buy into his line of crud and that his actions, though very self-centered and mildly justified, are okay. If there was a little bit of distance where we could see others reacting more to him and his nonsense, then a more complex view of McCandless could emerge were we could see him as foolhearty, but also sincere. The movie, he's just sincere....which is hard to do...for fuck's sake...he picks the surname Supertramp? Really? God. As movie goers were supposed to think that's cool or funny or ironic? I don't think so, and we're not really given much of a window of thinking how ridiculous that name change is. Also, it failed to point out all the mistakes McCandless made in preparation for the Alaska trip, like only bringing rice, purposefully leaving behind gear...also, he died partially because he couldn't cross a river because it had become too treacherous. The thing is...a few miles down the river he could have crossed, if he had only looked. Also, from where he died, he wasn't that far into the wild...in fact, there was a cabin with food relatively close to where he starved to death and a road. McCandless just never found it...too busy being one with nature to understand his circumstances until it was too late. Oh, also, another major goof in the movie is that it makes it look like McCandless decides to come home because he's lonely...that's not the case. In the book, you'll know that he decides to come home because he fufilled his goal, he lived in Alaska for the number of days he intended...bitch of it is he gets stuck. That's a big change in my book because it's a change in McCandless's favor, and with him already being deified in a way, that changed bugged me.

My other beef with the movie, it manages to do two things you'd think would be impossible. It moves too fast and seems to last forever. The film is damn near two and half hours long, so it will take up your time for sure, but how quickly it shows McCandless getting involved in all these people's lives is poorly done. For example, Vince Vaughn plays a feller named Wayne in this movie. Wayne's in here for, oh, ten minutes let's say, but they develop a relationship so tight that when in Alaska, Wayne is the one McCandless writes, not his parents...so a very deep relationship is formed, but I don't think what interaction shown between them really shows that. And that's a downfall of the movie that it is episodic, with each episode involving another character to love McCandless. Yes, the boy grew on people fast, but this movie gets bogged down in trying to show all of those relationships, and it can't be done on film this way...it would need to be much longer.

Oh, did I mention the runtime? A little south of two hours and thirty minutes....oh, and it feels that way too. It drags big time. What makes it difficult to edit this movie is that if you chop out or simplify too much, then it stops being non-fiction and it drifts further away from the book...but that shouldn't have stopped Sean Penn (the screenwriter and director of this). He should have been more faithful to a more compressed yet rich narrative while letting some of the extra bits fall away. Like, did we need the part about the 16 year old girl guitar player? Nope. I enjoyed their relationship, one of the few that I really bought actually, but ultimately, it could have been left behind. As well as some of the arty shots, or home-movie style footage. There's just a lot of fat that could have been trimmed.

Also, Hal Holbrook is nominated for an Oscar for his role in this movie, which doesn't show up until right near the end. He plays a sweet old man and he's good, and I understand why the 35+years of being a lonely widower would make him attach to McCandless so quickly, so I liked his part. He's definitely worth seeing...but you got to sit through so much tedium to get there...sheesh.

I had high hopes for this movie too. I had heard how it might have been snubbed for some awards. Bronson told me it was good, and I trust his non-fiction entertainment nose, but he got this one wrong in my opinion. And it is nominated for all the awards it should be (except for best song....Eddie Vedder put some good stuff together for this).

This isn't to say you shouldn't see it because it isn't a bad movie, it just isn't a good movie. It's kind of "meh" but one long damn "meh." So I am disappointed. Maybe it's because I saw McCandless as this bratty kid, and we're supposed to think he's some kind of hotshit, and I just not buying that part of the equation. The guy was a common loon with better than average intelligence. Also, I'm unsure of the term, but McCandless was wealthy because of his family...so it makes you wonder how easy was it for him to spew all this stuff about not needing anything, and burn piles of money rather than doing anything useful with it because he's somehow above material goods. I can say this though...at least he wasn't out traveling because of On the Road or another Kerouac novel.

Now, to close, here's a Supertramp video (it's the song Dreamer)


viva el mustache