"Into the Wild"

Sean Penn’s movie "Into the Wild" is a landmark cultural event. It might not be seen that way now, but over time this film’s straightforward story-telling and illumination of deeper human truths will stand in the starkest contrast to the false values and cruel lies that characterize far too many aspects of American life during the second Bush Administration.

By chance, I was reading Jon Krakauer’s original book version of Into the Wild at the time the advertisements for the film first appeared, and I’d encourage anyone interested in seeing the film to read Krakauer first. The book’s journalistic rigor – entirely admirable, even necessary – presents an all-sides view of Christopher J. McCandless, the young man of privilege who escapes the confusion of his family life and the perceived falseness of his parents’ imperfect marriage, in the search for a more truthful existence on the road and ultimately in the Alaskan wilderness. While Krakauer is clearly sympathetic to McCandless, he centers much of the character’s wanderlust in an adventurer’s almost genetic longing for new experience. In Penn’s vivid adaptation, the clay of Krakauer’s way with the story is fired and brought fully to life. The literary inspirations that moved McCandless– from Thoreau to Tolstoy and Pasterrnak, his psychological trauma, his profound attraction to nature, his guilelessness – all of these come together in a way that leaves you feeling that McCandless wasn’t foolhardy or careless, but simply doing the only thing that was right for him.

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth,” Thoreau implores in Walden, and these words are perhaps the single greatest inspiration fueling McCandless’s quest – indeed, they are the underpinning of his entire life. And Penn has given us just that: the truth not only about who McCandless was, but also where the true American spirit resides.

Penn’s respect for McCandless’s story is complete: not one scene is too long, nothing is underlined for effect, clichés are nowhere to be found. As the film progresses the spiritual dimension of McCandless’s quest grows ever more powerful and rings ever more true. The lonely McCandless, trapped in the wilderness, succumbing to starvation, is revealed not as the idealistic and tragic fool. Rather he is shown as a martyr whose life can be held up as a mirror to hordes of people who have long forgotten how to seek the truth and long for a better life and more just society.

During Bushes’ reign of error, it’s has been near impossible to utter the phrase, “I’m proud to be an American.” Sean Penn has flown to Venezuelan and to Iran to meet with their people and leaders to make political statements, but his strongest and longest-lasting anti-Bush statement has been made in this scrupulously honest, spiritually joyous and profoundly American film.