Into the Wild

[lsanderson]

Following His Trail to Danger and Joy

By A. O. SCOTT
Published: September 21, 2007

There is plenty of sorrow to be found in “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s adaptation of the nonfiction bestseller by Jon Krakauer. The story begins with an unhappy family, proceeds through a series of encounters with the lonely and the lost, and ends in a senseless, premature death. But though the film’s structure may be tragic, its spirit is anything but. It is infused with an expansive, almost giddy sense of possibility, and it communicates a pure, unaffected delight in open spaces, fresh air and bright sunshine.

Some of this exuberance comes from Christopher Johnson McCandless, the young adventurer whose footloose life and gruesome fate were the subject of Mr. Krakauer’s book. As Mr. Penn understands him (and as he is portrayed, with unforced charm and brisk intelligence, by Emile Hirsch), Chris is at once a troubled, impulsive boy and a brave and dedicated spiritual pilgrim. He does not court danger but rather stumbles across it — thrillingly and then fatally — on the road to joy. More

There's a scene in the movie where they're straight combining a field of grain, that did not affect me the way it was intended. The one character gets out of the combine and stands there as the straw spreader sprays the straw and chaff around. Being on a combine is my idea of hell, being sprayed by the straw spreader something past that. Harvest and hay seasons were always my seasons of hell, and seeing a combine is my idea of purgatory. Each part, the straw, the grain, the chaff, and the dust antithetical to me, and, without proper drugs, life-threatening. Drugs are better these days, but a combine is still not my friend, even if they do cost as much as a house.