My colleague was not a huge fan of this, but I always felt there might be something here I could enjoy. This is, in many ways, a very Matt film - it's a (Sean-Penn-helmed) biopic about a young man, Christopher McCandless, who gives all his savings to charity, leaves his family and friends behind, and goes off, 'into the wild', on a long journey towards the Alaskan wilderness. It's the kind of life I might dream of if only I had the courage to contemplate living it. Anyway, did I end up agreeing with my colleague's C+ (from memory) or not?First, the good. This is a stunningly beautiful film, deserving of being mentioned in the same breath as 2007's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Film. However, Eric Gautier's job here is far less demanding than Roger Deakins' in Jesse James, as the mood approaches wildlife documentary and doesn't have as many of the emotional complexities and themes reflected in Deakins' stunning, expansive and bleak American wilderness. Still, this doesn't detract from the beauty of the images and Gautier should be commended for an excellent job.
The performances are also good. Emile Hirsch (a dead ringer - surely no accident? - for a young Sean Penn) does a good job as the film's protagonist McCandless. William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden are as dependable as always as his despairing parents and the film is well narrated by Jena Malone, who plays McCandless' sister Carine. The film is largely driven, and memorable, however, by a number of shortish cameos, by Vince Vaughn, the beautiful Catherine Keener, Brian H. Dierker and, particularly, the excellent Hal Holbrook, who delivers the film's standout, albeit, brief, performance.
The problem is that that performance also demonstrates how off-kilter the film is, or at least becomes. I don't think it ever quite decides whose side you're supposed to be on. So much screen time and audience energy is invested in McCandless and his adventures and yet you are left with this detatched feeling when it comes to his incredibly selfish interaction with other characters, something not really, or at least not properly, picked up on by the film's narration and, indeed, narrator. This is particularly true of the film's best scene, involving Hirsch and a supremely despondant and emotional Hal Holbrook. who invests it with a genuine and deep pathos. Your opinion of McCandless slides and slies after that point, but you cannot but help feel that it's not supposed to. The last hour or so feels hopelessly unbalanced as a result.
Also, the ending is absolutely awful and flies in the face of much of what the rest of the film has been attempting to say. Clearly this film was made with the cooperation and input of McCandless' family and perhaps this is what they truly perceived to be his 'redemtpion'. It is important to bare these things in mind when you're reviewing a biopic - this is after all about a young man's life - but it equally isn't right to ignore such issues and it certainly doesn't do justice to the film's (admirable) purpose.
So there we have it. If this review feels a little confused, I'm glad, as that reflects how I feel as I've written it. It's worth watching but just expect to have a strong opinion afterwards and to not necessarily feel entirely satisfied. I firmly believe that Penn has a great film in him. This isn't - yet - it.
B- (so the answer to that inevitable question I began by posing is nearly : )
