Guest Film Review: Into The Wild
Here’s a Guest film Review by Dan Schneider, who has this heavily-visited website and whose reviews for TMV have been highly popular.
Film Review Of Into The Wild
Copyright © 2007 by Dan Schneider
How did the bus get there?
Of all the questions (pseudo and real) that Sean Penn’s latest film, Into The Wild, is so manifestly trying to provoke- and in a semi-retarded hippy-cum-tree hugger sort of way, this most basic and elemental plot point is never addressed. But, more on that later.
The film is based upon the 1996 nonfiction bestseller by Jon Krakauer, about a spoiled rich white suburban boy who basically commits suicide in the Alaskan wilderness, although he is so painfully unaware of the real world that he does not even know his own dark- almost Objectivist, impulses, and where they will lead.
The book the film is based upon was a good read, even if one might question the wisdom of making a martyr out of such a delusional narcissist as Christopher Johnson McCandless (Emile Hirsch) – the 24 year old who starved to death on the aforementioned bus, after accidentally poisoning himself with inedible berries, in the middle of Alaska’s wilds, after adopting the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp.
The lead character is simply annoyingly repellent- perhaps only Roberto Benigni’s lead character, Guido, in the awful Life Is Beautiful, makes a viewer more actively root for the character’s death. In that film the lead character is so annoying that one actually roots for the Nazis to kill him, and in this film McCandless is so pompous and the film so long (140 minutes, compared to a book barely over 200 pages) that, at the hour mark, one wishes he’d just die already, so one can vacate the theater. But, no relief will come for over an hour.
But, as repellent as Chris McCandless, the character, is, the direction by Sean Penn- in his first truly big budget feature, is ATROCIOUS!
Yes, Penn is a great actor, but his direction, and even worse screenplay, make this film a chore. Only some stellar acting, mostly by supporting actors, saves this film from total disaster.
Let me detail the many flaws in the film’s direction and writing, before detailing the ethical conflicts of deifying such a silly figure.
First there are the technical aspects of the film.
The cinematography by Eric Gautier is simply not good. There are some beautiful scenes- but that’s because the outdoor scenes, especially, are naturally beautiful. The camera only lingers on them for 4 or 5 seconds, tops, and does nothing to impart a unique vision. Most scenes are cut even more quickly, and instead of the deep penetrating images of, say, an Antonioni film, the scenes of Alaska or the Southwest fade swiftly from memory. In Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu, by contrast, there are scenes in mountain settings that really penetrate the character simply by isolating him against the slowly changing immensities. Not in this film.
There is nothing that suggests that McCandless’s fleeting arrested adolescence is tiny, in the scheme of the cosmos. Instead, it is fetishized in slow motion close-ups that rapturously pore over even his pores. This reminds me of the wasted cinematography in The Motorcycle Diaries, another film that glorified a bored suburban loser to a near Christ-like hagiography- a character whom all see as touched by something from beyond, endowed with all goodness and wisdom, despite being manifestly nothing like that. At least this film, however, did not glorify a mass murderer.
Then there is the neverending stream of filmic tricks, as if Penn wants mere razzle-dazzle to carry the film, rather than substance.
These are not only signs of artistic anomy, but are very poorly used. They include postcard scrolls in McCandless’s handwriting, an opening Byronic epigraph, voice over narration, split-screens, several breakings of the fourth wall- for no apparent reason (the worst being when McCandless eats an apple), pretentiously titled chapter sections, and musical selections as inapt as the whir of MTV-style editing. Perhaps the only such trick that works is the opening of the film, where McCandless’s mom, Billie (Marcia Gay Harden), awakens and calls his name.
Yet, the rest of the film vacillates between the past and the present- with no justifiable narrative reason, and the mother disappears into the background, so the opening’s jarring effect is pretty much lost since we never get to caring about her, much less her husband, Walt (William Hurt). Later in the film, a florid and anomic voiceover by McCandless’s sister, Carine (Jena Malone), tells us that these children of millionaires had to deal with such hardships as finding out they were ‘bastards,’ that society is shallow and materialistic, and that their parents dared to want the best for them.
Oh, yeah, their mother was also a shrewish harpy and their father would sometimes slap her around because of it. Ain’t life tough in suburbia?
But, the voiceovers are not only ill placed and written, but largely superfluous and at odds with reality.
As for the latter posit, the fact that Carine claims to know McCandless inside and out, and understands why he left on an odyssey without informing anyone, is at odds with what the film depicts: that they were not close, and that he was not a caring individual. As for the former posit, one scene, among many, illustrates the superfluity of the narration.
Carine tells us that her mother, after many months, started thinking any young man she saw with a backpack was McCandless. As this is told to us, we see Marcia Gay Harden overreacting as she drives her car past a young man with a backpack. Now, remove the narration, and the scene is still rather self-explanatory. Any intelligent viewer can know exactly what the mother is thinking. Thus, it is unnecessary.
But superfluity reigns not only in the voice over, but in other scenes and techniques.
While tramping through Los Angeles, with his stuff in a homeless shelter’s locker, McCandless passes by a yuppy bar, with kids his own age there. He sees a young guy hitting on a girl, and imagines himself in the guy’s place. He is repelled by the vision. Yet again, any intelligent viewer can easily make out what McCandless is thinking as he longingly looks through the window at the young hedonist. The substitution of himself for the yuppy, who then tips his own drink to himself, is just too much, and this sneering condescension shows just how little Penn thinks of his audience.
But, none of these techniques are fundamental to the narrative of the tale, thus Penn’s film goes all over the map because he is like a child with too many toys, unable to use any of them properly. Furthermore, Penn is utterly incapable of any deeper introspection than having McCandless utter banalities to people clearly older and wiser than he is.
Like almost all Hollywood tripe, Into The Wild worships, if not fetishizes, youthful recklessness and folly, for that lack of introspection the cipher of McCandless cannot engage is matched by Penn’s own lack of insight, which makes the film recapitulate its lead character’s flaws, but this vapidity is hardly a positive aspect of the film. This flaw in the screenplay is best illustrated when it focuses what little screen time it does, on his parents, solely on their problems, while spending the whole movie ignoring the glaringly obvious flaws of its protagonist, whom it views as someone profound, when the reality is that one could go into any artsy-fartsy bar or café, on any given day, and encounter tens of thousands of McCandless types with childish dreams.
The difference is that most of their obsessions do not lead them to death; therefore McCandless’s exceptionalism was merely evidence of his overweening stupidity- or, to be generous, immaturity.
Along the way to his self-determined death in Alaska, he meets up with a bevy of good-minded people who embrace, envy, and help him, and one railroad bull he beats the crap out of him for hitching a ride on the train. The bull, ironically, was the only person who really did McCandless a favor, and one can only admit that those who tried to help him only enabled McCandless’s addiction to the drug of his choice- irresponsibility, when what he really needed was a good bitchslapping.
These enablers included aging hippies, Jan and Rainey (Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker), a South Dakota wheat worker (and apparently drug dealer), Wayne (Vince Vaughn), and a retired military widower and leather craftsman, Ron Franz (Hal Holbrook). Of course, all of them find themselves in awe of the youngster with such ‘depth,’ even though their lives are manifestly more joyful than his, and he is even more lost in life than they or his parents are.
But all of their characters, even in their short appearances onscreen and despite the silly idea that they would genuflect at this kid’s altar, are defined by exceptional performances- especially Holbrook, sans his trademark mustache, as Ron, who wants to adopt McCandless just before he leaves for Alaska.
Perhaps the only good directorial sign Penn shows comes when a 16 year old female songstress, Tracy (Kristen Stewart), he meets when at a desert retreat with Jan and Rainey, tries to seduce him. McCandless turns her down because she is underage, and we see he likely cares for her. That Penn did not opt for a trite love story seems a sign that Penn has some potential as a director, until one realizes he had no choice, lest change the very autobiographical details of this film he seemingly strove to make as real to McCandless’s life as possible.
This is where Penn makes another error.
Not that he should have had McCandless get some thigh, but that he should have developed the relationships of McCandless with the minor characters more, for they would have illumined McCandless more. As is, his character is a virtual cipher, whereas the minor characters range from very well sketched to indelibly brilliant. That said, little of this is the flaw of Hirsch, who does very well with what little meat Penn feeds him in his horrid screenplay.
The worst part of the script is that it is told in flashbacks, for ridding the film of this structure would get rid of the voice overs, and let the emotional power in the film, especially that developed within the brief relationships McCandless forges, to build up slowly- especially in such a long film (trimming it by 50-60 minutes is a necessity). Instead, Penn undercuts even that with his manifold examples of directorial incompetence.
The soundtrack is similarly bad, save for a brief comic respite where McCandless paddles down the Grand Canyon without a permit, is chased by River Police, and encounters a wacky Dutch couple. They are playing M.C. Hammer’s U Can’t Touch This, which reverberates off the canyon walls. Other than that, the music far too easily gives away emotional endpoints, and is suffused with atrocious Eddie Vedder humalongs.
The ending of the film is appropriately awful, as McCandless dies of food poisoning, looking up at the sun in his bus, as he is too stupid to properly realize what berries he is eating, after he claims to be trapped by the thawed river. Yet, it never seems to have occurred to him to simply follow the raging river downstream to where an easier crossing, or other people, will inevitably be.
Yet, as bad as so much of this film is (it also bizarrely includes a poem from the awful doggerelist Sharon Olds, to boot), it is the perfect sort of vapid Oscar-worthy fare that Hollywood loves to celebrate, loaded with nostrums of pseudo-insight as ‘Happiness is real only if shared,’ and ‘You can have it all if you know what you really want.’ Of course, mature individuals know the answer to both those claims is no.
So much of Into The Wild reads like a bad poem with good intentions, or a slice of 1970s Jonathan Livingston Seagull mindfarts, that one wishes Penn had a dram of humor so he could have at least given his audience some campy joy- especially in some scenes, like one where Ron and McCandless are debating in the desert near a nudist colony.
But, he does not, and all the blame for that is Penn’s, who, like so many other mediocre Oscar winning actors-cum-bad directors (Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood), takes a mediocre tale and makes it worse. A great film director, like Werner Herzog, however, can take just such a tale (see Grizzly Man, about another idiotic nature lover who got himself killed in the Alaskan wilderness) and make it interesting, while simultaneously empathizing with, and laughing at, his main character’s idiocy. And when will there be a film made about a true Alaska icon, like Dick Proenneke, a man who tested himself against the worst Alaska had to offer….and survived because he was smart, prepared, and determined?
Probably, it is not even thought of, much less in the works, for such realities do not feed the youth-glorifying machine Hollywood feeds the Lowest Common Denominator zombies who dream McCandlessian aeries. That so many people identify and sympathize with this unfortunately deluded and hollow young loser bespeaks how little they even notice themselves, and their own flaws, much less the many other McCandlesses that proliferate in cafes across the nation.
Life is as real, both for the good and ill, in a New York City deli, a doctor’s waiting room, or in a tenement, as it is on the peak of Mount Everest, riding the tube of a forty foot wave in Hawaii, or trekking through the Amazon. McCandless never learned this for no one seemed to care enough to even try to stop him. Of course, even had they, he was so selfish and uncaring of others’ feelings, that he likely would not have been deterred. And, Penn would likely not have cared to make a film about such a character, anyway.
So, given the predetermined mess of this film, I return to the opening query- how did the bus, which the film refers to as ‘magic’- thank you to The Who, get there? A Google search reveals the bus was fortuitously left by a highway construction company, decades earlier, to be used as a waystation for hikers, hunters, and campers.
Since everything else in this film is so obvious, I just thought you’d want to know that and, also, to avoid this film.
Thank me later.
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Wow. You really missed the point of this movie. It is unfortunate that you so handily minimize the pain and suffering of another. It is obvious this kid was not happy, and something very important was missing from his life, which he was trying to find. But to you he is just “stupid” and “a delusional narcissist”. It is unfortunate he had to die to find what was missing, but you seem to be rather glad that this was the outcome.
I will do my best to avoid the hateful messages that you and others like you have to offer. Please look try to look at yourself more deeply in the mirror. What made you who you are today? You may even want to contrast it with the kid in the movie. What made him what he was?
So did you like the movie or not? I couldn’t tell by your short review.
I liked the movie and the book too. While I on the one hand admired Chris’s fervor in pursuing his individual ideas, I simultaneously marvel at his inability to address the difference between fiction and reality. In his writing he clearly idolized Jack London and Thoreau. Neither of these people really did what they said they did. Now, I love “Walden” as much as anybody could, but the fact of the matter is that the “experiment” wasn’t Thoreau’s solitary life for two years, it was an experiment that he conducted while still very much carrying on his life in Concord. That’s not to put down Thoreau, but to point out that it was misguided to try and emulate it.
I thought the movie did a good job of showing Chris’s vision of reality with what reality truly was. It didn’t glorify his actions, contrary to what I keep reading. If you watch the movie you see that. The narrative inside his head was that his parents were heartless people that drove him away. The hippie mom was the out-of-family parallel to the situation Chris said he was running from, and it was clear how much she hurt from her own son’s leaving. Was Chris’s mom the same or different (there are heartless people in the world by the way)? We find out when the movie goes over the mother having the same motherly motions that one would expect in this situation.
The same is true for what you consider to be the brow beating in the bar scene. Did you know what he was thinking when he was staring longingly into the bar window? At first you think he is looking at them resentfully, but his eyes are a little too full of want for that. He in fact begins to want those things, the “normal things” of life that he had been running away from. When he saw himself as clearly being able to be within that culture, simply by existing in the city for a few short hours, he ran away because his ideology didn’t allow him to accept those things. You couldn’t have gotten that sort of rush of mixed emotions in a more effective way.
I like the idea of rugged individualism, it’s the American way. But the way Chris did it was heartless, wrong and very short sighted. The reality is that nature and life aren’t flexing and kind. You have to be prepared for them. Almost everyone also have family and friends that do care about ones’ well being, and they shouldn’t be isolated in the way that he did his own family. A much better model for rugged individualism done right would be Richard Proenneke. They should have made a movie like this about him. The problem, from a movie making perspective, is that Proenneke didn’t do it for some over arching ideological reasons or some inner-built family resentment. He did it because he thought that Twin Lakes was beautiful and he liked his isolation. He lived in the Alaska wilderness successfully for 30 years, building his own cabin by hand with only hand powered tools, but went in fully prepared for the experience. Now that’s impressive!
If the Sean Penn movie treatment doesn’t do right by this book, that is truly unfortunate. I read the book by Krakauer some years back, and was moved by the thought provoking, disturbing, well researched and well written story. Krakauer as I’m sure some of you are aware, is well qualified to write such a book, in part by dint of his own experiences. The movie review, however, makes me wonder what Mr. Schneider even thought of the book? He seems to delight a little too much in trying to find ways to diminish the validity of Chris McCandless’s all too human experience. A movie review is one thing, an inability to empathize with a flawed, foolish, but also courageous person is quite another. It’s so easy to pass judgement isnt’ it.
Dan and I went to go see this film together and we were discussing it for a long while afterwards. Having said that, the book is much better than the film. Too many cliches fill this film, like when McCandless tells Tracy “When you want something, reach out and grab it.” It’s just so trite, and the writing meant to be the sister’s narration made me squirm in my seat.
I have a love/hate relationship with McCandless. Dan’s point here is spot on:
“Life is as real, both for the good and ill, in a New York City deli, a doctor’s waiting room, or in a tenement, as it is on the peak of Mount Everest, riding the tube of a forty foot wave in Hawaii, or trekking through the Amazon. McCandless never learned this”
I also think the whole idolization of McCandless is dangerous because it makes young people think they have to go off and live sensationalized lives for their lives to have any “meaning” or “depth” to them.
But as is, it is difficult to empathize with “the pain and suffering of another” when that pain and suffering is brought on by himself and he carelessly avoids all necessary precautions. That’s why Dick Proenneke is such a strong contrast. One can still have adventure and make smart choices.
Penn’s directing was also very distracting with all the writing on the screen, split screens, etc. He wanted us to know there was a serious DIRECTOR AT WORK.
For that reason, the film did not pull me in like the book did because I never once throughout the film forgot I was watching a film because, ‘oh look, more writing on the screen to remind me that I’m watching a film…’
You think this will inspire young people to go out on a tear and accidentally kill themselves? Remember, even in the movie, he had close brushes with death before the Alaskan wilderness hit him. The very first dialog was the guy saying, “if you make it out alive” and the main character scoffing at such a notion. All of this is what actually happened.
I saw the movie before I knew Sean Penn directed it. Perhaps that’s why I wasn’t so critical about the direction. I’m not a fan of his at all, so generally avoid his work. I’m glad I didn’t in this case.
A lot is missed if a movie, or a story is approached fromt the standpoint of either embracing or rejecting the main character or theme. Much more to the point is to see what there is in the story that illuminates something about being a human being, about us.
Every individual is complex, often containing tendencies at war with one another. To referee those tendencies well, one muct first know what they are, to recognize that they are there, in us.
To learn anything at all, it’s necessary to understand how the hero and anti-hero versions of ourselves are interlaced. To reject either is to subscribe to a fairy tale version of life. That is more dangerous that exposing young minds to challenging ideas Jessica Schneider.
This story illuminates several aspects of the human soul. And that’s a good thing.
A fairy tale version of life was just what McCandless had. And I don’t consider statements like “When you want something reach out and grab it” challenging.
Here’s what the Wikipedia page states:
“many Alaskans react with rage to his stupidity. You’d have to be a complete idiot, they say, to die of starvation in summer 20 miles off the Park’s Highway.”
And the film fails to mention this important detail.
Nessica S. said:
“A fairy tale version of life was just what McCandless had”
Right.
And so, we are invited to think about what it was that led him to turn to a fairy tale, Next, we are invited to think about what fairy tales we, ourselves, embrace. And so on.
It’s a mistake, IMO, to confuse the main character with a hero figure. If you put aside the hero/anti-hero labels, much can be learned about both the frailty and strength of the human spirit.
Sean Penn, on Charlie Rose, expressed a clear understanding of this, BTW. It seems to me, this crtitque is of something the movie is not, namely, an edorsement of the character and what he did.
I haven’t read the book. Even assuming the worst, that the author did see his character as a hero, though, that still leaves us with the choice of either putting him out of mind as unworthy of consideration, or thinking about what can be learned from his foibles. Just one possiblity would be to think how we all embrace ideas and ideals with such devotion that we become blinded to all else. Don Quijote, you know, lives in all of us.
Tim: I reviewed a movie about a character- who was an idiot. There is a difference between a film and a human being, When you understand that, you will have reached puberty.
Mr. Mod: Film blew- like or dislike are irrelavent. Note, I mentioned Dick P. in the review. There was a man worth emulating- not an ass like McCandless or the even more delusional Timothy Treadwell of Grizzly Man.
J Spencer: I do empathize w McCandless, which is why I was able to so easily define him,. What you are describing is sympathy. They are different things. Look up their definitions. No, I don’t sympathize one iota with the stupid. But empathy, yes.
As for the book, I wrote: ‘The book the film is based upon was a good read.’
It’s amazing when people comment, and then manifest that they just skimmed a review.
Mr. Mod: ‘You think this will inspire young people to go out on a tear and accidentally kill themselves?’
No, but will fools worship this kid, like they do other fools who off themselves early? Yes, look at James Dean, Tupac Shakur, etc.
Doma: I reviewed a film that fetishized an individual. I did not psychoanalyze a person. Learn to distinguish the difference. I also detailed numerous directorial and narrative flaws.
Perhaps reading a review is required before commenting on it, even if this goes against blog tradition?
domajot–
I agree with what you’re saying. You should read the book if you get a chance. It is a very good book–well written.
Doma: ‘Nessica S. said:
“A fairy tale version of life was just what McCandless hadâ€
Right.
And so, we are invited to think about what it was that led him to turn to a fairy tale, Next, we are invited to think about what fairy tales we, ourselves, embrace. And so on.
***Except the film does not offer such an invitation- it wholly embraces the folly of the character and reveres him as a more than mortal amongst mortals. I compared it with that bad Che Guevara film for a reason.
It’s a mistake, IMO, to confuse the main character with a hero figure. If you put aside the hero/anti-hero labels, much can be learned about both the frailty and strength of the human spirit.
***This is true, but it is THE FILM that mistakes McCandless as a hero, not the reviewer.
Sean Penn, on Charlie Rose, expressed a clear understanding of this, BTW. It seems to me, this crtitque is of something the movie is not, namely, an edorsement of the character and what he did.’
***Penn can say whatever BS he wants, the film says differently, as I show in some of the scenes described. Artists often say their work is about something, when the work lacks such qualities. This is why critics exist. And the film is an endorsement, in its obsession with the lead, its rapturous photography of him, its simpleminded explanations of his behavior, reinforced by narrations, etc. The film is a 100% hagiography of the character. Any flaws you have with that ideal are the film’s, not the review’s.
Cosmoetica, I haven’t seen the movie, and so my knowledge of the subject is confined to the book. I did note your brief comment about the book being a good read, but you followed that by suggesting Krakauer was trying to make a martyr of McCandless, which was what led me to pose the question you found so annoying.
Sympathy and empathy? It is empathy that keeps me from entirely accepting your view of McCandless as a spoiled fool and little more. As I recall from my own experiences, being young involves being foolish and making mistakes. If we survive them it’s one of the ways we learn. Some mistakes have greater consequences than others. Perhaps if he had survived his, he might have emerged with a lesson in humility.
About Timothy Treadwell: Perhaps he was metally ill. Either that or he brought foolishness to a new level. It’s especially unsettling, especially tragic, especially senseless, that he involved another person, one who trusted him, in a fate that would have made a certain sense had he met it alone. Sorry, I know this isn’t about Treadwell, but the name came up…
Anyway, I appreciated reading your review of the movie, and even though I took a certain amount of issue with it, I enjoyed your perceptions and writing. Certainly no one can accuse you of being ambiguous about your pov! I will likely steer clear of the movie at least in part because of your review, but also because I don’t see that any useful new information would come from seeing it.
Cosmo-
What you saw in the movie is not what I saw in the movie. I saw no endorsememt WHASOEVER.
In much the same way, Madame Bovary is not a recommnedation for the emptty lives of the bourgeoisie, it is, rather, condemnation with a touch of pity. While on the suject, it makes the reader confront the bits of the bourgois in one’s own life,
A lot of what one sees in a movie depends on what the viewer, or reviewer, brings to the viewing experinece. It is abvious we brought different frames of reference and had different experiences.
I’m delighted with the food-for-thought the movie provided for me.
I leave you with your own perceptions and what they bring, or not bring, to your experience.
Well, this is no documentary, but the movie purported to be about someone who was a human being. I don’t know how truthful the movie is to the actual human being it was about, but given that, why is the character an idiot? Because he was trying to find something essential that was missing from his life? Something he had been unable to find any of the other places he had been looking? This was a desperate character. Perhaps that is what either the movie failed to show or you failed to pick up on. I don’t know that the movie showed the true desperation this person must have felt to go on a journey like this completely alone. But, and I think you missed this, ion the end he did actually find what he was looking for (the character anyway, not sure about the real Chris), but only in dying.
Not sure what you mean about the puberty bit.
JSpencer: Juvenile mistakes are drinking too much or not pulling on a condom correctly. Willfully heading into the wilderness w no training or map is folly way beyond that. He had problems- so? Clearly he had no answers any greater than his parents or the others he encountered. Empathy is understanding him- I do; as I stated, he was rather like many many artistes wannabe. Sympathy is feeling sorry for him. That is what this reeks of: ‘If we survive them it’s one of the ways we learn. Some mistakes have greater consequences than others. Perhaps if he had survived his, he might have emerged with a lesson in humility.’
In short, as many Alaskans have said, he got what he deserved. As did Treadwell.
Doma: You were not paying attention if you did not see the film as an endorsement. A) the film was made about him, not a real worthwhile man like Dick Proenneke. b) the film fetishizes McCandless in images like many a supermodel in a swimsuit shoot. c) the narration of the sister make it seem like McCandless was a wise beyond his years genius, rather than a self-absorbed narcissist, which is what his actions delineate. d) the ending makes it clear that McCandless had an almost superhuman connection to nature that the rest of us don’t. It was plain silly. Perhaps you simply do not have the ability to tell when you are being snookered, but manifestly you were.
Tim: ‘I don’t know how truthful the movie is to the actual human being it was about, but given that, why is the character an idiot? Because he was trying to find something essential that was missing from his life? Something he had been unable to find any of the other places he had been looking? This was a desperate character. Perhaps that is what either the movie failed to show or you failed to pick up on.’
He was an idiot because he went out unprepared and died of his own stupidity. As I said, all he had to do was follow the river downstream to cross or encounter other people. If you go into a lions cage carrying some raw steaks, do not you share some blame if a lion attacks you? He was desperate? Perhaps. But, if so, so what? That would make him young man # 32, 567, 887 to have felt such in the year he died. We still never get to see anything of the character beyond trite homilies and hagiographic imagery. Yawn.
I became rather obsessed after seeing this movie, so I read the book and anything else I could find out.
It seemed odd to me that Chis’s backpack wasn’t recovered – but it actually was. I read on Ron Lamothe’s site (producer of Call of the Wild) that indeed his backpack contained a wallet with several pieces of ID and $300, which was not found until very recently. This really changes a few things about the story in my opinion.
I have also read that Chis actually died after eating moldy seeds – it was the mold that was fatal. In my opinion, and according to Ron Lamothe’s research, he simply died of starvation.
The fact that he didn’t search for another river crossing seems to imply a bit of a death wish.
And my final observation is a real mystery to me. He posed in a final photograph, with a note reading that he had a good life and God bless all – but if he knew he was dying why on earth didn’t he write a note to his sister and parents. A very bitter young man.
i think your a jackass this was based on real life & was a great film why chris didnt travel down the path further we will never know he did write a note that he was hurt & starving so maybe he couldnt travel far or think clear,duh! you cant blame sean penn for chris's life,i think he portrayed it pretty good he had to fit in so much in such a short time & he did. & as for the love story with Tracy ,are you a perv she was under age & this film wasnt a love story it was about a boys jurney & his thaughts from his own words left in his jurnals.I think you have way to much time on your hands to be so negative maybe you should take a trip to Alaska!
you are a very shallow individual.