Emile Hirsch trudges through the hard Alaskan snow, his back turned to the audience. His character, Christopher McCandless, doesn't approve of those who might be watching him. They, like his parents, just don't understand his journey from relative wealth as a college graduate in Georgia to Alaska's barren wilderness. Not yet, anyway.
Writer and director Sean Penn seems to have gotten his latest film, "Into The Wild," off to a bad start. He's already alienated his audience. Christopher seems to begrudge its presence. But first impressions can prove deceiving.
What appears at first glance to be Christopher's disgust with an uninvited audience later turns out to be a healthy skepticism. He might be a tough hero to love, but he's a good hero - an American tragic hero, whom Hirsch plays with great consideration and sensitivity.
The film rewinds. Christopher is graduating. He's driving through the desert. He's working on a farm. He's sleeping in a boxcar. His journey, much like his character, is patient and deliberate. But it's a rewarding one as well, for him and the audience. The impact might not hit while seated in that plush, movie theater chair. But walk outside after the movie's all done, and the images come rushing back.
What does our great U.S. society do for us, anyway? No one ever asks because that question goes against the very nature of what the United States stands for. Our country is the entirely democratized, totally capitalist system that promises great fame and fortune in return for hard work and a whole lot of luck.
Christopher's story is true, not only in the sense that this young, Emory University graduate actually trekked his away across the United States more than 15 years ago, but also in the sense that he represents a plight felt by so many young adults in this nation. Young adulthood is a restless period in everyone's life. We can't explain why; we just shudder at the thought of doing something or staying somewhere for too long a time.
Penn captures this restless, young adult spirit - along with the concerned adult mind that muffles it - with surprising realism. In the first flashback sequence, Christopher shocks his parents by refusing their offer to buy him a new car. He doesn't need such things. They represent material wealth, unneeded wealth.
But Christopher, they persist, must have some kind of gift. It's his special day, after all. His parents make sure to let everyone at the restaurant know that he just graduated from Emory University. This scene crystallizes the film's realism. Penn manages to capture here the awkward pride that parents can exhibit, while also communicating a son's dislike for the older generation's school of thought.
Not only is Penn wise enough to continue contrasting Christopher's youthful spirit with America's older generations, but he also divides his film into chapters, alternating perspective from the time Christopher spends in Alaska to the journey he takes to get there. Beginning the film at the end serves more function than it does novelty. Penn establishes the goal and plants a question: why here - why Alaska?
The answers come later. Penn thinks it appropriate to withhold such information until after viewers have traveled with Christopher. What's most interesting, though, is that no specific event provides a solid answer. Instead, the travel itself and the people Christopher meets serve that purpose.
Cinematographer Eric Gautier visualizes Christopher's journey in such a poignant way - his camera shifting from calculated, dream-like visages to rugged, documentary-style viewpoints - that audiences can slowly appreciate why such a young man left home.
What "Into The Wild" might mean to the college-age generation is uncertain. There is a romantic literary perspective (think Thoreau's "Walden") that will certainly speak to some students but probably not to the vast majority. What will likely resonate is Christopher's disillusion.
He feels betrayed by society, just like all classic J.D. Salinger characters and just like all college students who keep copies of "Catcher In The Rye" and "Franny and Zooey" alongside their textbooks. What "Into The Wild" might do for those students is provide an answer to their aggression. Take a break from the world, if not to visit nature then, at the very least, to visit the movie theater.
"Into The Wild" opens tomorrow at the Landmark Bethesda Row Cinema and the AMC Loews in Georgetown.
