Into the Wild is a 2007 American biographical drama survival film written and directed by Sean Penn. It is an adaptation of the 1996 non-fiction book of the same name by Jon Krakauer based on the travels of Christopher McCandless across North America and his life spent in the Alaskan wilderness in the early 1990s. The film stars Emile Hirsch as McCandless with Marcia Gay Harden and William Hurt as his parents and also features Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn, Kristen Stewart, and Hal Holbrook.
The film premiered during the 2007 Rome Film Fest and later opened outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, on September 21, 2007. It was later nominated for two Golden Globes and won the award for Best Original Song "Guaranteed" by Eddie Vedder. It was also nominated for two Academy Awards including Holbrook for Best Supporting Actor.
Plot
The film is presented in a nonlinear narrative, cutting back and forth between McCandless's time spent in Alaskan wilderness and his two-year travels leading up to his journey to Alaska. The plot summary here is told in a more chronological order.
In May 1992, Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) arrives in a remote area just north of the Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska and sets up a campsite in an abandoned city bus, which he calls The Magic Bus. At first, McCandless is content with the isolation, the beauty of nature around him, and the thrill of living off the land. He hunts wild animals with a .22 caliber rifle, reads books, and keeps a diary of his thoughts as he prepares himself for a new life in the wild.
Two years earlier in May 1990, McCandless graduates with high honors from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Shortly afterwards, McCandless rejects his conventional life by destroying all of his credit cards and identification documents. He donates nearly all of his entire savings of $24,000 to Oxfam and sets out on a cross-country drive in his well-used, but reliable Datsun B210 to experience life in the wilderness. However, McCandless does not tell his parents Walt (William Hurt) and Billie McCandless (Marcia Gay Harden) or his sister Carine (Jena Malone) what he is doing or where he is going, and refuses to keep in touch with them after his departure, leaving them to become increasingly anxious and eventually desperate.
At Lake Mead, Arizona, McCandless' car is caught in a flash flood causing him to abandon it and begin hitchhiking instead. He burns what remains of his dwindling cash supply and assumes a new name: "Alexander Supertramp." In Northern California, McCandless encounters a hippie couple named Jan Burres (Catherine Keener) and Rainey (Brian H. Dierker). Rainey tells McCandless about his failing relationship with Jan, which McCandless helps rekindle. By September, McCandless stops in Carthage, South Dakota to work for a contract harvesting company owned by Wayne Westerberg (Vince Vaughn), but he is forced to leave after Westerberg is arrested for satellite piracy.
McCandless then travels to the Colorado River and, though told by park rangers that he may not kayak down the river without a license, ignores their warnings and paddles downriver until he eventually arrives in Mexico. There, his kayak is lost in a dust storm and he crosses back into the United States on foot. Unable to hitchhike, he starts traveling on freight trains to Los Angeles, California. Not long after arriving, however, he starts feeling "corrupted" by modern civilization and decides to leave. Later, McCandless is forced to switch his traveling method back to hitchhiking after he is beaten by the railroad police.
In December 1991, McCandless arrives at Slab City in the Imperial Valley region of California and encounters Jan and Rainey again. There, he meets Tracy Tatro (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl who shows interest in McCandless, but he rejects her because she is underage. After the holidays, McCandless decides to continue heading for Alaska, much to everyone's sadness. While camping near Salton City, California, McCandless encounters Ron Franz (Hal Holbrook), a retired man who recounts the story of the loss of his family in a car accident while he was serving in the United States Army. He now occupies his time in a workshop as an amateur leather worker. Franz teaches McCandless the craft of leatherwork, resulting in the making of a belt that details McCandless' travels. After spending several months with Franz, McCandless decides to leave for Alaska despite this upsetting Franz, who has become quite close to McCandless. On a parting note, Franz gives McCandless his old camping and travel gear along with the offer to adopt him as his grandchild, but McCandless simply tells him that they should discuss this after he returns from Alaska; then departs.
Four months later at the abandoned bus, life for McCandless becomes harder and he becomes less discerning. As his supplies begin to run out, he realizes that nature is also harsh and uncaring. In the pain of realization, McCandless concludes that true happiness can only be found when shared with others and seeks to return from the wild to his friends and family. However, he finds that the stream he had crossed during the winter has become wide, deep, and violent due to the thaw, and he is unable to cross. Saddened, he returns to the bus, now as a prisoner who is no longer in control of his fate and can only hope for help from the outside. In a desperate act, McCandless is forced to gather and eat roots and plants. He confuses similar plants and eats a poisonous one, falling sick as a result. Slowly dying, he continues to document his process of self-realisation and accepts his fate, as he imagines his family for one last time. He writes a farewell to the world and crawls into his sleeping bag to die. Two weeks later, his body is found by moose hunters. Shortly afterwards, Carine returns her brother's ashes by airplane from Alaska to Virginia in her backpack.
Cast
- Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless / Alexander Supertramp
- Marcia Gay Harden as Billie McCandless
- William Hurt as Walt McCandless
- Jena Malone as Carine McCandless
- Catherine Keener as Jan Burres
- Brian H. Dierker as Rainey
- Vince Vaughn as Wayne Westerberg
- Zach Galifianakis as Kevin
- Kristen Stewart as Tracy Tatro
- Hal Holbrook as Ron Franz
- Thure Lindhardt as Mads
- Signe Egholm Olsen as Sonja
- Merritt Wever as Lori
- Jim Gallien as Himself
- Leonard Knight as Himself
- R. D. Call as Bull
Production
Filming
The scenes of graduation from Emory University in the film were shot in the fall of 2006 on the front lawn of Reed College. Some of the graduation scenes were also filmed during the actual Emory University graduation on May 15, 2006. The Alaska scenes depicting the area around the abandoned bus on the Stampede Trail were filmed 50 miles south of where McCandless actually died, in the tiny town of Cantwell. Filming at the actual bus would have been too remote for the technical demands of a movie shoot, so filming budget was extended to some smaller scenes in New Zealand. so a replica of the bus was built, and used when filming, from two other old buses of similar type. The production made four separate trips to Alaska to film during different seasons.
Release
Critical reception
Into the Wild earned positive reviews from critics. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 82% of 192 reviews of the film were positive, resulting in a "Certified Fresh" rating, with the consensus: "With his sturdy cast and confident direction, Sean Penn has turned a complex work of non-fiction like Into the Wild into an accessible and poignant character study." Metacritic assigned the film an average score of 73 out of 100, based on 38 reviews from mainstream critics.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four and described it as "spellbinding." Ebert wrote that Emile Hirsch gives a "hypnotic performance," commenting: "It is great acting, and more than acting." Ebert added, "The movie is so good partly because it means so much, I think, to its writer-director, Sean Penn."
The American Film Institute listed the film as one of ten AFI Movies of the Year for 2007.
National Board of Review named it one of the Top Ten Films of the Year.
Into the Wild also ranks 473rd in Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.
Top ten lists
The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.
Awards
Winnings
Nominations
Box office
In North America, Into the Wild initially opened in limited release, in four theaters and grossed $212,440, posting a per-theater average of $53,110. For the next several weeks, the film remained in limited release until it expanded to over 600 theaters on October 19, 2007; in its first weekend of wide release, the film grossed just $2.1 million for a per-theater average of $3,249. As of December 25, 2008, the film grossed $18,354,356 domestically and $37,281,398 internationally. In total, the film has grossed $55,635,754 worldwide.
Home media
Into the Wild was released on March 4, 2008 on standard DVD, Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition DVD, and standard HD DVD. It was one of the final films to be released on the now defunct format. The special edition DVD and HD DVD contain two special features entitled The Story, The Characters and The Experience. The Blu-ray Disc edition was released in France on July 16, 2008. The Blu-ray edition for the US was released on December 16, 2008. The UK Blu-ray was released on July 20, 2009.
Soundtrack
The songs on the soundtrack were performed by Eddie Vedder, lead singer of Pearl Jam, and Jerry Hannan. Vedder won a Golden Globe for Best Original Song for the song "Guaranteed". The score was written and performed by Michael Brook and Kaki King. The music at the end of the theatrical trailer is "Acts of Courage" by X-Ray Dog, a company that supplies music for many movie trailers.
See also
- Survival film, about the film genre, with a list of related films
- The Call of the Wild, a 2007 documentary about McCandless made by Ron Lamothe.
- Vagabond (film)
References
External links
- Official website
- Into the Wild at the Internet Movie Database
- Into the Wild at AllMovie
- Into the Wild at Metacritic
- Into the Wild at Rotten Tomatoes
- Into the Wild at Box Office Mojo
- Into the Wild at the American Film Institute Catalog
