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Friday, January 21, 2011

Into the Wild (film)

Into the Wild is a 2007 American drama film by Sean Penn based on the 1996 non-fiction book of the same name by Jon Krakauer about the adventures of Christopher McCandless. The film stars Emile HirschWilliam Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden. The film premiered during the Rome Film Fest and later opened outside of Fairbanks, Alaska in September 2007



Plot

In 1990, Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a college graduate from Emory University, rejects a materialist, conventional life, and his parents Walt (William Hurt) and Billie McCandless (Marcia Gay Harden), whom McCandless perceives as having betrayed him by entrapping him in a future of traditional lifestyle. It is shown that the family is rich but unloving. McCandless destroys all of his credit cards and identification documents, donates $24,000 (nearly his entire savings) to Oxfam, and sets out on a cross-country drive in his well-used but reliable Datsun toward his ultimate goal: Alaska, to experience life in the wilderness. However, McCandless does not tell his family nor his sister Carine (Jena Malone) what he is doing or where he is going and does not communicate with them thereafter, leaving them to become increasingly anxious and eventually desperate.
Along the way his automobile is caught in a flash flood and he abandons it to hitchhike instead, after burning what remains of his dwindling cash supply at the side of Lake MeadArizona. He then assumes a new name: Alexander Supertramp. Along his travels, he encounters a hippie couple, Jan Burres (Catherine Keener) and Rainey (Brian H. Dierker), with whom he forms a friendship. As McCandless continues his travels, he decides to work for a contract harvesting company owned by Wayne Westerberg (Vince Vaughn). However he is forced to leave after Westerberg is arrested for satellite piracy. McCandless then travels to the Colorado River and, though he is told by park rangers that he may not kayak down the river without a license, he ignores their warnings and paddles downriver, eventually all the way into Mexico. There his kayak is lost in a sandstorm, and he crosses back into the United States on foot. Unable to easily hitchhike, he starts traveling via freight train to Los Angeles. 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 brutally by a railroad bull.
McCandless then arrives at a hippie commune, Slab City, and encounters Jan and Rainey again. At the commune, he meets Tracy Tatro (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl who is attracted to McCandless and flirts with him. After some time, McCandless decides to continue heading for Alaska, much to everyone's sadness.
McCandless, while camping near Oh My God Hot Springs, encounters a retired man, Ron Franz (Hal Holbrook), in Salton City, California, who recounts the story of the loss of his family during his service in the army. He now occupies his time in a workshop as an amateur leather worker. He teaches McCandless the art, resulting in the production of a belt summarising his travels, and ending in a letter "N" which he explains means "north", i.e. Alaska. After spending several months with Franz, McCandless decides to leave for Alaska and Franz takes him the first 100 miles and gives him camp and travel gear. On parting Franz offers to adopt McCandless as his grandchild, but McCandless tells him that they should discuss this after McCandless returns from Alaska, and Franz emotionally watches him depart.
Nearly two years after leaving his family, McCandless crosses a stream in a remote area of Alaska and sets up camp in an abandoned Fairbanks Transit bus which he encounters. Initially McCandless is exhilarated by the isolation, the beauty of nature around and the thrill of living off the land as the spring thaw arrives. He hunts wild animals with a .22 rifle, reads books, and keeps a diary of his thoughts. At first he is willing to make sacrifices, sparing the life of a female moose when he spots her offspring. However life becomes harder and he becomes less discerning; his supplies start to run out and although he kills a moose he does not know the correct process for smoking the meat; as a result it is all spoiled and infested with flies and maggots (on his journey he was specifically warned of this problem). He realizes that nature is also harsh and uncaring. Ultimately on his journey of self-discovery, he concludes that true happiness can only be found when shared, and in the pain of realization seeks to return from the wild to his friends and family.
However, to his despair, McCandless finds that the stream which he crossed in the snow has become wide, deep, and violent due to the thaw, and he cannot return. He is forced to return to the bus-shelter, but now as a prisoner. Having previously insisted on being self-sufficient he is no longer in control of his fate and can only hope for help from the outside.
As his supplies run out, he is forced to gather and eat roots and plants. He has a book to help him to distinguish edible from inedible, but he confuses similar plants and becomes violently ill as a result. His book informs him that his mistake will cause him "starvation and death". He then slowly and painfully starves. In his final hours, he continues to document his process of self-realization and accepts his fate, as he imagines his friends and family for a final time, and writes a farewell to the world.
The epilogue states that two weeks after his death his body is found by moose hunters. The movie ends with a picture of him, found undeveloped in his camera from before he died (depicting an identical scene towards the end of the film). The epilogue also states that his sister carried his ashes from Alaska to the eastern seaboard by plane in her backpack.

[edit]Cast

Salvation Mountain where Chris and Tracy took a walk.

[edit]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.[5] 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,[6] so a copy 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.

[edit]Release

[edit]Critical reception

Into the Wild earned strong reviews from critics. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 82% of 155 reviews of the film were positive, resulting in a "Certified Fresh" rating.[7] Metacritic assigned the film an average score of 73 out of 100, based on 38 reviews from mainstream critics.[8]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four and described the film as "spellbinding." Ebert wrote that Emile Hirsch gives a "hypnotic performance", saying: "It is great acting, and more than acting". Ebert said, "The movie is so good partly because it means so much, I think, to its writer-director, Sean Penn."[9]
The American Film Institute listed the film as one of ten AFI Movies of the Year for 2007.[10][11]
Into the Wild also ranks 473rd in Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.[12]

[edit]Top ten lists

The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.[13]

[edit]Awards

[edit]Wins

[edit]Nominations

[edit]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 has grossed $18,354,356 domestically and $37,281,398 internationally. In total, the film has grossed $55,635,754 worldwide.[20]

[edit]Home media

Into the Wild was released on March 4, 2008 on standard DVD,[21] Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition DVD,[22] and standard HD DVD.[23]The special edition DVD and HD DVD contain two special features entitled The Story, The Characters and The Experience. The Blu-ray Discedition was released in France on July 16, 2008.[24] The Blu-ray edition for the US was released on December 16, 2008.[25] The UK Blu-ray was released on July 20, 2009.[26]

[edit]Soundtrack

The songs on the soundtrack were performed by Eddie Vedder, guitarist and lead singer of Pearl Jam, and Jerry Hannan. Vedder won aGolden 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.

[edit]See also



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