Into the wild

I find myself perpetually on the brink of trudging off into the forested distance-midterms be damned.

But alas, responsibility (and an egregiously expensive tuition) moves me to hole up and plug in when I'd rather be whirling and twirling through a grassy meadow. That's why Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch), the Emory-graduate-turned-adventuring vagabond in Sean Penn's film Into the Wild, caused me to peep out of my study booth in hopes of some spiritual catharsis.

Disillusionment evolves into Wall Street or law school for most graduates. But for Chris-a neo-scholar, mind flowered with transcendentalist poetry-the anti-society apoplexy translates into a hobo hairdo and a hitchhike quest for Alaska.

Actor Sean Penn (I am Sam, Mystic River), known for his politics and acidic anti-Bush rhetoric, steps behind the camera and navigates between film medium and Krakauer text. Lines from journal entries are scrawled across stunning landscapes. Lyrical narration is paired with a voyeur's view of intimate isolation. At times, the textual and musical literalness is a bit jarring, appearing too deliberate in our scruffy protagonist's moments of uncivilized bliss.

McCandless bonds with a colorful assortment of individuals during his feral pilgrimage. From a groovy hippie-couple (Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker) to feeble loner Ron (Hal Holbrook), each encounter is patiently portrayed, vibrating with a rare note of authenticity.

The scenic path-not-taken is a joy to experience. Penn disrupts linearity by cutting from McCandless' tragic desperation in the Alaskan wilds to the initial ecstasies of his self-dependence. Hirsch is McCandless incarnate. His easy grin and startled eyes communicate the pains of the disenchanted.

McCandless' motivation seem clear: escape materialism, escape his stifled domestic troubles, escape insufferable society in all her lusty excesses. But there's something more complex about the journey. I'm reminded of a line from '90s indie-comedy Kicking and Screaming, where witty graduate Max declares, "I wish we were just going off to war. Or retiring: I wish I was retiring after a lifetime of hard labor." Into the Wild speaks to this dilemma of the privileged. Barred from complaint, guilty at our own dissatisfaction, we pursue the paths of the greats before us fearful that the little we do is redundant. How exquisite savage nature must seem by comparison?

The film leaves us with a sense of uncertainty. Are we, the disillusioned young people, frauds or heroes? Was McCandless a desperate kid imitating the past or a poet fulfilling his purest work? Penn offers no answers but paints the questions in two and a half hours of cinematic beauty.