I'll put it right out there at the jump: this movie made me cry. Not the slight welling around the eyes, the single trickling tear that sometimes blindsides me while watching a Pixar film, I'm talking about full on, wrenching sobs. Just like the last film that did this to me, Children of Men, I thought I'd been relatively unaffected during the actual movie....it was during the end credits that the enormity of the thing crashed into me. It's not just that the fate of Chris "Alexander Supertramp" McCandless is devastating to behold and tragic. Director Sean Penn creates a sense of identification with the character that makes you care deeply for his fate. What made the film so astoundingly effecting for me was that, after watching the film, the reality of the amount of LOVE in my life crackled through my body. While the movie deals with themes of alienation, self-mythology and the value of self-reliance, and while the visual grammar emphasis the enormity and majesty of nature, the most resonant themes of the film are all about the double-edged nature of human relationships. We let down those we love, and are let down by them in turn, we long to trust other people, and when that trust is abused, we build walls....walls that we pray will come down as soon as possible. Why? Because relationships are what give life meaning. And as the Eddie Vedder tunes played over the rolling credits to this painful, joyous, insightful film, I mourned Chris McCandless, and I celebrated the life that I have built, because of the love that I feel for others, and the love that they feel for me.
From a technical aspect, Into the Wild is nearly flawless: the only things I would have lost were the narration from Jena Malone, playing McCandless's sister, and the use of that damn song with the high-pitched male singer that gets used in every single movie (and commercial) about road tripping. In both cases, the choice is just a bit too on the nose: this movie, rendered in beautiful, subtle peformances and lyrical cinematography, doesn't need its themes underlined so blatantly.
Score: 9.4
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11 comments:
T-Shirt:
Life is Brohams.
The rest is just details.
Word, broseph mengele, word.
I believe the song you're talking about is "Goin' Up the Country" by Canned Heat.
Bill Haverchuck is the greatest character ever created. This post made me think of that. An understanding of love that is so subtle and affecting.
You will all live in my mansion one day. Right now, you live in my thought mansion, in my mind.
Damn.
Put this movie in dialogue with "the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" and review, please. I'd be anxious to hear your thoughts.
This will make me see the movie tomorrow night.
i saw it saturday - it is now one of my favorite movies
Rob: that's definitely it. Somebody needs to kill that song.
Jesse: I'm a little reluctant to see the Jesse James movie because I usually don't respond well to that type of movie...what with the long takes of wind-ruffled corn and creaky rocking chairs. Have you seen it? Is it worth a damn?
i really didn't like this movie
i really liked the book
Matt,
Your distate for atmospheric, dreamy, pastoral movies is kind of what I'm getting at with the question. I have seen both movies, and believe that Jesse James is far, (even radically,) better than Into the Wild.
As much as I liked Into the Wild and as much as what you had to say resonated with me (there's an undeniable power to its narrative arc and themes) I think Into the Wild is undeniably a Western, not much else, and is deeply rooted to the tradition of the western. So, putting it into conversation with one of the fall's best westerns seems like an intriguing exercise, if you can find the time.
That said, Jesse James is also an exploration of what happens when you completely turn your back on society. And, for what its worth, Jesse James is also a road movie. And lastly, though, James does it in a different way, the whole conundrum of materialism and industrial capitalism and meaning is also a theme throughout.
And, James lived in what was, for all intents and purposes, a place many Americans at the time thought of or regarded (the frontier, the West, etc.) in the same way we romanticize (and now commodify, as the "bus" is now a booming tourist site, thanks to Sean Penn and the film makers) Alaska.
Jesse James makes you sit through extended shots of light moving across a floor. It does make you stare at flowing fields of wheat. It is ruthlessly demanding of the audience, sure. But it also asks us why we worship--or at least sympathize--with those who so radically break ranks to dash out on their own. I don't see Into the Wild taking any care to do so.
This is why I think they need to be paired together. There is much talk about the Western being re-born this fall. I'd like to have your thoughts on why this is happening now, and where Into the Wild contributes, maybe.
Or, whatever. Your blog works fine without departures such as these, and I clearly have a predisposition for boring an audience to tears. And I have my criticisms of James, as well. Some reviewers have said that experimental westerns from the 70s are much better, for instance.
Catch it if it comes to Milwaukee. If the extended shots of rolling clouds lull you to sleep, at least there will be no Eddie Vedder to wake you back up.
What about the fact that Jesse James was essentially an unreconstructed Confederate, and his status as a folk hero is largely connected to revanchist sentiment amongs the "blooded but unbowed" white citizens of the former CSA?
You correctly put a finger on one of the film's big problems. Reconstruction's politics get polite nods in the movie but not a full treatment. For instance, at one point, James makes a comment about the Yankees and the Reconstruction government. Members of his gang like singing "Oh, I'm a Good Old Rebel" too. But race is clearly something they (the production team) didn't want to really put up front. Jesse James is incomplete history as a result,and that's a big problem for a movie that obviously wants to take on the major themes of Americana.
Your point about his rise as a folk hero is on-the-money, and it does receive much attention, but in a strange way. Instead of race, which is there (however loosely), the director makes the Robert Ford/Jesse James drama one that seems more interested in a dilemma of manliness or gender. Reviewers have been particularly idiotic on this front, though, and have missed some of the film's subtle stabs at the mechanisms of gender that were also born after the Civil War.
Might some other similar cultural sentiment be fueling, too, Supertramp's embrace by certain "blooded but unbowed" Americans looking for their modern-day redemptive hero?
Maybe, if Into the Wild dealt, at all with McCandless's status as a post-mortem folk hero. It's a much more personal story than that, and that's what seems to be missed by a lot of the discussion about the social critique of the film. I understand that a film directed by political gadfly Sean Penn is going to get a lot of people looking for political subtexts, but the connective tissue between all of Penn's directorial work (The Crossing Guard, The Pledge, and Into the Wild) is their intense focus on personal travails, with questions of politics largely ignored. Even Penn's entry into the international "9-11" film anthology ignored politics, which is a pretty mean feat in a film about the defining political act of our century. Like these efforts, Into the Wild generally undercuts McCandless's broader societal critique, which is ill-defined and rarely explicated, and focuses instead on the family dynamic that made McCandless feel the need to flee all human connections. McCandless's journey across the country is littered with potential human connections that he spurns in favor of the comfort and saftey of solitude, only to realize, in the fullness of his Alaskan isolation, how even these fleeting interactions hold the promise of transcendance. Supertramp's social criticism and self-mythology crumble in the face of these realizations. The film utterly deflates any attempt to turn McCandless into a folk hero: he was not killed by capitalism, but by the injuries inflicted upon him by a family. Now, if you want to criticize the film for not being political enough, that's a different argument. For my money, though, if a film strikes a truthful emotional cord, political subtext isn't necessary.
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