|
|
The Bargain Nexus - Into the Wild
|
List Price: $29.98
Our Price: $12.96
Your Save: $ 17.02 ( 57% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Paramount
Starring: Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Jena Malone, Brian Dierker
Directed By: Sean Penn
|
Average Customer Rating:  
|
|
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: PARAMOUNT PICTURES
EAN: 0097363481249
Format: AC-3
Label: Paramount
Manufacturer: Paramount
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Paramount
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2008-03-04
Running Time: 148
Studio: Paramount
Theatrical Release Date: 2007-09-21
|
|
|
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: An existential odyssey
Comment: Into the Wild will not be to everyone's liking. Some people will dislike the protagonist, Christopher McCandless, and others will find the movie's pacing to be slow. Yet, I was fascinated by and even a little envious of Chris's dogged attempt to find meaning in life and his disregard for other people's expectations. Like the ascetic monks who would wander into the desert to find enlightenment, Chris was determined to find the answers to spiritual questions by renouncing all worldly things and, ultimately, all contact with other people.
Jaded by the shallowness of America's consumer culture and the poisonous dynamics of family life as he grew up, and inspired by writers like Tolstoy, Thoreau, and London who praised simplicity and being connected to nature, Chris decides after graduating from Emory University to give away his money, break off all contact with his wealthy family, and take off on the mother of all road trips. He does not get far before his car is damaged in flash flooding, so he abandons the automobile and makes the remainder of his journey by walking, canoeing, hitchhiking, or sneaking onto freight trains. Chris travels to various places in America and Mexico and plunges into new experiences, new friendships, and a new romance. Drawing him onward is the lure of his "great Alaska adventure" in which he would live alone in Alaska's big sky country. Along his circuitous route to Alaska, he breaks the hearts of many people he leaves behind, including a lonely old man, Ron Franz (played by Hal Holbrook, in a touching performance), who offers to adopt him. Although Chris shows his fondness for Ron, Chris keeps him at a safe emotional distance by saying that happiness cannot be found in human relationships.
[SPOILER ALERT] After Chris at last makes his way into the Alaskan backcountry in April, he makes a series of mistakes (not properly preserving his wild game and eating poisonous berries) that bring him to the brink of death. At last experiencing the most profound type of solitude--that of an isolated person confronting his imminent end--Chris concludes that a happy life is one shared with others, not one spent alone. The viewer is left to ponder the question of whether, if Chris had recovered, he truly would have reintegrated into society or whether the "call of the wild" would have led him back onto his solitary path. In other words, even if Chris did not want to die alone, it's unclear whether he would have wanted to live alone.
Raising perennial questions about whether society improves or spoils its members, whether happiness is found in social settings or in confronting nature alone, whether a person should live by uncompromising ideals or should make his peace with society's numerous and serious flaws, whether someone who so completely rejects society's shared ideals is a genius or a madman, and whether Chris was running away from his problems or engaging in a necessarily private spiritual quest, Into the Wild gives the thoughtful viewer much to think about. Yet, the movie also engages the viewers' emotions by showing Chris's desperate yearning for a pure and intensely lived life and the fragile and combustible dynamics of human relationships. For viewers who are more interested in a mature and contemplative film, Into the Wild is highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Wrong Director for the Job
Comment: You have to think of this as a film loosely inspired by Jon Krakauer's book about a young man's search for truth and freedom on an adventure that led him into the wild. Even that book, as carefully researched and well-written as it is, is wildly speculative and, in the end, is more of a meditation on that search and on what drives some of us to make it, than it is a biography of the one who called himself Alexander Supertramp. Sean's Penn plays fast and loose with the historical record, inventing and/or re-inventing characters and relationships and rewriting or outright deleting parts of Christopher McCandless's adventure that don't fit Penn's script even to the point of refashioning the terms of his demise. I was disappointed and yet deeply affected by the film when I first saw it. I then read Krakauer's book and that deepened my disappointment and left me wondering how (and why) Penn had gotten it so wrong. Watching it a second time, now, I am left simply with this sense of a lost opportunity. There's an interesting and important story to be told here, but Sean Penn is not the director to tell it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: What's the point
Comment: What a self indulgent little twrip. I found nothing at all endearing about this character. What a waste of 2.5 hrs.
RWF
Customer Rating:
Summary: WOW!
Comment: I had heard about this real story watching a TV talk show that the author appeared on and it intrigued me. While it starts a bit slow the depth of it soon comes through and you are right there with CHristopher Johnson McCandless. A sad tale about a young man who has the right idea but doesn't prepare himself enough. Especially for one so bright and full of life.
Customer Rating:
Summary: KS Movie Buff
Comment: A compelling story! I've wondered time to time about the "why" behind these characters we've all run across in life. I thought the director did a great job in asking us all to really question the way we've chosen to live and have compassion for those that choose differently. The movie did drag a little in parts and I did wonder how much of it really was true, but overall, worth watching.
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
A superb cast and an even-handed treatment of a true story buoy Into the Wild, Sean Penn's screen adaptation of Jon Krakauer's bestselling book. Emile Hirsch stars as Christopher McCandless, scion of a prosperous but troubled family who, after graduating from Atlanta's Emory University in the early 1990s, decides to chuck it all and become a self-styled "aesthetic voyager" in search of "ultimate freedom." He certainly doesn't do it halfway: after donating his substantial savings account to charity and literally torching the rest of his cash, McCandless changes his name (to "Alexander Supertramp"), abandons his family (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden as his bickering, clueless parents and Jena Malone as his baffled but loving sister, who relates much of the backstory in voice-over), and hits the road, bound for the Alaskan bush and determined not to be found. For the next two years he lives the life of a vagabond, working a few odd jobs, kayaking through the Grand Canyon into Mexico, landing on L.A.'s Skid Row, and turning his back on everyone who tried to befriends him (including Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker as two kindly, middle-aged hippies and Hal Holbrook in a deeply affecting performance as an old widower who tries to take "Alex" under his wing). Penn, who directed and wrote the screenplay, alternates these interludes with scenes depicting McCandless' Alaskan idyll--which soon turns out be not so idyllic after all. Settling into an abandoned school bus, he manages to sustain himself for a while, shooting small game (and one very large moose), reading, and recording his existential musings on paper. But when the harsh realities of life in the wilderness set in, our boy finds himself well out of his depth, not just ill-prepared for the rigors of day to day survival but realizing the importance of the very thing he wanted to escape--namely, human relationships. It'd be easy to either idealize McCandless as a genuinely free spirit, unencumbered by the societal strictures that tie the rest of us down, or else dismiss him as a hopelessly callow naïf, a fool whose disdain for practical realities ultimately doomed him. Into the Wild does neither, for the most part telling the tale with an admirable lack of cheap sentiment and leaving us to decide for ourselves. --Sam Graham
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
