Bechtold,+Sarah

X (no A8)
 **Paper 3** Into the Wild  It is always easier to judge in retrospect. To those who knew Christopher McCandless during his final two years, he was an aimless wanderer seeking adventure and a higher fulfillment in life. After his death, with the many articles published about him and Jon Krakauer’s book //Into the Wild// many people were quick to pass judgment and deemed him a fool hardy youth whose rebellion against his parents and society ended tragically. When Sean Penn chose to make a film adaptation it seemed as if someone else was ready to pass quick judgment; however, in a quite eloquence of breathtaking images and grandeur, Penn passed little judgment and instead truly took viewers into the wild of a one man’s quest for truth. //Into the Wild// tells the story of Chris McCandless, a young idealist just graduated from Emory University. Chris gives up his identity burning his social security card and other identification cards, donates his entire life savings to Oxfam, and travels the Southwest with the ultimate goal of heading north to Alaska. He comes in contact with a wide variety of people and experiences while on his travels. It is through these encounters that the viewer comes to know Chris and that drives the wandering storyline. These are the people who as Roger Ebert notes, “take in the odd youth, feed him, shelter him, give him clothes, share their lives, mentor him and worry as he leaves to continue his quest” (2). The supporting characters—Jan, Rainey, Tracy, Ron, and Wayne—are all enthralled by him and fall effortlessly in love with him. As Jan notes, “You look like a loved kid,” which begs the question why would such an intelligent young man with a bright future leave everything behind to disappear into the unknown?  The film is slightly sporadic in its images. Penn had the task of weaving together multiple subplots into the overarching goal of presenting the viewer with an accurate understanding of Chris. One of the main plots that is essential to the rest and is the connecting lace is the background of Chris’s youth and family life presented as a voiceover by Chris’s sister Carine. Carine narrates the film giving insight into the motivations that would have driven to Chris to do what he did. She identifies herself as the only one who truly understood him and what he was doing. Their family life was not a happy one and was driven by their parent’s desire for material success and image. Penn presents the past in fuzzy, poorly light clips many of which are shot to look like home videos. It is apparent in each of these clips that Chris does not approve of his parent’s lifestyle and that he wants desperately to be free of it. He sought the wild because it offered a “mythic frontier…an oblivion into which a troubled young man could disappear and reimagine himself as something other than an upper-middle-class kid from a dysfunctional family” (Fox 1). It is this wild that he runs to which emerges as not only the immense backdrop of the film, but as another character and a force of its own. At moments when the film is dragging, the images of the natural beauty that captivated Chris is the saving grace that keeps the viewer engaged. Penn made a priority to film the movie in the same locations that Chris visited. Using the same views that motivated and captured Chris was a brilliant way to help present the viewer with a deeper understanding of the character. There is a quality about the natural beauty of the world that haunts. This quality, this haunting and the desire to be a part of it drove Chris to embark into the unknown and seek a truth that he felt he could not find anywhere else. He was an incessant wanderer and a restless soul. The film indirectly brings out this wandering quality. Some critics considered the film to be too long and rambling, but, that rambling brings to life the rambling, footloose nature of Chris (Puig, 2). The true heart of the film, however, is the transformation and realization of Chris McCandless. At times he is cast as a saint—there is even a subtle comparison to Jesus—but the film does a good job of trying to avoid labeling Chris a martyr and being overly sentimental (Scott 3). The real focus of the movie is love and forgiveness. In one scene Ron remarks, “When you forgive, you love. When you love God’s light shines on you.” The line is haunting, and in the final scene as Chris is dying he seems to have put aside his vendetta against his parents and he is surrounded by light and there is a flashback to him running into his parent’s arms and gazing up into the sun. This final transformation in the last few days of his life in Alaska shows the growth of his character and the true heart of the film. Chris remarks early on that, “You’re wrong if you think the joy of life comes principally from human relationships.” However, as he lies dying he comes to the realization and marks in his book that there is no true happiness alone. Ken Fox summarized it well, “We can only know love, happiness and ultimately ourselves through community, whether the one we’re born into or a family we form along the way” (2). Some critics found the character of Chris to be too idealized. A review in //The Christian Science Monitor// compared him to Shirley Temple—“A lovely young person appears and touches the lives of people from all walks of life, bringing them a little bit of sunshine, and guilelessly showing the way to a better life” (Mathewes-Green 1). But isn’t there a bit of the idealistic wanderer in all of us? Roger Ebert put the question to rest in his review. He reminisced about a young man who grew up down the street from him who like Chris disappeared after college. Later, his body was identified as a dead Sandinista freedom fighter. “I believe in Sean Penn’s Christopher McCandless,” he writes, “I grew up with him” (Ebert 4). As did we all in our own way. The Christopher Johnson McCandless’ in our lives may not have gone to such extremes to find truth and to come to terms with their past and expectation of their futures; however, in their own quite way, each and everyone one found a way to forgive, love and experience the wild of themselves.


 * Argument 6: Analysis of Outside Reviews**
 * Roger Ebert:** Ebert’s review is very much like all the other reviews of the film //Into the Wild//. He gives a synopsis of the basic storyline and makes comments on the “hypnotic performance” given by Emile Hirsch. It does not dwell so much on the movie as it does on the story and the individual behind the story. Ebert notes that Chris McCandless sees himself as a “heroic loner, renouncing civilization, returning to the embrace of nature,” and that in a different time he may have been viewed as a saint or a hermit—not a disillusioned and ill-fated boy. His is the only review that has a sort of personal poignancy that shows a deep personal conviction received from the film. The last paragraph of the review recounts the story of a young man that grew up down the street from Ebert who disappeared like McCandless and whose body was later identified as a Sandinista freedom fighter. He concludes, “I believe in Sean Penn’s Christopher McCandless. I grew up with him.” To a point, we all know a Chris McCandless. We all know a “young man swept away by his uncompromising choices.”
 * A.O. Scott:** The opening of Scott’s review embodies one of my main ideas about the film—“(al)though the film’s structure may be tragic, its spirit is anything but. It is infused with an expansive, almost giddy sense of possibility…” His review presents Chris very true to form describing him as “at once a troubled, impulsive boy and a brave and dedicated spiritual pilgrim. He does not court danger but rather stumbles across it—thrillingly and then fatally—on the road to joy.” One of underlying themes of the movie that is not often recognized was that Chris’s seemingly rambling wanderlust was really an incredible spiritual journey of self discovery. I like the point that Scott makes that the film does develop many “greeting card sentiments,” but at the same time, to the attentive viewer it offers much more than that. He notes that it almost makes him into a saint, but at the same time it “emphasizes his capacity for love” and that it is “a movie about the desire for freedom that feels, in itself, like the fulfillment of that desire.” I like how Scott presents the idea that //Into the Wild// is “alive to the mysteries and difficulties of experience in a way that very few recent American movies have been.” And how he responds to the film detractors by arguing that, “the film’s imperfection, like its grandeur, arises from a passionate, generous impulse that is as hard to resist as the call of the open road.”
 * Ken Fox [TV Guide]:** Fox’s review is the only one that presents what I believe to be the true heart and message of the film, “We can only know love, happiness and ultimately ourselves through community, whether the one we’re born into or a family we form along the way.” He goes beyond that and concludes that Sean Penn gave us the hope that we do not have to go to such extremes to realize this but “we simply have to learn how to forgive.” I also appreciate the observation that “in chasing the truth of his destiny, Chris is also running from the lies of his past.” Fox does an excellent job of presenting the reality that part of what Chris was doing was running away from society, his family, expectations, and the ugly reality of the injustices of life that he had studied in school but may not have really wanted to face.
 * Excellent, as usual, Sarah. There are lots of quotes you have identified that will probably work nicely in your paper. **

I do believe that Chris McCandless lived Thoreau’s words. He wanted to experience the true grit and dirt of life. He did not want to believe or simply listen to someone else’s version of what life was. He did want “to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if (he) could not learn what it had to teach.” Chris was not satisfied with going through the motions of life and daily existence. He believed that there was a deeper meaning to life and all that it had to offer. He was not content with the life that he had watch his parents live and the future he was faced with. He wanted much more. He wanted to live a life full of meaning and adventure. As Thoreau said, he wanted to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life…to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms” and to experience every aspect of it even if was not easy or simple. Chris McCandless did not want to live the simple life—he wanted life full of all of its complexities and burdens.
 * //Into the Wild// Journal**
 * Extra Credit (5 pts.) **

//Into the Wild// tells the story of Chris McCandless, a young idealist just graduated from Emory University. Chris gives up his identity, donates his savings to charity, burns his social security card, identification, and travels the Southwest with the ultimate goal of heading north to Alaska. He comes in contact with a wide variety of people and experiences while on his travels. He eventually makes it to Alaska, and after living alone in the wild for a summer, he finds himself trapped and dies of starvation. The movie is narrated by his sister, Carine, the one member of his family that was the closest to understanding him. His travels and the details of his stay in the Alaskan wilderness are formulated by notes from his journals and the interviews of those who meet him along the way. Since there is not a lot of background information or substantive detail, Sean Penn, the screenwriter and director, had to find a way to bring the story to life and connect the different scenes. He did an excellent job of this by having Carine narrate—quoting Chris, giving details of their adolescence and family life—she is a true “authority” on Chris and was able to bring life to the film. At times, it seems that she is recounting a story again, trying to somehow understand what really happened—who her brother really was. The film has an underlying theme of cycles-specifically cycles of life. The characters that Chris comes in contact with and befriends come from all walks and are all at different stages of life. Jan and Rainey are “rubber-tramps” who are still living their bye-gone hippie days and are around 50-60 years old. They are redefining their relationship, and Jan is dealing with the pain of not knowing where her son is. Wayne is in his late 30’s-early 40’s and running a grain elevator in North Dakota along with the side job of providing television service illegally. He is trying to live life the best he can, and, after getting in trouble with the law, is seeking to redefine it. Tracey is a 16 year old girl who is living with her grandparents in a hippie conclave who meets Chris at the Slabs and becomes infatuated with him. She is just beginning her journey and is trying to understand herself and relationships. Ron is an elderly man around 80 years old who has had his share of grief in life. He lost his wife and young son many years ago. Chris brings joy back into his life and he becomes incredibly attached to him—enough to offer to adopt him. All of these people represent a different stage in life that Chris is “experiencing” in his journey to find himself and on the road to his discoveries and ultimate death in Alaska. The setting and cinematography are essential to this movie. The natural beauty of the earth—the wild—is just as much a “character” of the movie as Carine or Ron or Jan. Chris wanted to “be one with the earth.” He wanted to experience the realities of living in the wild and seeing all of its beauty. He kayaked through the Grand Canyon, almost died in the Pacific off of Mexico, lived in the desert, and, of course, experienced the beauty of Alaska. The panorama of images and shots that Penn put together truly take your breath away. He shifts focus, camera angles, the speed of the motion, and the lighting incredibly effectively and many times in a single scene. He pulls the viewer into the movie and makes it seems as if you are a bystander—not viewing a movie on a television screen. The film has texture and depth—it is very easy to get distracted by the beauty of the shots. The message of the movie is summed up in a short sentence Chris writes in the margins of a book—“happiness is only real when shared.” He went into the wild to escape from the materialism, confines, and ideologies of society and to escape from his parents expectations. But in the end, he realized that you really can’t run away. Problems need to be faced. He realized the value of the relationships he had with the people he meet along the journey and the relationship with his family. 
 * A5-Preliminary Analysis**