Into the Wild is the story of a young man trying to find the meaning of life in the barren landscape of America’s remote hinterland.Chris McCandless was a Harvard-bound law student who decided to send his college fund money to Oxfam and set about finding himself by travelling through America on little or no money. After saving enough money for some meagre supplies, he headed off to the wilds of Alaska with the intent of living off game and wild vegetation for a few months.
Told in flashback, we discover that the reason for McCandless living the life he did may have been to deep psychological scars suffered as a child with his parents constant bickering and fighting giving him a skewed view of the world and his place in it.
Penn has done an outstanding job with both script and direction and French cinematographer Eric Gautier makes the most of the Alaskan location, easily giving the viewer the feel of isolation that is McCandless’s world.
Harden and Hurt make the most of their limited screen time, but this is Hirsch’s show, and he does a great job of conveying the real McCandless’s state of mind.
Without giving away too much of how it pans out, there are those who think that the real-life McCandless was some sort of anti-hero living his life on his terms, others thought he was a fool to even attempt the feat.
