Movie Review: Into the Wild

Here is my review of Into the Wild, the last review I wrote for the local paper that won't be published there. The only thing I want to add to this review is that I really hope Hal Holbrook doesn't pull an Alan Arkin and upset Javier Bardem for Best Supporting Actor at this year's Oscars. I'll be writing something about the Oscars and my predictions coming up here, but I have a sneaking feeling that Holbrook might get the sympathy vote for this performance. Nothing against Holbrook, but he doesn't show up until very late in the movie, and the performance doesn't hold a candle to Bardem's, which will go down in film history as one of the great villain roles of all time.

Anyway, here's the review:


In 1990, Christopher Johnson McCandless, having recently graduated from Emory University, gave his remaining college fund to charity, left his parents and sister, and began a journey around the country that ended two years later, when his body was found, weighing all of 67 pounds, in the Alaskan wilderness. McCandless’s story was documented in Jon Krakauer’s bestselling book, “Into the Wild,” which has now been adapted to film by writer and director Sean Penn. The film is clearly a labor of love for Penn, and Penn’s attraction for McCandless’s unconventional abandonment of American society obviously resonates throughout the film. However, Krakauer’s book presents several daunting challenges in the adaptation to the screen, especially in its episodic structure and an enigmatic central character with whom the audience may have difficulty sympathizing. Despite the film’s beautiful landscapes and nature photography, it ultimately fails to overcome the challenges of compressing McCandless’s story into a full-length feature film.

Penn structures the film around various chapter titles from Krakauer’s book, each indicating a different stage of maturation, such as “Adolescence.” In addition, the film frequently flashes forward from McCandless’s American journey to his 113-day survival adventure in the Alaskan wilderness, living inside an abandoned bus that had been converted into a hunting shelter. After graduation, McCandless attempts to abandon his identity and his overbearing parents by assuming the new persona of “Alexander Supertramp.” He then leaves his car in an Arizona ravine after a flash flood and proceeds on foot across the desert, armed with several books on surviving in the wild. His journey alternates between moments of intense isolation communing with nature and other times when he connects with other like-minded travelers, including characters played by the wonderful Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn, and Hal Holbrook.

The film’s episodic structure—which moves from the Arizona desert to a South Dakota farm to the Colorado River, Los Angeles, upstate California and finally Alaska—makes it difficult for the audience to feel emotional attachment to any of these characters that intersect with Christopher’s life, despite some moving and authentic performances by Catherine Keener and Hal Holbrook. Neither appears for very long in the movie, and Holbrook doesn’t even show up until the very end. Instead, Christopher moves from one location to the next with a suddenness and speed that dillutes the emotional impact he has on these people, or they have on him.

Penn also includes a parallel narrative detailing the McCandless family’s struggle to come to grips with their son’s disappearance. The part of the story is mainly revealed through a voice-over narration from Christopher’s sister, played by Jena Malone. This technique further burdens the film, but one can see Penn’s struggles to remain faithful to this story that clearly inspires him. However, one can’t help but feel some sympathy for the family, even though the parents’ dysfunction is blamed for driving Christopher away, and that makes sympathizing with Christopher even more difficult. Perhaps it’s to Penn’s credit that he doesn’t completely idealize his subject, but the character’s motivation becomes less understandable the more difficult it is to sympathize with him.

Emile Hirsch, who plays McCandless, is also clearly inspired by the story, and his performance is impressive, bringing life to an enigmatic figure who spends much of his time onscreen alone, immersed in his natural environment. As Christopher’s Alaskan adventure—the most compelling part of the movie—progresses, and Christopher continues to make small mistakes that will ultimately compound in tragedy, Hirsch’s performance becomes even more effective. The actor lost considerable weight to visually represent the sharp decline in health the character experienced. Much like Christian Bale’s recent performance in the Vietnam-era P.O.W. film “Rescue Dawn,” Hirsch’s performance deserves special attention for the dramatic physical transformation the actor underwent for this role.

Krakauer’s book has sold millions of copies and inspired many readers with its story of a real-life rebel and adventurer who attempted to abandon society and live a more authentic life. The abandoned bus where McCandless lived in the Alaskan wilderness has even become a kind of shrine, inspiring pilgrimages from fans of the book, including Sean Penn. Those who were moved by the book may find similar connection with the film, but the material ultimately does not lend itself well to the compressed narrative required for film. Penn has certainly created a beautifully filmed movie with strong performances (in addition to a great soundtrack featuring new songs by Eddie Vedder), but it struggles under the burden of an unwieldy story and an elusive central character.

Movie Review: Atonement

The posting on this blog has been light lately because I've had some other writing projects to complete, including movie reviews for the local paper and a conference presentation I'm delivering in Louisville in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I just got word this afternoon that the local paper is completely cutting its freelance budget, which means, for the foreseeable future, I won't be writing movie reviews--or the annual Oscar prediction piece I do with the paper's regular movie reviewer.

However, I sent the paper three reviews this week, on No Country for Old Men, Atonement, and Into the Wild. The No Country review ran today, but the paper won't be running the other reviews. Since I don't want to put the effort to waste, I'm going to make my local readers' loss your gain, and post the Atonement review here.

Before I get to the review, I just want to say, though I say something similar in the review, that Ian McEwan's novel upon which this film is based is my favorite novel of the 21st century, and one I've returned to often over the past few years. It really holds up to multiple readings. I'd also recommend pretty much every one of McEwan's novels, especially The Child in Time and his recent short novel, On Chesil Beach.


“Atonement”: A Rare Successful Literary Adaptation

Ian McEwan’s novel “Atonement” is my favorite novel of the last ten years, and one to which I have frequently returned. So, it was with considerable trepidation that I anticipated director Joe Wright and writer Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of the novel. Wright, I thought, had done some violence to Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” in his last film, adding too many modern sensibilities to a story that should stand up well on its own. However, the announcement that Keira Knightly and James McAvoy would play the two central characters filled me with some hope, as both seemed perfectly suited to this period story that spans the mid-1930s to the Second World War.

As an adaptation, “Atonement” is about as successful as a fan of the novel could hope for. While some elements of the novel are necessarily missing from the film in order to compress the narrative into a two-hour running time, and the novel’s surprising conclusion is far less satisfying in the film, the essence of the novel remains intact due to inventive directorial choices by Wright, an intelligent screenplay, and fine performances by the main actors.

The film opens in 1935 at the ancestral estate of the Tallis family. Young Briony Tallis (Oscar-nominee Saoirse Ronan) is on the cusp of adolescence, and she is eagerly awaiting the arrival of her visiting cousins so that they can begin work on her latest creation, a play called “The Trials of Arabella.” When we first see Briony, she is typing away at a typewriter, toy animals arranged on the floor of her room as a silent and respectful audience for her creative work. This image perfectly and economically condenses Briony’s character: she is an aspiring writer who selfishly demands the attention of an audience that conforms to her needs.

In a pause from her writing, Briony looks out the window to see a startling tableau: her sister, Cecilia (Knightly) stripping to her underclothes in front of a fountain, while the housekeeper’s son, Robbie (McAvoy) stretches out what appears to be a commanding hand. This scene, and Briony’s interpretation of it, becomes the catalyst for an escalating series of events that Briony fits into a larger, immature, romantic narrative that has devastating consequences for Robbie and Cecilia.

The novel features shifting perspectives that move through various characters’ points of view as well as back and forth in time, and the film succeeds at subtly duplicating some of these shifts without relying on clunky voiceover narration or other obvious tricks to indicate time shifts. At one point, Briony intercepts a letter from Robbie to Cecilia, and the letter contains a word that has such a strong, emotional impact on the young girl that it appears typed out on the screen in giant letters. The loud impact of the typewriter key on the page duplicates the impact of the word on the impressionable and immature girl’s mind. Briony is on the cusp of adolescence, still immersed in childish games and stories, yet exposed to information from the adult world that she has difficulty processing. In order to do so, she tries to fit it all into a romanticized, fantastic narrative that she has created, using the members of her household as the characters. Later, when Briony witnesses an apparent crime, her narrative reaches the point of its fulfillment, and the story she has created colors her testimony and has real-life consequences.

The film also follows the overall structure of the novel, moving from life at the Tallis estate to Robbie’s experience as a soldier in World War II attempting to escape France after the Allies’ defeat at Dunkirk. Though this segment abbreviates the novel too much, it does feature an impressive, bravura, long tracking shot of the British soldiers’ chaotic evacuation of Dunkirk.

The film’s third segment reveals the experiences of Briony (now played by Romola Garai—a change in performer that seemed to confuse those in the audience surrounding me, even though the segment opens by identifying her as "Briony Tallis") as an eighteen-year-old nurse training at a London hospital during the war. As Briony treats soldiers suffering from horrible wounds, she also tries to come to terms with the consequences of her earlier testimony and continues her development as a writer.

McAvoy and Knightly are perfectly suited for this film—both look great in the period costumes, and their chemistry conveys the passion of Cecilia and Robbie’s relationship. It’s unfortunate that they were both overlooked by the Academy Awards, because both performances are certainly deserving of recognition. The Academy did get it right, however, in recognizing young Saoirse Ronan in the Best Supporting Actress category. Her performance as the young Briony exhibits a feigned maturity that masks her real naïveté. While Briony makes tragic decisions, she is not truly malicious, and it’s to Ronan’s credit that she maintains this delicate balance in her performance without making the character unsympathetic.

While the film’s conclusion captures the spirit of the novel’s, I do wish the filmmakers had attempted to duplicate the novel’s stunning final chapter with more accuracy. That being said, “Atonement” is one of the most successful literary adaptations I can remember, and it should stand on its own for viewers unfamiliar with the novel (though I would hope that the film’s success would drive readers to the book and to McEwan’s other excellent novels).