Sean Penn’s road drama is moving, expansive and too indulgent towards its restless hero. Emile Hirsch and a fine supporting cast make the journey worth taking, even when the film’s reflections keep us waiting.
Sean Penn’s Into the Wild is a good road film that asks us to admire its central traveller a little too often. Christopher McCandless’s search for freedom gives Penn room for landscapes, chance encounters and long stretches of reflection, and much of it is absorbing. The film takes seriously the desire to get away from an ordinary life. It also has the humour and warmth to make that desire feel inviting, even when McCandless himself tries our patience.
Emile Hirsch is the reason this does not become an extended lecture about living properly. As McCandless, also known as Alexander Supertramp, he has the openness to make an encounter feel welcome, even when the character’s certainty deserves a raised eyebrow. We can see why people take an interest in him. Hirsch allows idealism and selfishness to coexist, and his performance leaves us more room to question the young man than Penn’s screenplay always seems prepared to grant.
Catherine Keener’s Jan Burres and Hal Holbrook’s Ron Franz give the film a welcome change of emphasis. Their performances make the people McCandless encounters worth watching in their own right, rather than simply useful stops on his journey. Holbrook in particular brings a tenderness that does not need a speech about freedom to justify its place in the film. Penn is generous with his supporting actors, and the warmth of these passages helps us understand why this life might appeal.
Éric Gautier’s landscape photography is central to that appeal: the open spaces receive enough attention to make the urge to explore comprehensible. We felt a strong longing to be out there when the wilderness filled the screen. The scale of those views explains McCandless’s restlessness more effectively than the spoken reflections, though their beauty also makes it easier to overlook his self-importance. Derek R. Hill’s production design helps the human surroundings feel lived-in, a useful restraint when the scenery is already doing so much.
Jay Cassidy’s editing allows the encounters to breathe, although the larger arrangement can feel forced. At 148 minutes, the film lets some passages linger after their point is clear, and the repeated pauses for reflection begin to slow its progress. The music by Eddie Vedder, Michael Brook and Kaki King gives the journey a persuasive forward pull. It also contributes to the sense that Penn wants our wholehearted agreement, when a little more room to doubt McCandless would have made the film stronger.
Penn keeps explaining why we should value McCandless’s choices after Hirsch has given us enough reason to watch him make them. The spoken commentary is particularly insistent, turning ideas we might have considered into lessons we are expected to accept. That is frustrating because the character’s self-importance is part of what makes him interesting. We could have been allowed to spend more time wondering whether he is right.
A road film has an advantage over its traveller: it can pay attention to people he does not yet understand. Penn uses that freedom well enough to keep the encounters interesting even when McCandless’s thinking becomes repetitive. If wandering stories are your sort of thing, this one earns the long evening. There is no need to agree with the man at its centre.
