Into the Wild (film)

Into the Wild
Original theatrical poster
Directed by	Sean Penn
Produced by	Sean Penn Art Linson William Pohlad
Written by	Sean Penn Jon Krakauer (novel)
Narrated by	Jena Malone Sharon Olds Carine McCandless
Starring	Emile Hirsch Marcia Gay Harden William Hurt Jena Malone Catherine Keener Vince Vaughn Kristen Stewart Hal Holbrook
Music by	Michael Brook Kaki King Eddie Vedder
Cinematography	Eric Gautier
Editing by	Jay Cassidy
Studio	Square One C.I.H. Linson Film River Road Entertainment[1]
Distributed by	Paramount Vantage
Release date(s)	September 21, 2007 (2007-09-21)
Running time	148 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$15 million
Gross revenue	$56,255,142[2]

Into the Wild is a 2007 American drama film by Sean Penn based on the 1996 non-fiction book of the same name by Jon Krakauer about the adventures of Christopher McCandless. The film stars Emile Hirsch, William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden. The film premiered during the Rome Film Fest and later opened outside of Fairbanks, Alaska in September 2007.^[3]

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Filming 4 Release 4.1 Critical Reception 4.1.1 Top ten lists 4.2 Awards 4.2.1 Wins 4.2.2 Nominations 4.3 Box office 4.4 Home media 5 Soundtrack 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

Plot

In 1990, Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a college graduate from Emory University, rejects a materialist, conventional life, and his parents Walt (William Hurt) and Billie McCandless (Marcia Gay Harden), who McCandless perceives as having betrayed him by entrapping him into a future of traditional lifestyle. McCandless destroys all of his credit cards and identification documents, donates $24,000 (nearly his entire savings) to Oxfam, and sets out on a cross-country drive in his well-used, but reliable Datsun toward his ultimate goal: Alaska, to experience life in the wilderness. However, McCandless does not tell his family nor his sister Carine, (Jena Malone), what he is doing or where he is going and does not communicate with them thereafter, leaving them to become increasingly anxious and eventually desperate.

Along the way his automobile is caught in a flash flood and he abandons it to hitchhike after burning what remains of his dwindling cash supply at the side of Lake Mead, Arizona. He then assumes a new name: Alexander Supertramp. Along his travels, he encounters a hippie couple Jan Burres (Catherine Keener) and Rainey (Brian H. Dierker), with whom he forms a friendship. As McCandless continues his travels, he decides to work for a contract harvesting company owned by Wayne Westerberg (Vince Vaughn). However he is forced to leave after Westerberg is arrested for satellite piracy. McCandless then travels to the Colorado River and when he is told by park rangers that he may not kayak down the river without a license, he ignores their warnings and paddles downriver, eventually all the way into Mexico. There his kayak is lost in a sandstorm and he crosses back into the United States on foot. Unable to easily hitchhike, he starts traveling via freight train to Los Angeles. Not long after arriving, however, he starts feeling "corrupted" by modern civilization and decides to leave. Later, McCandless is forced to switch his traveling method back to hitchhiking after he is treated brutally by freight train security.

McCandless then arrives at a hippie commune, Slab City and encounters Jan and Rainey again. At the commune, he meets Tracy Tatro (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl who is attracted to McCandless and flirts with him. After some time, McCandless decides to continue heading for Alaska, much to everyone's sadness. McCandless then encounters a retired but lonely leather worker, Ron Franz (Hal Holbrook) in Salton City, California. After spending several months with Franz, McCandless decides to leave for Alaska and Franz gives him camp and travel gear. Franz offers to adopt McCandless as his grandchild, but McCandless tells him that they should discuss this after McCandless returns from Alaska and Franz emotionally watches him depart.

Nearly two years after leaving his family, McCandless crosses a stream in a remote area of Alaska and sets up camp in an abandoned Fairbanks Transit bus which was placed as a shelter for moose hunters. Initially McCandless is exhilarated by the isolation, the beauty of nature around and the thrill of living off the land as the spring thaw arrives. He hunts and gathers, and reads books, and keeps a diary of his thoughts. However life becomes harder; his supplies start to run out and although he kills a moose he does not know the correct process for smoking the meat; as a result it is all spoiled and infested with flies and maggots. He realizes that nature is also harsh and uncaring. Ultimately on his journey of self-discovery, he concludes that true happiness can also be found in sharing, and in the joy of realization seeks to return from the wild to his friends and family.

However, to his despair, McCandless finds that the stream that he crossed has become wide, deep and violent due to the thaw and he cannot return. He is forced to return to the bus-shelter but now as a prisoner; having previously insisted on being self-sufficient he is no longer in control of his fate and can only hope for help from the outside. As his supplies run out he is forced to gather and eat roots and plants. He has a book to help him to distinguish edible from inedible, but he confuses similar plants and becomes violently ill as a result. He slowly and painfully starves. In his final hours, he continues to document his process of self-realization and accepts his fate, as he imagines his friends and family for a final time.

The epilogue occurs two weeks after his death when his body is found by moose hunters. The movie ends with a picture of him, found undeveloped in his camera from before he died. It tells that his sister carried his ashes from Alaska to the eastern seaboard by plane with the ashes in her backpack.

Cast

• Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless / "Alexander Supertramp"
• Marcia Gay Harden as Billie McCandless, mother of Chris
• William Hurt as Walt McCandless, father of Chris
• Jena Malone as Carine McCandless, younger sister of Chris
• Catherine Keener as Jan Burres, a hippie woman in California
• Brian H. Dierker as Rainey, a hippie man in California
• Vince Vaughn as Wayne Westerberg, owner of "Westerberg Harvesting & Grain Service" in South Dakota
• Zach Galifianakis as Kevin, a friend of Wayne's
• Kristen Stewart as Tracy Tatro, a girl in Slab City, California
• Hal Holbrook as Ron Franz, an elderly man in Salton City, California
• Thure Lindhardt as Mads, a Danish man in Colorado River
• Signe Egholm Olsen as Sonja, a Danish woman in Colorado River
• Jim Gallien as Himself
• Leonard Knight as Himself
• Pepper Pierce hippie on salvation mountain

Filming

The scenes of graduation from Emory University in the film were shot in the fall of 2006 on the front lawn of Reed College. Some of the graduation scenes were also filmed during the actual Emory University graduation on May 15, 2006.^[4] The Alaska scenes depicting the area around the abandoned bus on the Stampede Trail were filmed 50 miles south of where McCandless actually died, in the tiny town of Cantwell. Filming at the actual bus would have been too remote for the technical demands of a movie shoot.^[5] The production made four separate trips to Alaska to film during different seasons.

Release

Critical Reception

Into the Wild earned strong reviews from critics. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 82% of 155 reviews of the film were positive, resulting in a "Certified Fresh" rating.^[6] Metacritic assigned the film an average score of 73 out of 100, based on 38 reviews from mainstream critics.^[7]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four and described the film as "spellbinding". Ebert wrote that Emile Hirsch gives a "hypnotic performance", saying: "It is great acting, and more than acting". Ebert said, "The movie is so good partly because it means so much, I think, to its writer-director", Sean Penn.^[8]

The American Film Institute listed the film as one of ten AFI Movies of the Year for 2007.^[9][10]

National Board of Review named it one of the Top Ten Films of the Year.

Into the Wild also ranks 473rd in Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.^[11]

Top ten lists

The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.^[12]

1st: Ben Lyons, The Daily 10[13] 2nd: Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post[12] 2nd: Tasha Robinson, The A.V. Club[12] 3rd: James Berardinelli, ReelViews[12] 3rd: Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times[12] 3rd: Peter Travers, Rolling Stone[14] 4th: Kyle Smith, New York Post[12] 5th: Claudia Puig, USA Today[12]

5th: David Germain, Associated Press[15] 5th: Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal[12] 6th: Carrie Rickey, The Philadelphia Inquirer[12] 6th: Steven Rea, The Philadelphia Inquirer[12] 7th: A.O. Scott, The New York Times (tied with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)[12] 7th: Noel Murray, The A.V. Club[12] 9th: Christy Lemire, Associated Press[15] 10th: Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times[12]

Awards

Wins

65th Golden Globe Awards[16] Best Original Song - Motion Picture ("Guaranteed, Eddie Vedder") Gotham Awards Best Feature Film Mill Valley Film Festival Best Actor (Emile Hirsch) Palm Springs International Film Festival Director of the Year Award (Sean Penn) Rising Star Award Actor (Emile Hirsch)

National Board of Review Breakthrough Performance - Male (Emile Hirsch) Rome Film Feast Jury Award (William Pohlad), (Art Linson), (Sean Penn) São Paulo International Film Festival Best Foreign Language Film (Sean Penn) Italian Online Movie Awards Best Motion Picture Of The Year Best Motion Picture soundtrack

Nominations

80th Academy Awards[17] Best Supporting Actor (Hal Holbrook) Best Film Editing (Jay Cassidy) 65th Golden Globe Awards[18] Best Original Score - Motion Picture (Michael Brook, Kaki King, Eddie Vedder) American Cinema Editors Best Edited Feature Film - Dramatic (Jay Cassidy) Broadcast Film Critics Association Best Film Best Actor (Emile Hirsch) Best Supporting Actor (Hal Holbrook) Best Supporting Actress (Catherine Keener) Best Director (Sean Penn) Best Writer (Sean Penn) Best Song ("Guaranteed, Eddie Vedder") Chicago Film Critics Association Awards Best Picture Best Screenplay - Adapted (Sean Penn) Best Supporting Actor (Hal Holbrook) Directors Guild of America Awards Best Director - Film (Sean Penn) Cinema Audio Society Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures

Costume Designers Guild Awards Excellence in Costume Design for Film - Contemporary Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards Best Foreign Film - English Language (Sean Penn) Grammy Awards Best Song Written for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media ("Guaranteed") Gotham Awards Breakthrough Award (Emile Hirsch) Satellite Awards Best Original Song ("Rise") Screen Actors Guild Awards Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role (Emile Hirsch) Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role (Hal Holbrook) Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Catherine Keener) USC Scripter Award USC Scripter Award (Sean Penn) (screenwriter), (Jon Krakauer) (author) Writers Guild of America Awards Best Adapted Screenplay (Sean Penn)

Box office

In North America, Into the Wild initially opened in limited release, in four theaters and grossed $212,440, posting a per-theater average of $53,110. For the next several weeks, the film remained in limited release until it expanded to over 600 theaters on October 19, 2007; in its first weekend of wide release, the film grossed just $2.1 million for a per-theater average of $3,249. As of December 25, 2008, the film has grossed $18,354,356 domestically and $37,281,398 internationally. In total, the film has grossed $55,635,754 worldwide.^[19]

Home media

Into the Wild was released on March 4, 2008 on standard DVD,^[20] Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition DVD,^[21] and standard HD DVD.^[22] The special edition DVD and HD DVD contain two special features entitled The Story, The Characters and The Experience. The Blu-ray Disc edition was released in France on July 16, 2008.^[23] The Blu-ray edition for the US was released on December 16, 2008.^[24] The UK Blu-ray was released on July 20, 2009.^[25]

Soundtrack

The songs on the soundtrack were performed by Eddie Vedder, guitarist and lead singer of Pearl Jam, and Jerry Hannan. Vedder won a Golden Globe for Best Original Song for the song "Guaranteed". The score was written and performed by Michael Brook and Kaki King. The music at the end of the theatrical trailer is "Acts of Courage" by X-Ray Dog, a company that supplies music for many movie trailers.

See also

Call of the Wild (2007 film)

References

External links

• Official Website
• Into the Wild at the Internet Movie Database
• Into the Wild at Allmovie
• Into the Wild at Metacritic
• Into the Wild at Rotten Tomatoes
• Into the Wild at Box Office Mojo

Films directed by Sean Penn The Indian Runner (1991) · The Crossing Guard (1995) · The Pledge (2000) · Into the Wild (2007)