netflix blogging: into the wild

Given that the days are so long (which I looove), John and I opted for the long, 2.5 hour  "Into the Wild" after dinner. After "Grizzly Man" I thought I'd had my fill of Alaska "survival" movies (sorry: spoiler). And now I really have. I mean, I guess the character in Wild was somewhat more compelling, and definitely a lot more sympathetic than the wild-eyed freako bear lover in GM. And Sean Penn gets a few extra degree-of-difficulty points for dramatizing severe hunger. Frankly I expected more scenes like the one 3/4 of the way through of the kid running around going "I'm hungry! I'm hungry!" because goodness knows that is what I would do. Hell, I do it just about every day around 4:30. This is why I am afraid to go backpacking.

But. Having not read the Krakauer book, but doubting that Krakauer is quite as self-seriously introspective as the movie, I wonder to what extent Penn was trying to portray this kid as some sort of hero/victim. And if he was a victim, then of what? His youth? "Society" (one of the Eddie Vedder original track titles, insert rolling eyes here)? Chance? Nature? After the movie I had the vague sense that Penn was all "I can't go to Alaska? Because I'm in Hollywood? But if I could, I'd be pretty tragic and shit too." Sigh. JM made the excellent point that this is where Grizzly Man was tons better: when Werner Herzog does the voiceover at the end and tells us, in his thick german accent, that people probably shouldn't fuck with nature, we know exactly where the director/producer guy stands. But with "Wild" all we really know is that Penn likes to make his cuts jumpy.

Oh, and Christian Bale's weight loss for "The Machinist" was far more impressive. So impressive that his weight loss is all I could remember about that movie; JM had to remind me what the plot was.

Comments

[JM]

Tagline for Grizzly Man (I'm not making this up): "In nature, there are boundaries."

[mao.mimosa]

huh. I just watched this the other night too, though I had a very different reaction. What if The Point, rather than something like "don't fuck with nature" is more that the American imagination has some pathological and absurd relationships with The Land. That Supertramp's voyage to Alaska is less an expression of freedom or even wanderlust, but of sheer frustration and confusion.

I was struck how his diary entries seemed to say somewhat interchangeably that he wanted to live "on the road" and "in the wild" -- these seem to me polar opposite goals, though I can also imagine a story of the American frontier in which they are perhaps not so different. But so I thought the movie (I also have not read the book) calls attention to how the American identity has been for so long predicated on a relationship with the land, though there are today of course far fewer people who have any relationship to land. (Even fewer since the movie came out -- thanks Countrywide!) In which case, The Point might not have anything to do with establishing that relationship, but with revising national ideals in line with history. Supertramp is clearly a victim (the obligatory Christ scene in the river makes that clear) -- but of what? Maybe he's a victim (and/though this would parallel his relationship with his parents) of the enduring American myths of innocence, self-reliance and opportunity, since they are so misplaced in a bloated capitalist superpopwer.

But maybe that's just me.

[E!]

so, i came in for the last 45 minutes (which i thought was going to be the last 15 minutes) while smarty mcfarty/mao.mimosa was watching this movie directed by his all-time BFF sean penn, for whom i have far less patience. and debbie? in that tiny fraction of the movie i had the EXACT SAME reaction as you. like sean penn is all, "even though i personally would never ever let myself be uncomfortable or disoriented for more than about ten minutes? i can still *totally* relate, because really, when you think about it, just filming beautiful things and thinking really hard about this mccandless fellow is very close to the extreme sublime. in fact, i may as well *be* mccandless because of my extreme aesthetic."

oh and? apparently there were many small things mccandless could have done to save his own life, including get a map, which apparently would have shown him 1.) where to cross the river, just a little ways up and 2.) where he could have walked to safety easily and within minutes. i don't know if such dumbassery contradicts the myth of good old mccdandless or if maybe such is the status of the american hero/sublime/relationship to the land.

and JM: that is extremely g.d. funny.

[caraf]

I knew guys like this when I lived in the woods. For this reason the book kept me up at night and I will not see the movie. These were not what we in Minnesota/Canada like to call the "jack pine savage" types - guys that really could survive for long periods in the wilderness. These were guys who grew up in the suburbs and canoe-camped in the BWCA two weeks a year, read Desert Solitaire and The Monkeywrench Gang and John Muir and liked to fish and naively thought they knew something about the wilderness. And they verbalized all sorts of fantasies of taking off to Alaska or the Northwest Territory, though eventually the ones I still know about got married or moved to Seattle or got a corporate job. I don't know what the precise tipping point into McCandless-style sublime tragedy exactly is, but when I read the book he felt eerily familiar to me - esp. the twentysomething male hubris.

[Robin J.]

I read the book and watched the movie . . . I felt the major difference between the two was that Mccandless/Supertramp has a much lower likeability factor in the book (and it's not really that high in the movie), making the ending almost satisfying. How evil am I?

[bonnie kyburz]

Penn made a hero of McCandless and missed a lot of the critique that made its way through Krakauer's superb prose work (i strongly recommend that you read the book). Penn certainly left off the fact that McCandless could have found his way out several different times/ways, as mao.mimosa explains.

here's a thing: Penn directed the movie. the whole while, McCandless family members (and, i believe, Krakauer himself) were "available" on set. i wonder: to what extent did he feel, given this reality, that he needed to include Every Single Moment from the story/book? ...

... i wondered this especially in light of the wonderfully efficient and moving scene (on the beach), w/ Catherine Keener's character, her hippie hubster, and McCandless. that scene established EVERYTHING we needed to know about what that couple contributed to CM's personality/identity/path, etc. (as well as to the progression of the narrative; it had done its job . . . move on!). we NEVER needed to go that hipped compound to wallow around there; it was such sad overkill, especially given the economy and care we found in the earlier (and ONLY NECESSARY) scene.

anyhow, generally, A Boy's Dream when it might have been a more Complicated Chronicle, one that enables a kind of delicate criticism to circulate throughout the story (but hey, who can critique hubris when hubris keeps getting in the way?).

here's a recommendation: Kung Fu Panda. amazing animation. and just enough Lao Tzu to make the generally "sideline kid makes good" message more meaningful (i teared up a little bit, i must admit). and Forgetting Sarah Marshall is dollarmovieriffic!

enjoy summer. i am :)

[bonnie kyburz]

oops. that's "hippie compound" (and yes, i did preview. sorry ;)

[Ted Striphas]

It's funny--I finished Krakauer's book, "Into the Wild," just a couple of days ago. It's been very much on my mind since then. I was moved to read it after seeing the film back in April, on DVD.

I do think the film ultimately is more sympathetic to McCandless, but, in contrast to Robin J., I don't think the book is especially critical of him and his actions. If anything, it goes to great lengths to rationalize what he did, in part through recounting the author's own mountaineering experiences from his youth.

The difference, I think, revolves around the matter of individualism and sociality. Both the film and book note Mccandless' realization: that happiness is only real when it's shared. Near the end, the film essentially revisits and renarrates all of McCandless' human interactions in light of this discovery.

I also feel as though the film makes more of his family's anguish over the disappearance of their loved one, and in that regard, it may well be more critical than the book.

The book, for its part, places much less of a stress on the pro-social message. Indeed, it seems to get more caught up in the whole matter of why someone would want to leave society, as evidenced by the numerous tales of men (yes, they're all men) who all tried to drop out.

Anyway, that's my two cents. What an interesting conversation! Thanks, Debbie, for prompting it.

[Abby]

I just want to second the Kung Fu Panda recommendation. Formulaic? Sure. Fantastic and funny anyway? Absolutely.

[bonnie kyburz]

Ted, . . . phew! one never knows how the lowbrow recommendations are going to go over :)

[dave's not here]

OK, so I'm pretty late getting to this. I was actually looking for some of your recent Burke stuff and scrolled down to this post which piqued my interest b/c I taught the book in my academic argument class last semester. I dunno if I'd do it again -- maybe, but for a sophomore-level course, I think the original Outside article will do justs fine.

But what I see in the book (that Penn *totally* misses) is that the book isn't about McCandless at all! McCandless is simply a vehicle for Krakauer to talk about himself and his own near-death experiences as stemming from some quasi-Oedipal confrontation with his father. As an argument, the article and book hinge upon Krakauer's climb up Devil's Thumb. By relating this tale, K is able to come to McCandless' side a bit and say "Hey, I've been there. I understand why he was doing what he did and maybe we shouldn't be so judgmental about it." That's the point of what K wrote, but yeah, the comments on the post here are all pretty right on about Penn's version: he made it about McCandless, who is not really all that compelling. The characters he meets along the way far outshine him (both actors and characters, IMO) in the film.

I don't think K was trying to "rationalize" McCandless, though, as BK suggests. She's right that there is a strong allegiance here with the head-to-the-wilderness-and-confront-your-demons kind of machismo and this is problematic. However, I see K's entire corpus as really trying to understand why people do these extreme things -- climb Everest, live in the "back country" of Alaska, etc. In that way, he is using the historical conditions he is given to ultimately ask: what good is wilderness? In that respect, it may not be all that different from Herzog's film: wilderness can teach you to treat it respectfully or it will kill you. Unfortunately, this breeds more dumb-ass antics (so different than driving through water-covered streets?) as guys (almost to a fault) will want to dominate rather than contemplate wilderness.