Into the Wild

Sean, old buddy, you were close to having a really good film. Here’s what I suggest to improve it by paring away excess: drop the arty and empty narration, tell the story straight through without the cumbersome flashback-flashforward structure, and cut out half the camera tricks. Show a little of your subject’s asceticism by showing some restraint yourself -- you can show off a little bit but not too much. Loved the super-slo-mos of tossed mortarboards and the spray of an improvised shower in the wilderness, for example, also the handwritten superscript, but hated the unmotivated direct address to camera and the steady stream of visual gimmicks. On top of all that rapturous landscape photography, it’s just too much, and leaves your main character opaque throughout, despite the appeal of Emile Hirsch in the role. Werner gets much deeper into his Grizzly Man than you get into yours, though you would have brought a lot to the role yourself as a young man. I can’t speak to how you’ve changed the character from Jon Krakauer’s nonfiction bestseller, about a new college graduate fleeing civilization and his old life by getting as deep into the wild as he could, all by himself. What you have done is mix diverse landscapes and characters within them, all well-embodied by the likes of Vince Vaughn, Catherine Keener, and Hal Holbrook, into a highly watchable road trip. But Mr. Penn, you might have had a worthy film in the great American tradition of Thoreau et al. You should learn their lesson -- to simplify, simplify. (2007, Images, n.) *6+* (MC-73.)