Howling at the wild child

Pity the poor parents of Chris McCandless, the American college graduate who gave away his savings, burned his ID and headed off into the wilds of North America to live life free and easy, and all alone.

Director Sean Penn doesn't seem to have too much sympathy for the abandoned family of his egotistical hero in his sometimes infuriating film of the true story. He does, it's true, give us an almost unbearable moment when Chris's father, portrayed by William Hurt, drops to the ground in his suburban street and silently howls at the loss of his son. But on the whole, Penn lets Chris (Emile Hirsch, playing it as blank as a brick wall) off the hook - he never has to explain what he's running away from or what he's hoping to find, or accept responsibility for hurting anyone he has left behind.

Far from moralising about the young man's extreme and selfish behaviour, Penn romanticises it. And that's where, pretty early on, he loses me.

Some critics don't seem to have minded being trapped for more than two hours with a philosopher/poet/seeker type who doesn't share his thoughts (though he's always quoting other people's). Others have found him a bit of a bore. He made me want to scream.

Yeas ago, I used to go camping to beautiful, cold, wet places with mountain climbers. There was one among them who, when we sat around patching a meal together, would make a point of plonking the cheese or the bread on the muddy ground instead of replacing it on the plate he'd picked it up from. He wasn't there for the glorious views, the camaraderie of the camp fire, or even the great outdoors. He was there to beat the mountain. It was a dehumanising process where normal social rules didn't apply and he loved it.

I thought of him while watching Into the Wild. Chris didn't seem to have any more affinity with nature or really to be in search of beauty (that appalling, tatty, hippy caravan park; that ugly rusty van he lived in). In the end, I thought, he wasn't searching for anything - just doggedly trying to win. He had become obsessed to the point of dangerously dysfunctional.

There's an interesting American hero in there somewhere. But I wonder if he's so very far away from the goth teenager who bursts into high school and shoots all his mates?

Into The Wild
Cert: 15