Saturday, November 24, 2007

INTO THE WILD

Written and directed by Sean Penn, INTO THE WILD tells the story of a young man's journey to independence and freedom in Alaska. There's a lot of great stuff in the film. Penn is an outstanding director of actors. Hal Holbrook's performance alone is worth watching.

However, he's got structural problems with his writing. The decision to tell the story through flashbacks, with literal chapter markings in the film (and the chapter titles are literally what is going on in the scene), he could have used some help with the screenplay. But the cinematography and sound are great.

Recommended.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I liked this film as well. The story was compelling, the cinematography was beautiful and it was wonderfully acted. My criticism is that it should have been edited better; it was way too long and could have been condensed into 2 hours.

Bondelev said...

Definitely a Hollywood trend, films overstaying their welcome.

Unfortunately, it's a leftover effect from TITANIC.

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry was I the only one who watched the whole movie? It had the chance to be so good but I would like to ask Sean Penn for those 3 hours of my life back...No tears at the end, if anything it portrayed Alex's whole social isolation as nothing but a pure waste. Happiness is best shared-duh...so nice you had to die to figure that out. If we all obsessed about how messed up our parents were we might as well all swear off relationships for life. Grow up and lead your own meaningful existance. And wasn't the whole meaning of his journey to get back to nature? I didn't know that meant hanging out in a bus for 3 months- I pictured more of a loner nomad treking across the wilderness "planet earth" style. Hence the title into the wild. No inspiring story here, just glorified mental problems. But that's just how the movie came across to me, I don't know anything about the true story.