Into the Wild |  | Director: Sean Penn
Actors: Emile Hirsch, Vince Vaughn, Catherine Keener, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt
Studio: Paramount
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.99
Buy Used: $3.29
as of 2/9/2010 18:52 EST details
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Seller: previously-enjoyed
Rating:  315 reviews
Sales Rank: 753
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Widescreen, NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 148 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: 348124
UPC: 097363481249
EAN: 0097363481249
ASIN: B000ZN802W
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Release Date: March 4, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
This is the true story of Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch). Freshly graduated from college with a promising future ahead McCandless instead walked out of his privileged life and into the wild in search of adventure. What happened to him on the way transformed this young wanderer into an enduring symbol for countless people -- a fearless risk-taker who wrestled with the precarious balance between man and nature.System Requirements:Running Time: 148 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/COMING OF AGE Rating: R UPC: 097363481249 Manufacturer No: 348124
Amazon.com
A superb cast and an even-handed treatment of a true story buoy Into the Wild, Sean Penn's screen adaptation of Jon Krakauer's bestselling book. Emile Hirsch stars as Christopher McCandless, scion of a prosperous but troubled family who, after graduating from Atlanta's Emory University in the early 1990s, decides to chuck it all and become a self-styled "aesthetic voyager" in search of "ultimate freedom." He certainly doesn't do it halfway: after donating his substantial savings account to charity and literally torching the rest of his cash, McCandless changes his name (to "Alexander Supertramp"), abandons his family (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden as his bickering, clueless parents and Jena Malone as his baffled but loving sister, who relates much of the backstory in voice-over), and hits the road, bound for the Alaskan bush and determined not to be found. For the next two years he lives the life of a vagabond, working a few odd jobs, kayaking through the Grand Canyon into Mexico, landing on L.A.'s Skid Row, and turning his back on everyone who tried to befriends him (including Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker as two kindly, middle-aged hippies and Hal Holbrook in a deeply affecting performance as an old widower who tries to take "Alex" under his wing). Penn, who directed and wrote the screenplay, alternates these interludes with scenes depicting McCandless' Alaskan idyll--which soon turns out be not so idyllic after all. Settling into an abandoned school bus, he manages to sustain himself for a while, shooting small game (and one very large moose), reading, and recording his existential musings on paper. But when the harsh realities of life in the wilderness set in, our boy finds himself well out of his depth, not just ill-prepared for the rigors of day to day survival but realizing the importance of the very thing he wanted to escape--namely, human relationships. It'd be easy to either idealize McCandless as a genuinely free spirit, unencumbered by the societal strictures that tie the rest of us down, or else dismiss him as a hopelessly callow naïf, a fool whose disdain for practical realities ultimately doomed him. Into the Wild does neither, for the most part telling the tale with an admirable lack of cheap sentiment and leaving us to decide for ourselves. --Sam Graham
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 315
 failed to play February 3, 2010
Zsuzsa Rakosy
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
We could not watch the movie. The DVD player and the computer could not read the DVD either. There was not any scratch on the surface, probably we got an empty DVD.
 "To be great is to be misunderstood" January 27, 2010
Justin Held (Illinois)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is the best book into movie ever. This is the best movie ever. If you are like me and are constantly searching for that great divine spirit to show through in a person then let Christopher "alex" McCandless be your guide. Here is a true story about an individual who doesnt live by society, who doesnt need material posesions, a true poet with a passion for nature and life. Unfortunately he died, but in his short life he lived more than most of us. Critics who made fun of his death need to be careful what they say for they don't know how their end will come. Not that any one will notice. Alex is alive in every tree, rock and river,he is also in every virtuous nature loving soul whose read Krakauers book or seen his movie.
outstanding report of a special life January 27, 2010
P.Market (Milano, MI, Italy)
outstanding, just as the film. really intriguing, well written. also the diversion about various outcasts is appropriate in my opinion
Into the Wild January 19, 2010
Arnita D. Brown (USA)
Based on a true story. After graduating from Emory University, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters who shape his life. This movie is beautiful, deep, true, adventurous, sad, occasionally funny, real, at times very touching. Chris McCandless lived a whole, remarkable, life. And Sean Penn has captured those two years for all to see in this movie.
A Dream Unfinished January 18, 2010
Jeff Farrow
I remember reading the actual account this film was based on & I felt sad. From what I read, I assumed that the subject of the news article had been suffering from some form of mental illness. So I knew the ending & this movie provided the history.
Sean Penn's film presents us a young man who is not mentally disturbed, but a person who is clearly "troubled," a person seeking a Self unstiffled by the realities of modern, materialistic society. This causes him to engage in very few relationships, and those he does form are on his own terms & with his right to terminate at any time. This is more than a kid running from a bickering upper middle class mother & father. I don't know how many other viewers saw the hero (anti-hero hero really) as much mentally ill as a rebel. When you do see it that way, you can't help but sympathize with the parents--and particularly with the sister who seemed very close to him.
In the opening sequence, we see Nemo (I call the main character "Nemo" because he saw himself as a reality in search of an identity)graduate from college & offered a place at Harvard. His parents are ectsatic, but he's not interested. The fact that he graduated with honors does not necessarily rule out mental illness. Schizophrenia, for example, often doesn't manifest until young adulthood.
Nemo carries on full conversations with himself, acting out the parental anger & dysfunction. A major symptom of schizophrenia. He makes up wild names for himself. Another sign of borderline personality disorder. However, his quest for perfect freedom in Alaska is on a par with any one who is inspired by a goal, vision of a painting, etc. Nemo logically plans his quest over an extended period of time, demonstrating that if he IS mentally ill, at least he's very high functioning.
I see Nemo's Alaska goal as being a form of "The Great Work" for him. It's accomplishment will free him from the lower forms of reality & raise him into unified, perfected/pure consciouness, a transcendental unity with One. He has overcome his father & mother and in doing so, has become his OWN father & mother. He states as much in the course of the movie. This is a metaphor of alchemy & magick ritual--it is also found in the New Testament teachings of Josahua ben Joseph (Jesus.) Nemo has also cut off the emotional attachment to his sister, his last long term relationship. He does not have sex--even when offered by a beautiful girl. Celibacy, another stage of The Work. He eats strange plants & roots--yep, yet another stage. Finding the bus in the middle of a gorgeous nowhere was like a gift from a spirit, an offering literally out of the blue.
When in extremis, he encounters a bear who snifs him, then passes casually on. A totem image? hallucination? The bus was as much a gift as it was as a warning he failed to read correctly. His failure to assess the element of water in his calculations/metaphisical formula was, in the end, tragic. Such is the fate of many of attempt "The Work" on totally on their own.
It is tragic, not just pathetic as some reviwers claim.
Maybe, unlike most of us who don't take risks for the sake of comfort & security, Nemo could have found his inner Self, his true Godhood.
Maybe he could have really healed, but didn't.
That's a tragedy for any broken soul.
PS NOTES: Hal Holbrook is excellent as the bitter, sad old man who lost his family--and he regenerated via his relationship with Nemo. As matter of fact, the persons he managed to connect with, all benefited from the relationship. There was a great deal of good in him that went unrealized & unfulfilled
The music in the film is really good & very appropriate to the scene they illuminate.
At the films' conclusion, a photographic self-portrait of the man seems to indicate a man more troubled than at peace.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 315
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