'Into The Wild' Is Modern America's Western

By Katey Rich

The American West has been getting a lot of attention on the big screen this fall, and rarely has it looked so good. Cinematographer Roger Deakins alone has redefined the frontier, with his gorgeous work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country For Old Men showcasing two equally striking but vastly different versions of the West. Add to that the success of 3:10 to Yuma, an old-school Western in a way neither of the above films were, and it's a wonder we're not all packing up the wagons and heading for the Oregon Trail.

It might be the most modern of this fall's films set in the West, though, that best captures the attitude and mythology of the place. Sean Penn's Into the Wild, while featuring nary a 10-gallon hat or horse, gets to the heart of America's fascination with the West, the idealized nature and the rugged individualist spirit. Penn's anti-hero may be more Jack Kerouac than Wyatt Earp, but Chris McCandless picks right up where those heroes left off, seeking his fortune in the great unknown�only this time, with disastrous consequences.

Penn's film is based on Jon Krakauer's bestseller Into the Wild, which painstakingly retraced McCandless' rambling path across the American West, which he undertook after graduating from college, abandoning all his worldly belongings and rechristening himself "Alexander Supertramp." The list of location shoots features heavily in the credits, and with good reason-- Penn and his crew seem to have traveled everywhere that McCandless did, from the freewheeling former hippie campsite Slab City, California to the rushing waters of the Rio Grande. Penn reportedly shot much of the movie himself, and while he's no visionary like Deakins, he does an extraordinary job of capturing the still beauty but also the excitement of the locations. Seeing the Denali Mountain Range in Alaska, we admire its timeless elegance while channeling the excitement felt by our young hero, eager to strike out and conquer it.

McCandless (Hirsch) sees a flock of caribou his first day in Alaska.

In the lead role, 22-year old Emile Hirsch is extraordinary, playing a character both admirable and infuriating for his steadfast dedication to his ideals. Penn's jubilant cinematography would not work without him, as Hirsch effortlessly conveys the sheer wonder of what he's seeing-- a scene in which he first arrives in Alaska and spies a flock of caribou is tiny compared to the larger landscapes, but devastatingly tender. Penn is bold enough to have his actor play to the camera; Hirsch looks directly into the lens at several points, both in moments of joy and disaster. It's a terribly risky move, especially in a film that's otherwise naturalistic, but somehow the charisma and power both behind the camera and before it combine in a way that simply invites the audience into Christopher's adventure.

Chris McCandless might be the kind of city slicker who would have been laughed out of Dodge City, but he's who we are now, a nation with itchy feet but no frontier to explore with them. Penn has it both ways with McCandless' story, never quite canonizing him for striking out the way most of us never will, but unwilling to condemn him for his foolish unpreparedness. Somehow, it works. McCandless, like the great heroes of the West, can be whoever you want him to be, a tragically flawed hero for some and a role model for others. He embodies one of the most powerful ideals we Americans have ever held: that somewhere out where the sun goes down, there's a better future. Though he meets a tragic end in his search, what he comes across in the meantime is gorgeous and awe-inspiring: the stuff American dreams are made of.