Dallas Morning News (subscription) |
Dallas Morning News (subscription), TX - Sean Penn saw himself as a citizen of the road from an early age. “From the time I got my driver’s license, I became a minimum-20-round-trip-across-America driver and camper,” he says, puffing on a cigarette at the Toronto International Film Festival, where his new film, Into the Wild, premiered earlier this month (it opened locally Friday). “I never pick a particular route. I just fly into the wind. I’ve always loved the motels where you park eight feet from your bed.”
Christopher McCandless never had much use for the motels. When he graduated from college he became a “leather tramp,” hitching, hiking, canoeing and riding the rails up and down the West Coast before reaching his final destination in the wilds of Alaska. A restless spirit in search of himself amid solitude, he became the subject of Jon Krakauer’s nonfiction book. When Mr. Penn picked it up, he read it cover to cover. Then he went back to the beginning and read it again.
Then he decided he had to make the movie.
The result is a big, bold, existential travelogue about a young man (Emile Hirsch) with a fierce moral code who feels compelled to throw himself off the grid. He donates his savings to charity and burns his cash. (”I don’t need money,” he says in the film. “It makes people cautious.”) Once he leaves he never again speaks to his parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden). He makes friends during his travels, including a California hippie couple (Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker) who befriend him, a South Dakota grain harvester (Vince Vaughn) who becomes his pen pal and a lonely widower (Hal Holbrook) who wants to adopt him… [Full Story]
|
Loading ...
