15, 148 mins

It’s easy to see why Sean Penn was attracted to writing and directing Into the Wild. Based on Jon Krakauer’s book of the same name, it tells the true story of young Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch). He was idealistic and uncompromising, a rebel with a rucksack who wanted to find a more meaningful life somewhere in the wilds of Alaska. Penn, on the other hand, likes to choose meaningful films somewhere in the wilds of indie cinema. Both men crave authenticity.

I’ve always loathed Penn’s films (The Pledge, The Crossing Guard), and suspected that they were given special praise because people love Penn and his veneer of I-hate-Hollywood hipness. But Into the Wild is a terrific film – though far too long. Poetic and passionate, it hits you in places other films never reach, reminding you of the dreams of youth, when all was possible.

The 22-year-old McCandless has just graduated, and has a bright future ahead of him, but, instead of that parentally approved future of Harvard, marriage, the big money, he sets out to pursue a very different American dream, the one chased by poets, drop-outs and writers such as Jack London and Thoreau, and founded in the joys of nature and the solitude of the self. He gives his college money to Oxfam, cuts up his credit card and heads off for a two-year adventure (without telling his family) that will take him across the wheatfields of South Dakota, down the rapids of the Colorado River and finally to an abandoned bus in the wilds of Alaska. On his journey, he sheds his old self and takes the name Alexander Supertramp, meeting figures from another, marginalised America: an old hippie couple (Catherine Keener, Brian Dierker) and a lonely old man, Ron Franz (Hal Holbrook). Along with his crazy boss (Vince Vaughn), they become his extended family and he becomes their missing son.

Penn strikes powerful emotional chords with these characters. And he is careful not to make them come across as the vessels of a special wisdom that we sad dupes of western consumerism should listen to. McCandless is a kind of character we rarely see in films about young Americans. He is not part of the iPod/YouTube generation, but a moralist in search of a new morality. He doesn’t want “things” and success. In a culture obsessed with safety, he’s the risk-taking adventurer who gladly embraces the unknown and the dangers that come with it.

This kind of rebel character could so easily get on your nerves, with endless whines about our shallow society, but he doesn’t come across that way. He is a literate and articulate critic of modern life, frequently quoting Tolstoy and Thoreau. Instead of being a sanctimonious prig, he seems like a sincere searcher after a way of life that would suit him, and denounces society without denouncing us as well.

Penn avoids the obvious temptation of trying to make him likeable. He isn’t. His freedom is founded on a kind of selfish disregard for others, in particular for his family. His parents (William Hurt, Marcia Gay Harden) have no idea what has happened to him; nor does his adoring sister. Maybe Penn romanticises his life on the road a little, but he is shown to be something of a fool for entering this harsh landscape so poorly prepared. Along with beautiful shots of snowcapped mountains and deer by babbling streams, we see the terrible physical hardships and the loneliness that at times seem to push him over the edge. The dream of the self-sufficient solitary life becomes a struggle for survival.

There’s a cruel irony at the heart of the film: McCandless has gone into the wilderness to find out what it is that makes us truly human, and ends up a poor, trapped beast. Hirsch, who has the wide-eyed openness of the young DiCaprio, really carries the film. He’s not a great actor, but he’s a highly proficient one who, you can tell, works hard to deliver what he does.

Penn has given his film a rigid structure in terms of his character’s development, but subverts this tidy scheme by moving backwards and forwards in time, having different voiceovers, breaking the realism. What we get is a life more lyrical, messy and authentic.

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