Emile Hirsch in a scene from the film, shot in 2007
Driving the minibus which became one of the symbols of the story
The actor Emile Hirsch in a scene from the film
Into the wild was directed by Sean Penn
Reflection, solitude and immersion in nature
There’s a pleasure in the pathless woods,
there’s a kidnapping on the lonely beach,
there is a world where no one penetrates,
near the deep sea, and music in the world:
oh, don’t love it‘man less, but Nature more…
– Lord Byron, The Pilgrimage of Young Harold, Canto IV, Verse 178 (1812-1818)
It is about these verses of the English romantic poet Lord Byron that begins Into the Wild – Into the wildsa 2007 film written and directed by Sean Penn and taken from the book by the essayist and mountaineer Jon Krakauer In the extreme lands (1996). It is the tragic true story of Christopher McCandlessa young twenty-three-year-old from West Virginia who, immediately after graduating in 1990, abandoned his family to embark on the path of nomadism, renunciation of money and solitude, determined to achieve his own truth in the boundless and wild lands ofAlaska.
Having distanced himself from society for highly personal reasons (he had a bad relationship with his parents, an example of the American upper middle class, who raised him together with his sister in an environment of violence) McCandless, self-renaming himself Alexader Supertramp, literally disappeared from every radar – determined not to be found – ed explored inland and rural America for two years. During his pilgrimage, accompanied by books by Tolstoy, Thoreau and London, he met several people with whom he established new, direct and truthful human contact, a sort of new extended family with which to start over. From the film, as from the book, it is possible to fully understand Christopher/Alex’s philosophy, expressed in a series of dialogues and in the written words of his diary, read by the narrative voice of his beloved sister, an invisible guide in the narrative of the film.
“Don’t believe that the joys of life come above all from people”, says Christopher, turning to the elderly Ted, whom he met in California. “God has placed them all around us. I’m everywhere. In everything we can experience. We just need to change the way we look at things…”
There soundtrack of the film was composed by Michael Brook with songs by Eddie Vedder (leader of Pearl Jam), whose Guaranteed it has become the banner of a philosophy of life. A song, like the others contained in the film, which is a real manifesto (just think of Society) of the protagonist’s ideas, and which contributed significantly to the success of the film. Music and images, in Into the Wild, are truly indivisible.
However, perhaps the most cult phrase of the film is “Happiness is real only when it is shared”: this is Christopher’s final awareness, a few moments before death, engraved with a knife on the wood. It is the final stage of the search for her, which brings with it – for the moment in which it is written – both a strong bitterness and a powerful awareness. A real legacy for posterity, even all these years later.
Some curiosities about the film
Filmed by Sean Penn with the goal of being as faithful as possible to the true story, Into the Wild presents a series of small staging devices in this sense. For example, the wristwatch worn by Emile Hirsch in the film belonged to the real Christopher McCandless and was given to the actor by the McCandless family.
Hirschdetermined like Penn to be as “mimetic” as possible, lost almost 20 kg and he refused to use stuntmen, shooting the film’s most complicated scenes himself, like the one where Chris meets a grizzly or the ones where he canoes across wild rivers or climbs steep mountains. And to think that Penn initially thought of Leonardo DiCaprio, who we saw a few years later in the not too dissimilar role, in terms of acting performance, of Hugh Glass in Revenant – Revived.
It seems that Sean Penn worked on the film for about ten years before deciding to shoot itdetermined to receive the approval and full support of the McCandless family.
The locations of the film Into the Wild
Into the Wild was filmed in the following scattered locations Between Oregon, Alaska, Arizona and South Dakota: Anchorage, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Astoria, Atlanta, Beaverton, Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary, Boulder City, Bullhead City, Cantwell, Cape Disappointment, Carthage, Copper River, Denali National Park and Preserve, El Centro, El Golfo de Santa Clara, Emory University, Fairbanks, George Fox University, Grand Canyon National Park.
Into the Wild is available for streaming and rental on various platforms at the following link: https://www.justwatch.com/it/film/into-the-wild-nelle-terre-selvagge
