What Do The Critics Say?

"Sean Penn has made an eco-road movie that refreshes and invigorates. Exquisitely shot, robustly acted and deeply felt, it’s a potent ode to wanderlust and human pluck." Tom Charity TOTAL FILM "Into the Wild will haunt anyone willing to take the trip." Owen Gleiberman ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY "Beautifully structured and performed." Moira MacDonald SEATTLE TIMES "Days later I was still thinking about this adventure... a sure indication of a well-crafted film." Cherryl and Leigh Ann THEMOVIECHICKS "Penn's maturation as a filmmaker is stunningly complete. Into the Wild is a riveting, spiritual revelation - one young man's journey to find himself that ends in folly unmourned." Laura Clifford REELING REVIEWS "Laced with amazing visual stunts, standout performances, and a perspective of our nation that's nearly incomprehensible, we wind up tramping right along with our wide-eyed hero." Bill Gibron POPMATTERS

"For 10 years, Sean Penn has been obsessed with bringing to the screen Jon Krakauer's 1998 best-selling book about the two-year odyssey of Emerson graduate Chris McCandless, a societal dropout who eventually winds up spending 113 days in the Alaskan wilderness. Penn has remained faithful to the book, shooting in over 30 of the exact locations Chris crossed. A mystic and mesmerizing journey of adventure and self-discovery." Peter Hammodd MAXIM "Sean Penn sings a powerful and poetic hymn to America with "Into the Wild," his sweeping, sensitive and deeply affecting adaptation of Jon Krakauer's best-selling book." Ann Hornaday WASHINGTON POST "Into the Wild shows you the way, but lets you choose for yourself. And hippie or no, this trip is absolutely worth the effort." Todd Gilchrist IGN MOVIES "There is food for thought and food for every kind of feeling in Sean Penn's outstanding film." Peter Bradshaw UK GUARDIAN "Into the Wild takes your heart and shakes it, offering inspiration, exasperation and blunt realization in a true story of one young man's dream and nightmare." Tom Long DETROIT NEWS

The Inside Story In the course of his two year quest to better understand himself and his place in the world, Chris McCandless blazed through an entire lifetime of experiences. From the birth of a brand new, self-invented identity as he set out on the road; to his declaration of independence from the bewildered family he left behind; to an exhilarating process of gaining knowledge and wisdom from the amazing people and places that touched his soul; to the calamity that led to his own unplanned demise at the apex of his perspective-altering journey, these fragments form the emotional mosaic at the core of Sean Penn’s adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s bestseller Into The Wild. First published in 1998, Krakauer’s book became that rare thing in our contemporary, urbanized world: an instant wilderness classic. The book riveted readers of all backgrounds with its probing investigation of the life and death of twenty four year old Christopher McCandless, an affluent young man who renounced his wealth and attempted to shed his former identity in order to try the find the real meaning of freedom and wilderness, only to vanish into a rough country from which he would never return. The details of who McCandless was, where he journeyed and how he came to spend a remarkable 113 days in the wilds of Alaska with only bare supplies, became the unforgettable story of Krakauer’s book; which was expanded from an article he had written for Outside Magazine. "A lot of my motivation in writing the book was identifying with Chris and trying to figure him out for myself, but I don’t pretend that I totally figured him out," Krakauer explained. "“Chris was not an ordinary kid. He was self-absorbed. He was stubborn. He was impetuous. But he was also pure of heart. And the extremely wonderful thing about him is that he would not compromise. He had these extremely high ideals, this sense of moral rectitude. He believed that the purpose of life was not to take the easy path. Some of his critics thought he was ill-prepared, reckless, foolish; they asked why he didn’t he have an ax and a radio when he went into Alaska? But his idea was: that’s not an adventure. In this day and age, when there are no more blank spots on the map, Chris left the maps behind." When Sean Penn saw Krakauer’s hardback in a Brentwood bookshop, he had an immediate, visceral reaction. He recalls being drawn like a magnet to the cover photo of an abandoned bus in the snow and heading home to crack the spine, then says: "I read it from cover to cover twice before I went to sleep. Then I got up the following day, whatever time it was, and started right away trying to see if I could get the rights. I thought the story was instantly indelible and deeply cinematic in its characters and its landscape in every way. It hit the same nerve with me that I think it hit with most people who read it." Eventually, Penn would get the rights but it would take nearly a decade. "The family simply wasn’t ready yet to let this film be made, but Sean kept in touch with them and he was very passionate about it," recalls producer Bill Pohlad ("Brokeback Mountain"). "This story just felt so hungry to be made into a movie, I always felt, one way or another, it was going to happen," says Penn. Ten years after Penn first set out to get the rights, the phone rang at last. "They called, completely out of the blue, and said they were ready to do it. I honestly don’t know why they changed their minds but they did," says Penn. Jon Krakauer, who deferred to the McCandless family throughout this process, believes he does know why the family chose Penn. "There’s something about Sean that is so direct, so in your face, that you believe him, because you know he is telling it like it is," he says. "The McCandlesses couldn’t be any more different than Sean, but they trusted something in him." Years earlier, Penn had written the story in his head. Now he set about creating the script. "It was as if Sean had thought about this movie for the whole ten years. It just poured out of him because the entire thrust of the movie was in him before he wrote a page," producer Art Linson ("Pushing Tin" & "Fight Club") recalls. "I just wrote what was lodged in my head," Penn says. "For the next draft, I went out on the road, following in Chris’s steps, and meeting the people who Chris knew, and that enriched the story in a different way." Penn had difficult and intimate conversations with the McCandless family, especially Chris's sister Carine, who shared her journals, letters and most private memories with him. He also met with as many people who had known Chris during that period in the early 1990s as he could. "They all had something helpful to say," notes Penn. "I think Sean brought something new to the story. It’s more than just Krakauer’s book re-created," says Linson. "I think Sean did an amazing job of getting inside Chris as a character and letting you feel what he was going through, even though we’ll never know precisely what happened to him. You get a real sense of the incredible impact he had on the people he met," Pohlad ("A Prairie Home Companion") said. "But, like any piece of true art, ultimately he leaves it up to the viewer to take their own judgment and interpretation of the events." To play the role, Sean Penn sought an actor with the same sort of disarming, fresh-faced idealism as McCandless, and one who also might bear some physical resemblance to the handsome and charismatic young man seen in the haunting photographs left behind. He found all these qualities in twenty two year old Emile Hirsch. "I knew he could act the part, but the question was could he act it every day for eight months under tough circumstances," Penn notes, "and was he going to be willing to go from boy to man during production and on-screen?" Pohlad says Hirsch, "was able to portray Chris in a way that you really believe it was in this kid’s soul to do these kinds of things. He underwent a genuine transformation." Hirsch remembers first hearing about Chris McCandless as a kid, while watching television. "I think I was about nine years old and a 20/20 episode about him came on and I was just captivated and kind of mesmerized by the story of this guy who went to Alaska," he recalls. "It had this deep impact on me even as a child. When Sean approached me, I read the book and those memories came flooding back." Hirsch, like Krakauer, and Penn, remains convinced that Chris’s demise was truly an accident of circumstance. "I definitely think he meant to come backs. He was looking for a total spiritual cleansing, but he didn’t want to die." "In preparing for the role, Hirsch also spent considerable time in conversation with Chris’ parents and sister, whose honesty and openness provided their own inspiration. "I thought they were wonderful, smart, interesting people," he says. Carine McCandless's deeply personal observations of her lost brother were especially invaluable to Hirsch. "She was really Chris's best friend and nobody knew him better than Carine." Going to Alaska had an equally profound effect on Hirsch. "Alaska is such a striking and amazing land, and being there in the real clothes that Chris really wore and wearing the backpack that Chris did, which was literally really heavy, it constantly amazed me how he managed at all in the cold and the snow and the harshness of that environment." To portray Chris in his final days, Hirsch shed fourty one pounds off his already lean body. For the moving final scenes in Alaska, Hirsch weighed just one hundred and fifteen pounds. The role of Chris's father Walt went to Academy Award ® winner William Hurt, who says he took the role largely because of his respect for Sean Penn and his "brash, bold, insightful instincts. I’ve known Sean for a long time and I trust him." Walt’s wife, Billie is played by Academy Award ® winner Marcia Gay Harden. "Marcia floored me," says Hurt. "It’s an astounding performance because she’s everything a suburban woman could be and at the same time, there’s nothing cliché about it." Harden notes that she went into the role certain of one thing: "It was very important to me and to Bill Hurt to bring a humanity to these parents." Penn chose three time Young Artist Award winner Jena Malone for the role of Chris's sister Carine. "In Sean’s screenplay, you really felt like she and Chris had this bond, that they were connected in this unique way that didn’t require a lot of words." Malone not only worked with Carine McCandless in preparing her narration but also the acclaimed American poet Sharon Olds. Catherine Keener, who played Harper Lee in "Capote", took on the role of Jan Burres. On working with Hirsch, she notes: "He is beautiful and it was just so easy to be taken with him, you know." Kristen Stewart plays Tracy, a teenager Chris met at Slab City. "When Tracy meets Chris, she just falls for him. He has such a love for life, all she wants to do is be with him," she said. Of all the people Chris met in his travels, none stands out more so than Ron Franz, played in the film by stage legend Hal Holbrook. "when Hal showed up on the set, you already knew something special was going on. It wasn’t like Hal Holbrook playing a role, it was as if he really was this character," Pohlad recalls. "I thought Sean took the book and made something remarkably eloquent out of it. I think young people today will find it hard not to take something very personal and wrenching from this story," the four time EMMY Award ® winner Holbrook said. Of Hirsch he says, "It was like working with a real person, which is what you always most hope for." "Sean has made the kind of movie I suspect will leave an impression on people for a very long time," Krakaue says. "It doesn’t spoon-feed you, it’s an intense movie, but it makes you wonder." Synopsis

Shortly after graduation, Chris McCandless gives his life savings to charity, burns all of his identification, and begins hitchhiking across America, his ultimate goal being Alaska. Citing passages from his heroes, Thoreau and Jack London, he is determined to escape society and get back to nature. He blows from town to town like a tumbleweed, hopping trains, camping with aging hippies, working briefly with a farmer, and befriending a widowed leather worker, Ron Franz. He revels in his newfound freedom. Meanwhile, his parents, who have no idea where he is, and are sick with worry. While their relationship with Chris was already troubled, they are nonetheless devastated by his disappearance. Chris finally makes it to Alaska, where he hikes out to a remote campsite where he discovers an abandoned bus, which he makes his home. He manages to survive there for a few months living off the land. Eventually he runs out of supplies. Unable to leave because of a swollen river, the young man meets a tragic end.

The Verdict "Sean Penn delivers a breath of cinematic fresh air with his latest film, "Into The Wild". Based on the book by Jon Krakauer, interviews with McCandless's family and the people he met during his journey of self-discovery Penn's direction and screenwriting skills are at there very best in this very, emotionally affecting, film. "Into The Wild" is a modern day adventure story full of great images, wonderful characters, humour and sadly tragedy. Emile Hirsch gives a solid performance in the lead role. The supporting cast effectively portray people we'd probably like to meet somewhere along lifes way. The grandest performance comes from veteran actor Hal Holbrook who plays leatherworker Ron. Cinematographer Eric Gautier captures images that are truly indelible. The songs of Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder are poetic, lyrical and haunting. A lively film filled with spirit and heart. Very Recommended. 4 STARS." Cast & Crew Bytes "INTO THE WILD" stars .......
Emile Hirsch ["The Emperor's Club", "The Girl Next Door" and "Lords of Dogtown"]; 1997, 98 & 99 Young Artist Award winner Jena Malone ["Life as a House", "Cold Mountain" and "Pride & Prejudice"]; 2006 Chlotrudis Award winner Catherine Keener ["Lovely & Amazing", "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and "Friends with Money"]; Western Heritage Bronze Wrangler Award winner Marcia Gay Harden ["Space Cowboys", "Pollock", "Mona Lisa Smile" and "P.S."]; 1986 David di Donatello Award winner William Hurt ["Kiss of the Spider Woman", "The Proposition", "A History Of Violence" and "Mr Brooks"]; Kristen Stewart ["Panic Room", "Zathura: A Space Adventure", "In the Land of Women" and "The Messengers"]; Vince Vaughn ["Be Cool", "Wedding Crashers", "The Breakup" and "Fred Claus"] and 1971 Golden Apple Male Star of the Year Award winner Hal Holbrook ["The Star Chamber", "Wall Street", "Waking the Dead" and "The Majestic"] as Ron.
"INTO THE WILD" was .......
directed by Sean Penn ["The Indian Runner", "The Crossing Guard" and "The Pledge"]; screenplay by Sean Penn ["The Indian Runner" and "The Crossing Guard"]; art direction by Domenic Silvestri ["50 First Dates", "Cellular" and "Mission: Impossible III"]; costume design by Mary Claire Hannan ["Beverly Hills Ninja", "Jackie Brown", "Life Without Dick" and "Red Eye"]; production design by Dereck R Hill ["Run for the Money", "Roadie" and "House M.D."]; edited by 2007 American Cinema Editors Eddie Award winner Jay Lash Cassidy ["Tuck Everlasting", "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" and "An Inconvenient Truth"]; cinematography by Eric Gautier ["The Housekeeper", "Paris, je t'aime", "Noise" and "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints"]; set decoration by Danielle Berman ["Guinevere", "Memento" and "Made"] and Christopher Neely ["Circulatory Man", "Genuine Risk" and "Shakes the Clown"]. Who's Who?

Emile Hirsch Brian Dierker Catherine Keener Marcia Gay Harden Kristen Stewart Hal Holbrook William Hurt Jena Malone Vince Vaughn Dan Burch Joe Dustin Zach Galifianakis Cheryl Francis Harrington John Jabaley Thure Lindhardt Robin Mathews Bart the Bear

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Christopher McCandless Rainey/Marine Coordinator Jan Burres Billie McCandless Tracy Ron Walt McCandless Carine McCandless Wayne Westerberg Passerby The Beast Kevin Social Worker Announcer Thomas Gail Borah The Bear

Run Time 148 minutes Rated M [AUST] Copyright ©2007 - Paramount Vantage - All Rights Reserved ©2007 All Rights Reserved - Protected by Australian & International Copyright. Trademark Laws Apply.