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208.58.2.83
Apart from 6 or 7 minutes of unwonted "lyricism", the other 140 were incredibly worth watching.
Both a road-trip pic and a man-against-nature saga, the protagonist is ill-prepared for the challenges he takes on -- life, hiking, the river -- especially the river. The river proves his undoing.
But he was just a boy, giving it all away.
He was selfish, but selfless too, foolish and foolhardy, alert and yet somehow asleep. Emile Hirsch conveys the role nearly perfectly, both in his face and in his physical presence. Vince Vaughn actually acts, and Hal Holbrook, in an academy-worthy job, will break your heart.
The matinee audience, in a 2/3 house, was as quiet towards the end as any I have ever witnessed, testimony enow.
clark
Follow Ups:
"He was selfish, but selfless too, foolish and foolhardy, alert and yet somehow asleep"
You've just described 'boys' perfectly. Always a puzzle, sometimes an enigma and yet readable like a book. Given the ultimate freedoms without adult role models around to guide them, boys can easily undo a sort life, more specifically, their own.
I haven't seen the movie, but Emile could only do this role perfectly. I'd be walking away from this movie wondering where we had failed this boy....how could you not?
s
There's a great article about John Krakauer and Sean Penn getting this story into a movie. It took quite some doing. Penn wanted to make it ten years ago, but the McCandless family wouldn't go for it. It took Krakauer a couple of years working with the family to just get the book into print. He did that by slowly winning their confidence that he would do an honest and respectful job with the truth as revealed to him.Penn also respected their wishes to not make a film without their approval. Finally, ten years later, the family contacted him and said to go ahead. What changed their minds is that they heard somebody might make an unauthorized movie of the story. If was going to happen, they would rather have Penn do it.
Penn wanted to shoot it in Utah to save a buck. Krakauer went ballistic when he heard that and told Penn that the movie would suck if not filmed in the Alaska Range. Up to that point, Penn had never been in Alaska. The terrain and mountains are a big part of the events and the story. Penn shot it on location, thus battling the short season and additional costs to make it authentic. I have not seen the movie nor read the book, but I have lived in Alaska for thirty years. I can tell you without hesitancy that Utah is no Alaska. It was a wise investment.
As Alaskans, we saw many freaky hippy dropout types wandering up to find whatever is there to find. Most came with stupid notions of what it would be like, trying to leave their past behind and just drop out. They got little respect from the residents, although most of us were there for similar variations on the theme. The state is like that. We called the low-end of the spectrum "end-of-the-roaders". Most left after they got their asses kicked by the environment, economics, lifestyle, et al.
Was the kid selfish? Sure maybe, as a teenager will be, but was he also selfless? Also yes, as he wandered trying to lose himself and join with everything else in Buddhist fashion. The turning point for Krakauer in writing the story was when Chis McCandless's sister finally confided a family secret that made Chris start his odyssey. His father had a previous marriage, and continued to "see" his former spouse on the west coast and fathering more kids with her after Chis and his sister were well into their teens or late pre-teens. That's a magnum betrayal, and it fucked up his head. As his sister explained, it messed up hers as well, but she didn't have a flambouyant death to write a book about.
I'm looking forward to seeing the flick. I know the region and the kid's perspective. I hope Penn did a credible job.
They shot everything on location except for the Alaska stuff. I mean... they shot it in Alaska but not right where the bus was.
From Outside magazine's article on the film...
"Of all the locations Penn had to scout, the remote spot in Alaska where McCandless spent his final months proved to be the most difficult to replicate. He started by visiting the real bus, which still sits in the wilderness west of Healy.
PENN: We went in the winter on snow machines. [The bus was] in exactly the same state. The most impacting thing is that [McCandless's] boots are still sitting there on the floor and his pants are still there folded, with the patches he sewed into them. As a story that I'd followed for so long, that was a pretty big moment... It was very moving, but I was also there to work. I knew I wasn't going to shoot there. It would have been obnoxious, a kind of rape of the area to have a whole crew there. I was going there to make a pilgrimage but also to find a reference. It affirmed for me that what I had in my head was quite accurate. Our place is an approximation.
We had a scout by the name of John Jabaley—he was the point man to find our location. We searched for over a month. It was a ton of time walking in the snow and trudging and getting cold and wet and frustrated. I was getting to the point where I was wanting to take it out on John, because we hadn't found what I wanted. But that night he came and said, "I think I might have found it." So we took snowmobiles, and as we approached I could see that this is what I'd had in mind. The hill from the river was dead on. And just as we got to the top, where we eventually placed our bus, there were three moose. And I just said, "This is it."
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
a
s
I'll probably see it because Penn screws up but he does so in interesting ways, as a director.
You really should put a "SPOILER" heading in a post in which you give away critical parts of a film!
It said JK worked closely (and slowly) with them on the book - to convince them of his honesty and probably to gain their trust and have them open up - and that they initially decided not to have the movie made and then 10 years later, when it was going to made by someone other than Penn, they decided to have it made.The reason they initally rejected the film was because the mother had a dream in which the son said he didn't want it made. She told Sean Penn about it and he said... to paraphrase... "If I didn't respect dreams I wouldn't be making movies."
Sounds like you're in danger of letting those couple of paragraphs in the New Yorker taint your perception of this film.
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
contacts with the family.
As a former reporter, I never was "trusted" by a subject because they knew I'd not work to get their approval: I served a different master as should Penn.
That means that Penn, if he wished, could cast the young man as a delusional, egotistical little pig who only thought of himself, bringing his miserably short life to an end after having done absolutely nothing for anyone, including himself.
A stockbroker that takes a few hours a week to help out in a soup kitchen is far more worthwhile.
Or the guy who got gobbled up by the bears; he died trying, no matter how miserably, to save those animals.
I'll go with an open mind to the work because I've surprised myself plenty, previously. One can, after all, appreciate a work of art and despise the protagonist: that's the difference between life and art, right?
of the product (book or movie).
I haven't read or heard anything that even suggests they had final approval on anything.
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
decided to: you seem to be a tad naive here for arguments sake.
Penn knew what he had to do, though to base it upon K's book he probably had to be somewhat true to it.
Why would someone need the family's approval at all?
I don't know why you seem to come to a halt on the adjective "final."
If they approve, they approve and they participate. Penn felt he needed their blessing which a guy like Herzog, a far more accomplished film maker, never did in his many documentaries.
ac
"....quiet as any I've witnessed."
Possibly asleep?
The New Yorker pans it, brutally.
.
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
""In the fall of 2005, Krakauer and the McCandless family finally signed off on Penn's plans for a movie (the film hits theaters September 21), in part because of his pledge to stick so closely to the true story."
Now to you, "signed off" probably doesn't match PERFECTLY with final approval but to most people, I think, it does.
No, I haven't seen the film but I think I could muster a tad more sympathy for young guys dying in Iraq, starving in Africa, risking their lives in Red Cross missions in Darfur, or being shot in ghettos across our richest-on-the-planet country.
The guy died because either he was suicidal or he fucked up while camping where his ego shouldn't have led him. Sob, sniff.
The problem with that viewpoint is that you are placing a judgment 'value' on a young man's life. They tried that in England for centuries, it was called the 'class system'. Everybody has to find their way, regardless of their background-even rich kids.
You can have empathy for the young men & women dying in the sandbox and elsewhere in service to this country, while at the same time have empathy for a lost young man who came from a rich family. Any boy/young man that is so lost and self-indulgent that he recklessly forfeits his life is a cause to examine our very social structure-just like your example of a young man dying face down in the ghetto, in a pool of his own blood. They are all a tragic waste of an amazing resource-youth. Indeed, we're a nation of resources, we admire youth & beauty above all else and yet their voices are lost amongst us. It's a double standard of tragic proportion.
Maybe if the 'rich kid' had survived and gained from the wealth of his life experiences (or had an older mentor), he could have grown up humble enough to give back tirelessly-perhaps with the resources his family had. To imply that he was just a rich kid and deserved what he got is just self-serving and petty.
Kevin
It's not.The fact that SP had the decency and respect to get the family's blessing (not to mention that it was one of JK's requirements before signing over the rights of the book... to anyone) - and that he sought their participation - isn't the same thing as their having final approval. In fact there's a good chance SP didn't have final approval... it may well have been some suit at Paramount Vantage - fed by focus group info - did.
As for..."Penn felt he needed their blessing which a guy like Herzog, a far more accomplished film maker, never did in his many documentaries." Says who?
You don't think he had Denglers "approval" or that he didn't seek to get the blessing and participation of the friends and family of Grizzly Man before embarking on those projects?
Also the movie, for me at least, wasn't about having sympathy for the guy... it was about relating to the spirit of someone who felt so strongly abut communing with nature.
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
seeking approval I also take issue with: he's got too much integrity. Seeking approval and having a family decide to participate w/out approval authority are different. Very.
It remains hard for me to gather a lot of interest in this "kid" who actually was a twenty-something man at the time of his rather silly death. Hell, he graduated from Emory, right?
Anyhow, I'll see it, as earlier noted, if for no other reason than to see if Penn actually has learned anything in his latest vanity project.
I wish he and DeNiro would stay in front of the camera and quit wasting our time behind it.
Okay, so you apparently believe their participation has probably watered down the telling of the story. As a fan of the book and now a fan of the movie I don't believe it did... or if it did, it didn't negatively effect the films impact on me.
One thing's for sure... SP didn't invent girlfriends or love stories or rescue attempts or reams of dialogue that were pure specualtion... or make the parents heroic or evil, etc., etc. As Clark noted there are a few minutes of the film that are a bit too epic (and yet his was, in its way, an epic journey in regards to the sights he saw and the experiences he had) but for me that was easily forgiven for getting the feeling so right.
As a side note... that you - without reading the book or seeing the film - have turned the fact that the family was involved (which was a prerequisite to get the rights of the book) into a lack of integrity on SP's part is just weird.
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
fairly famous people. Several times, I was asked, previous to the interview, if I'd allow the subject or his minion to view the article before publication.
Each time, I told them, firmly, "no."
That's the way I was trained by a grizzled, old news editor.
I'd apply the same high standards to "art."
Don't put words in my mouth, please. I am not familiar with Penn's integrity.
About putting "words in your mouth"... you said flat out that Herzog has too much integrity to get the kind of permissionn/blessings/"approval" that Penn did.
It sure seems that by default you're saying SP was somehow lacking in that integrity.
I still think that's weird (as is the idea that you know what Herzog has or hasn't done in that regard) but the weirdest thing is you're saying that you think art should be held to journalistic standards.
Anyway... it's a silly argument... and even with all the biases your piling up against it I'll be curious to hear what you think of the film.
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
First of all, he pans Penn. And then, "he" happens to be not the New Yorker's insightful, witty Anthony Lane, but the dull, dreary David Denby.
clark
Lane but way off in your contention that Denby merely takes issue with Penn.
"McCandless (the lead character) rejects not only family and bourgeois life but also sensual life, and he's incapable of sustaining an interest in anyone outside himself."
Denby goes on to say that the young man heavily has been influenced by Tolstoy's writings but that it is superficial: Tolstoy, after all, only "rejected" life after he had lived an extraordinarily full one.
Lastly, Denby doesn't criticize Penn per se, as you imply, but rather his shortcomings as a director IN THIS FILM, in which Penn emphasizes the false saintliness of the young man while ignoring his incredible selfishness, naivete, and self-destructiveness.
Goethe did it best, of course, in "The Sorrows of Young Werther." This led to a wave of suicides in Germany....
Right on, Clark, couldn't agree more. I am always elated when I see Lane's name in the TOC andd disapointed to see Denby's.
Speaking of the river... the way Emile Hirsch conveyed the depth of his fear (and how dire his situation had just become) when seeing the swollen river and immediately refocused, in single look.... single moment really, was brilliant.
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
...that episode did lead to one of the film's few continuity errors: While he seemed surprised to see the river so swollen, when the camera pans up and out from the "magic" bus, we see that one could see the river almost from the bus itself.
clark
Already discussed here . . . as you'll note in my original post, we agree on Holbrook's oscar worthy performance.
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