Labels

architecture Asheville atheism bard bbq books buddhism buffy burgers cars comics fashion film food japan kung fu Las Vegas manga memory music New Zealand other people's blogs photography podcast updates politics San Francisco Santa Cruz sex shoes shopping snow skiing taoism toys travel TV video web 2.0 women writing

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Cloying, Sentimental Hokum?

I'm not a big fan of being overtly manipulated by movies. I hate myself if I cry during a Steven Spielberg picture. I much prefer to be affected by subtlety, surprises, sudden and unexpected tragedies, and uncomfortable personal relationships. I'm not a fan of being told to feel a certain way by a montage. I also despise the overused convention of focusing on an individual's face as they confront some awesome thing. Jurassic Park comes to mind as an extreme example. I'd much rather look at the dinosaurs than all those slack-jawed yokels being amazed by dinosaurs. If you've done your character development with any kind of skill, can't I look at the thing myself and imagine how the characters feel? These kinds of contrivances stick out like red flashing lights to me and result in instant point reductions in my ratings, no matter how good the rest of the film might be.

So I'm a little upset about how Into the Wild made me feel - which is bad, by the way - very sad and lonely. The contrived bits and pieces stuck with me. The super-charged relationships Alex Supertramp made during his journey filled me up like one too many servings of homemade macaroni and cheese, and I'm still feeling a little bloated. I could have used a few more vegetables with that, maybe in the form of stillness and reflection.

Then again, maybe that's the point. I don't subscribe to the idea that this guy had some perfect vision of a utopian life alone in nature. The story clearly indicates that there was some childhood trauma impacting his ability to cope with society. Maybe he wasn't crazy, per se, but it felt like he was living with some naive, euphoric vision of what life without complication could be. He rarely stopped moving, rarely observed in silence. He was always moving, always doing. His focus on Alaska kept him from really having to deal with anything. It kept him from recognizing the impact he had on other people's lives. He was headed for 'the answer'. Maybe some might read his behavior as 'living in the moment', but I don't buy it. The idea of Alaska took over everything. Maybe all the drama happening around him needed to be overly pronounced to drive home the point that he lived in a completely different mental universe than the people who were becoming attached to him.

So what happened when Alex finally arrives in Alaska? (What do you think happened?) The Alaska story unfolded in parallel with his adventures of the year or so preceding. These parts of the movie were my favorite. There was self-reflection, stillness, and intense despair, all depicted with more subtlety. Once confronted with a harsh reality with no one's kindness to rely upon, Alex's luck changed for the worse. In the beginning, he believed he could do anything. As he froze and starved, he learned, very simply, he could not. I don't think his moments of clarity were happy ones at this phase. I think these parts of the film could have stood on their own, but I think Sean Penn offset these scenes with those of happier times with his temporary friends from the road to intensify the loneliness of the stay in the wild.

The result for me? I walked out of the theater wanting to believe Alex achieved enlightenment somehow and accepted his place in nature with some kind of peace. Mr. Penn didn't let me do that, and it made me feel awful. Maybe I'm just fighting the fact that this story is incredibly moving and maybe more complicated than I might've thought at first glance, but some part of me just feels like I've been played. Yeah, maybe I should read the book and get over it.

Labels: film