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By Cole Smithey

‘Into The Wild’

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Sean Penn directs this thoroughly satisfying account of Christopher McCandless’s wilderness journeys that Jon Krakauer eloquently brought to light in his 1996 best-selling book. Emile Hirsch (“Alpha Dog”) personifies the fiercely idealistic and self-absorbed young man who severed ties with his upper middle-class family in search of personal truths on a literary-fuelled odyssey that ended near Alaska’s Denali National Park. Intermittent voice-over narration from McCandless’s sister Carine (Jena Malone) combined with samples of her brother’s writing and bits of text from the authors he constantly read, add layers of vital framework with innovative cinematic textures. Catherine Keener, Hal Holbrook, Brian Dierker and Kristen Stewart contribute memorable supporting performances as people won over by McCandless’s ineffable charms.

For a story so fraught with potential landmines, Penn, bridges delicate narrative constraints to fulfill expectations of audiences familiar with Krakauer’s book. What we see is a person who pushed himself to the edge at every opportunity and in doing so compressed a lifetime’s worth of experience into a very narrow margin of time.

Upon leaving high school, Chris made a fact-finding mission from his family’s middle class burb of Annandale, Va., to the vicinity of El Segundo, Calif., where he was born. There, he heard from past family friends about how his aerospace engineer father Walt (William Hurt) had kept up relations with his first wife Marcia, even after taking up with Chris’ mother Billie (Marcia Gay Harden). Walt secretly split his time between the two women long enough to sire a son from Marcia, two years after Chris was born. The dark revelation of his father’s base behavior instilled a silent burning rage in Chris that he would attempt to vanquish in the cold air of solitude.

After graduating with a double major in history and anthropology from Emory University in Atlanta, McCandless gave away his life savings of $24,000 to charity. He soon burned his cash and abandoned his old yellow Datsun after getting caught in a flash flood in Nevada. It was an act of quiet defiance against society that would dispatch him through South Dakota, Oregon, California, Mexico, Arizona, Washington and Alaska over the next two years, during which time he renamed himself “Alexander Supertramp.” Penn’s decision to film at many of the exact locations that McCandless traversed colors the story with an indisputable sense of authenticity. Especially significant is the film’s setting in and around the now famous “Fairbanks City Transit System 142” bus abandoned in the Alaskan wilderness.

On April 28, 1992, McCandless hiked 20 miles into the Alaskan wilderness along its Stampede Trail with a .22-caliber rifle, a 10-pound bag of rice and a field guide to edible plants of the region. It was here that he came across the abandoned shell of a 1940s International Harvester bus in which he would set up camp for the remaining 113 days of his life. During that time, he lived off the fat of the land, eating squirrel, porcupine, birds and a moose. But McCandless made a fatal error by eating the toxic seeds of wild potato roots that were not mentioned as poisonous in the book he referenced like a bible. Before succumbing in his sleeping bag within the shelter of the bus, Chris achieved his vision of a solitary primal existence necessarily based on a hunting and gathering lifestyle far removed from the mechanized bubble of the Western world.

McCandless’s story divides people. On the surface, it seems another instance of a young unprepared adventurer with a thinly veiled suicidal fantasy who gets exactly what he bargained for. But the layers of meaning, motivation and purpose surrounding his experience come through in the letters he wrote to people he befriended on the road and of their remembrances of their time spent with him. We come away feeling that we at least know who McCandless was, a young man with a burning desire to simplify his existence. CV

‘In the Valley of Elah’

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Its evocative title refers to the place in Israel where David defeated Goliath at the behest of King Saul more than 3,000 years ago. Writer/director Paul Haggis (“Crash”) uses the biblically grounded metaphor as an all-encompassing touchstone for the desperate plight of physically and psychologically wounded Iraq War soldiers returning home.

Vietnam War vet Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) is a retired Army Sergeant who hauls gravel for a living in Monroe, Tenn. Having lost his oldest son, a soldier, in a helicopter training accident, Hank leaves immediately for Fort Rudd, N.M. upon learning that his younger son Mike (Jonathan Tucker) has gone missing since returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. Believing the soldier is AWOL, Mike’s platoon superiors are nonplussed by his father’s appearance until Mike’s stabbed, dismembered and charred body is found on a contested piece of jurisdiction between the military base and a civilian street.

Local police detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron) teeters on succumbing to the lethargic attitude of the male cops that constantly ridicule her. A single mother with a young son, she is lost. Hank identifies Emily’s predicament and knows how to win her over. In a flash we see Emily transform from an unsympathetic desk clerk into a caring cop willing to follow Hank’s lead. In yet another tour de force performance Theron is nearly unrecognizable at first glance, with her hair pulled tightly back in a short ponytail and lacking make-up she blossoms into an uncompromising detective willing to learn from her mistakes.

Hank stalls an Army officer visiting his hotel room in order to prepare for the news of his son’s death. The men salute and a subtle difference in their execution of the universal military gesture hints at a divide between military officers of different generations. We notice the division again when the steely-eyed father visits his son’s room at Fort Rudd where “property theft is a real problem.” Hank takes advantage of the situation to invisibly remove Mike’s cell phone from the abandoned nightstand. Fragmented video files from the gadget provide video snippets of Mike’s Iraq missions. He was far from heroic. Hank silently accepts that his son did terrible things in the name of “bringing democracy to a shithole.”

Mike’s four platoon buddies necessarily become the focus of the investigation since they were the last ones to see the soldier alive. Conversations with their former buddy’s soldierly father enable theme-rich dialogue that cuts to the quick of their feelings about the war. It’s worth noting that Haggis cast real life war vets Wes Chatham and Jake McLaughlin in two pivotal roles. “If you ask me, they should just nuke it and watch it all turn back to dust,” says one of the boys, whose opinion reflects his self-destructive streak.    

Hank can’t listen to his distraught wife Joan (Susan Sarandon) cry over the telephone. A dinner invitation from Emily briefly revives his fathering skills when he tells her son (David Brochu) the story of David and Goliath. The contrasting scenes crystallize everything about Tommy Lee Jones’ brilliant embodiment of his role. It is Tommy Lee Jones finest and most fearless performance.

Paul Haggis based the story from an article in Playboy Magazine by Mark Boal called “Death and Dishonor,” about Army Specialist Richard R. Davis who was found stabbed to death shortly after returning from Iraq. What is the war doing to every one of us? What do you do when you realize that everyone in authority is lying? Why are they lying? How can we be saved from ourselves? These are a few of the questions the film raises in order to piece together aspects of a war whose effects will be felt long after the last soldier comes home. It is so patriotic as to be a radical example of dramaturgy. On top of that, it is executed to perfection. CV

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