sean penn’s latest film

Destination Unknown

by John Touhey

Rather than love, than money,
than faith, than fame,
than fairness, give me Truth.      
(Christopher McCandless,
paraphrasing Henry David Thoreau)

Sean Penn’s latest film recounts the true story of Christopher McCandless, a young man from a well-to-do (but dysfunctional) family. After graduating from college, Chris donated his life savings to charity and abandoned everything to take a solitary, ill-fated journey that ended in the Alaskan wilderness. As Penn tells it, Chris’s trek is ultimately a search for freedom, truth, and happiness.
Repulsed by the perceived materialism of his parents and society at large, Chris is zealously committed to making a new start. He changes his name to Alexander Supertramp, erases all traces of his former existence, and resists contacting his family, including the little sister who had grown emotionally dependent on him.
Emile Hirsch interprets the role of Chris in a moving performance that draws our sympathy but evades our understanding. By the end of the film, we are left wondering what Chris McCandless was really hoping to accomplish on his journey. Did he want to escape civilization, to get back to “real” reality? Was he trying to find himself by giving up everything, like a modern-day St. Francis? Or was Chris’s adventure merely an idealized rebellion against his privileged background? What was the freedom he sought? How did he define happiness?
This confusion can be traced back (at least in the film story) to the many books that Chris reads and memorizes like scripture, each of which offers its own proposal on human desire and destiny. From Thoreau he has taken the idea of finding Truth in Nature. In Russian novels, he perceives a call to live a radically moral life by rejecting everything that is false.  Chris also devours the works of Jack London and decided that he can only find himself by testing himself in the extremes of life.
The result is a working hypothesis that is a confusing, contradictory jumble of ideas which seem to be in constant conflict with each other. It is one thing to commune respectfully with Nature at Walden Pond, and quite another to march into frozen wastes alone with a pound of rice and a rifle. As a result, rather than getting closer to reality, Chris reaches his destination only to find himself struggling against reality. Ignoring desire kills the soul, but there is also a deadly price to be paid when one ignores the unmistakable warning signs sent out by reality as our attempts go off in the wrong direction: “Pull back! You’re going too far this time!” Caught up in his dream, Chris ignores these signs with predictably disastrous results.
Yet Chris’s most costly mistake is probably the decision to make his journey alone. “You don’t need other people to be happy,” he declares at one point. And despite his engaging personality, Chris ruthlessly practices what he preaches. The most interesting parts of Into the Wild are the scenes where Chris actively disentangles himself from the people who keep crossing his path and who care about his destiny. (The film is rich in supporting performances by a host of talented actors, especially an emotionally charged performance by the great Hal Holbrook.) Those faces are clearly the most compelling signs that reality puts before Chris. Rejecting them for a dream is actually an act of violence against reality and against the self.
In his loneliness at journey’s end, Chris finally begins to sense his error, but it is too late. “Happiness is only real when shared,” the dying young man writes between the lines of one of his books. During the film’s coda, Penn seems to suggest that we, the audience, can share in Chris’s experience and give his words and actions redemptive meaning. One of the strengths of Into the Wild, however, is that the director leaves us room to form our own opinion. In fact, the entire film is really one long question. Was Chris McCandless’s journey into the wild an admirable act of courage or just a tragically confused mistake? Few films released this year will so clearly demand our judgment. This film is worth seeing and taking seriously.