An unfinished person (in this unfinished universe)

On Mondays, I will have a feature called Movie Monday, in which, yep, you guessed it I will feature something about a movie or movies that I recently have watched. Today’s topic: “Into the Wild,” screenplay and directed by Sean Penn, based on the book by Jon Krakauer.

Movie: Into The Wild
Director: Sean Penn
Screenplay: Sean Penn
(based on book by Jon Krakauer)
Studio: Paramount Vantage
Time: 148 minutes
Thoughts: I read the book several years ago. I think I read Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” first and then because of that, decided to read this. From what I remember, the book was fairly compelling, maybe not as much as “Into Thin Air,” but still compelling. The true story, as recounted by Krakauer, is about a college graduate, who gives his life savings to charity and then disappears — eventually into the Alaskan wild. While I liked the movie, I thought it was a bit on the long side…however, performances by Emile Hirsch and Hal Holbrook were outstanding and well worth the length of the movie, and like Clint Eastwood, who has remade himself into a great director, Sean Penn, while not a great director yet, is shedding his identity as Madonna’s paparazzi-punching ex-husband. The movie made me think about the “big questions of life,” but in the end, I couldn’t help but think what a waste of a life — for all his “book smarts,” he sure wasn’t very smart. Despite that, of course, the ideas brought up in the movie — such as “what are we living for” are well worth exploring and Penn does a good job of making us think about those larger questions and not in too political of a way either. I recommend renting this one, but when you’re in a more philosophical mood.