Into The Wild is all the rage in Alaska these days. How can Alaskans not be curious how director Sean Penn depicts the "wild" that is The Last Frontier? After suffering through obnoxiously quirky series like Northern Exposure and Men In Trees that showed Alaska in its tamest state, it's nice to see a movie that shows the feral nature of this winter wolf. This vision could only come from Penn, an actor and still-experimenting director who consistently bucks the system playing weird roles and making weird movies. (Mystic River was the closest role he ever came to "normal", which predictably won him the Academy Award) Into The Wild is the type of film that required a visionary who was not only daring, but also meditative, just walking the fine line that separates the artistic from the bizarre.

Into The Wild tells the true story of upper class, over-achiever Christopher McCandless (played earnestly by Emile Hirsch). In 1992 after college graduation Chistopher gave $24,000 in savings to charity and hitchhiked his way across country with one unusual goal in mind: walk straight into wild Alaska and live or die by nature's own choosing. Along the way Christopher meets several characters that shape his life and ultimately determine his life's story. Along the way he meets Rainey and Jan Burres, two hippies with free loving hearts, the slightly unstable Wayne Westerberg (fittingly played by Vince Vaughn), Tracy, an underage vixen, and Ron Franz, an older man who takes a fatherly liking to Christopher. Christopher is seemingly a young man who has walked away from a world of opportunity and naturally arouses everyone's curiosity.

You have to wonder what Christopher McCandless' motivations truly are and up until the very end of the film, a thinking moviegoer will continue to wonder. Writer director Penn reaches his own conclusion by following the book by Jon Krakauer and slightly glistens up the story for the screen. However, I don't believe Penn ever purposely manipulates the audience into seeing Christopher from any firm perspective. Was Christopher a man driven by bratty, impulsive behavior and did he learn his humility from the untamed wilderness of the U.S.'s largest state? Was he a rich kid legitimately trying to unlearn the materialism and hypocrisy of the world by imagining no possessions and doing what great naturalistic visionaries only dream of doing? The movie and the book implied that Christopher was possibly acting out in a passive aggressive rage against his distant, borderline-abusive parents. Much of the film's emotional power comes from his repentant parents (played by Marcia Gay Harden and William Hurt), arguably pitiable antagonists who don't deserve the emotional trauma the hero is subjecting them to, not to mention Christopher's sister Carine who was the closest Christopher had to a soul mate, and yet also hears nothing for most of Christopher's journey.

Was this a movie about a deep spiritual journey or a soulful tale about alienation and redemption? All we really see in Into The Wild is the journey. We are left clueless as to what's happening in Christopher's mind, at once both well light years ahead of his time and dangerously absent-minded. Though the final scenes of the film reach a fitting conclusion, Into The Wild will leave your head spinning as to what it all meant for you and the rest of humankind, which is also characteristic of the book and of Sean Penn as a creative talent.

The performances in the movie are grand, most notably coming from Hal Holbrook, who plays his character straight, almost in a documentary-style, and is able to bring the film to its emotional climax. Nevertheless, all emotion and second-guessing aside, the best scene in the movie is one of the most innocuous moments: Christopher is eating at a homeless shelter, poverty-stricken by choice, and listens in to a press conference by former President George H.W. Bush. Christopher, now having a wolf-like presence and ravaged by nature's angriest moods, listens with transcendental confusion--as if the problems of our civilized world are the most incomprehensible of thoughts to a creature that lives or dies by its own daily cunning. We are the ones that are helpless and at the mercy of politics. The wild animal simply survives, with nothing to show for its victory but blood stained teeth.

It's easy to see why Into The Wild is sweeping the critics' awards and winning support among the actor's guild: it's a movie that rejects everything material and everything the American dream is dolled up to be. The rich and famous are fascinated by the implications and sleep uneasily knowing there is a force out there greater than everything we know and love, whether that force is friendly, violently aggressive, or simply indifferent to our pathetic little genre drama. Grade: A