“Into the Wild,” 5 October 2007, theater. Sean Penn has taken John Krakauer’s non-fiction look at young Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), who hit the road and eventually starved to death (not really a spoiler) when he went alone into the backcountry in Alaska. He went to both learn about himself and test himself, to live without many possessions and the obsession of acquisition. Along the way he meets and both changes and is changed by many people (almost all very well acted). Hal Holbrook is superb, better than I’ve ever seen him before, as Ron Franz, an old man in the desert who loves McCandless as the grandson he never had. The parents are the dark force in the film and are played very cruelly, without sympathy or empathy, by William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden. This is a big film, best seen in the theater or on a good screen. Unfortunately, the film’s weakness is also serious in that Penn gets way too little distance from his hero, who he is almost in awe of. I’m less smitten with McCandless’s simplistic arrogance, but hell, who hasn’t wanted to disappear and just wander. A good film that touches on questions fundamental to American culture and our history, time and place. “Easy Rider” meets “Walden Pond” in a land of beauty and blood. Good soundtrack by Eddie Vedder.