🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 84 (from laksa009)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa084.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/movies/21wild.html\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/movies/21wild.html\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/09\/21\/movies\/21wild.html","crawl_time":1770969767,"first_indexed_time":1501886463,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,nytimes!www,\/2007\/09\/21\/movies\/21wild.html s443","src_root_hash":"4566504020376537684","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Into the Wild - Movie - Review - The New York Times","meta_descriptions":["There is plenty of sorrow to be found in “Into the Wild.” But though the film’s structure may be tragic, its spirit is anything but."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"Advertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\nMovie Review | 'Into the Wild'\nEmile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless in a scene from “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s adaptation of the book by Jon Krakauer.\nCredit...\nChuck Zlotnick\/Paramount Vintage\nInto the Wild\nNYT Critic’s Pick\nDirected by\nSean Penn\nAdventure, Biography, Drama\nR\n2h 28m\nSept. 21, 2007\nThere is plenty of sorrow to be found in “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s adaptation of the nonfiction bestseller by Jon Krakauer. The story begins with an unhappy family, proceeds through a series of encounters with the lonely and the lost, and ends in a senseless, premature death. But though the film’s structure may be tragic, its spirit is anything but. It is infused with an expansive, almost giddy sense of possibility, and it communicates a pure, unaffected delight in open spaces, fresh air and bright sunshine.\nSome of this exuberance comes from Christopher Johnson McCandless, the young adventurer whose footloose life and gruesome fate were the subject of Mr. Krakauer’s book. As Mr. Penn understands him (and as he is portrayed, with unforced charm and brisk intelligence, by Emile Hirsch), Chris is at once a troubled, impulsive boy and a brave and dedicated spiritual pilgrim. He does not court danger but rather stumbles across it — thrillingly and then fatally — on the road to joy.\nIn letters to his friends, parts of which are scrawled across the screen in bright yellow capital letters, he revels in the simple beauty of the natural world. Adopting the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp, rejecting material possessions and human attachments, he proclaims himself an “aesthetic voyager.”\nMr. Penn serves as both his biographer and his traveling companion. After graduating from Emory University in 1990, Mr. McCandless set off on a zigzagging two-year journey that took him from South Dakota to Southern California, from the Sea of Cortez to the Alaskan wilderness, where he perished, apparently from starvation, in August 1992. “Into the Wild,” which Mr. Penn wrote and directed, follows faithfully in his footsteps, and it illuminates the young man’s personality by showing us the world as he saw it.\nWhat he mostly saw was the glory of the North American landscape west of the Mississippi: the ancient woodlands of the Pacific Northwest, the canyons and deserts farther south, the wheat fields of the northern prairie and Alaska, a place that Mr. McCandless seemed to regard with almost mystical reverence. Mr. Penn, who did some of the camera work, was aided by the director of photography, Eric Gautier, who previously turned his careful, voracious eye on the wilds of South America in Walter Salles’s “Motorcycle Diaries.” That movie, like “Into the Wild,” finds epic resonance in a tale of youthful wandering and proposes that a trek through mountains, rivers and forests can also be a voyage of self-discovery.\nMr. Salles’s film, in which Gael García Bernal played Che Guevara, found a political dimension in its hero’s journey. And while Chris’s fierce rejection of his parents’ middle-class, suburban life contains elements of ideological critique, Mr. Penn and Mr. Krakauer persuasively place him in a largely apolitical, homegrown tradition of radical, romantic individualism.\nAn enthusiastic reader (with a special affinity for Tolstoy and Jack London), Chris is in many ways the intellectual heir of 19th-century writer-naturalists like John Muir and especially Henry David Thoreau, whose uncompromising idealism — “rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth” — he takes as a watchword. (Had he survived, Mr. McCandless might well have joined the ranks of latter-day nature writers like Edward Abbey and Bill McKibben.) His credo is perhaps most succinctly stated by Thoreau’s mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, who advised that “the ancient precept, ‘Know thyself,’ and the modern precept, ‘Study Nature,’ become at last one maxim.”\nOne problem with this strain of American thought is that it sometimes finds expression in self-help nostrums and greeting-card sentiments. “If you want something in life, reach out and grab it,” Chris says to Tracy (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl who develops a crush on him, collapsing Self-Reliance into something like an advertising slogan. But the movie’s theme, thankfully, is not so simple or so easily summed up in words.\nMr. Penn, even more than Mr. Krakauer, takes the Emersonian dimension of Chris McCandless’s project seriously, even as he understands the peril implicit in too close an identification with nature. The book took pains to defend its young protagonist against the suspicion that he was suicidal, unbalanced or an incompetent outdoorsman, gathering testimony from friends he had made in his last years as evidence of his kindness, his care and his integrity. The film, at some risk of sentimentalizing its hero, goes further, pushing him to the very brink of sainthood. After Chris offers wise, sympathetic counsel to Rainey (Brian Dierker), a middle-aged hippie he has befriended on the road, the older man looks at him with quiet amazement. “You’re not Jesus, are you?” he asks.\nWell no, but it’s a comparison that Mr. Penn does not entirely discourage. (Note the final, man of sorrows image of Mr. Hirsch’s face and also an earlier shot of him floating naked in a stream, his arms extended in a familiar cruciform shape.) At the same time, though, “Into the Wild” resists the impulse to interpret Chris’s death as a kind of martyrdom or as the inevitable, logical terminus of his passionate desire for communion with nature.\nInstead, with disarming sincerity, it emphasizes his capacity for love, the gift for fellowship that, somewhat paradoxically, accompanied his fierce need for solitude. Though he warns one of his friends against seeking happiness in human relationships — and also rails incoherently against the evils of “society” — Chris is a naturally sociable creature. And “Into the Wild” is populated with marvelous actors — including Mr. Dierker, a river guide and ski-shop owner making his first appearance in a film — who make its human landscape as fascinating and various as its topography.\nThe source of Chris’s wanderlust, and of the melancholy that tugs at the film’s happy-go-lucky spirit, is traced to his parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden), whose volatile marriage and regard for appearances begin to seem contemptible to their son. (His feelings for them are explained in voice-over by his younger sister, Carine, who is played by Jena Malone.)\nFleeing from his mother and father, Chris finds himself drawn, almost unwittingly, to parental surrogates: a rowdy grain dealer in South Dakota (Vince Vaughn), a retired military man in the California desert (Hal Holbrook) and Rainey’s companion, Jan (Catherine Keener), who seems both carefree and careworn.\nChris reminds some of these people of their own lost children, but all of them respond to something about him: an open, guileless quality, at once earnest and playful, that Mr. Hirsch conveys with intuitive grace. “You look like a loved kid,” Jan says, and “Into the Wild” bears that out in nearly every scene.\nHe is loved, not least, by Mr. Penn, who has shown himself, in three previous films (“The Indian Runner,” “The Crossing Guard” and “The Pledge”) to be a thoughtful and skilled director. He still is, but this story seems to have liberated him from the somber seriousness that has been his hallmark as a filmmaker until now. “Into the Wild” is a movie about the desire for freedom that feels, in itself, like the fulfillment of that desire.\nWhich is not to say that there is anything easy or naïve in what Mr. Penn has done. “Into the Wild” is, on the contrary, alive to the mysteries and difficulties of experience in a way that very few recent American movies have been. There are some awkward moments and infelicitous touches — a few too many Eddie Vedder songs on the soundtrack, for example, when Woody Guthrie, Aaron Copland or dead silence might have been more welcome — but the film’s imperfection, like its grandeur, arises from a passionate, generous impulse that is as hard to resist as the call of the open road.\n“Into the Wild” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has profanity, brief nudity and some violent or otherwise upsetting scenes.\nINTO THE WILD\nOpens today in New York and Los Angeles.\nDirected by Sean Penn; written by Mr. Penn, based on the book by Jon Krakauer; director of photography, Eric Gautier; edited by Jay Cassidy; score by Michael Brook with songs and additional music by Eddie Vedder and Kaki King; production designer, Derek R. Hill; produced by Mr. Penn, Art Linson and Bill Pohlad; released by Paramount Vantage. Running time: 140 minutes.\nWITH: Emile Hirsch (Christopher McCandless), Marcia Gay Harden (Billie McCandless), William Hurt (Walt McCandless), Jena Malone (Carine), Brian Dierker (Rainey), Catherine Keener (Jan Burres), Vince Vaughn (Wayne Westerberg), Kristen Stewart (Tracy) and Hal Holbrook (Ron Franz).\nRelated Content\nMore in Movies\nWarner Bros. Pictures\nCBS, via Getty Images\nAmazon MGM Studios\nAlex Goodlett\/Getty Images\nEditors’ Picks\nNetflix\nRobert Samuel Hanson\nTrending in The Times\nNicolas Ortega\nEric Lee for The New York Times, Greg Kahn for The New York Times\nAndrew Graham Todes Photography\nBrandon Celi\nWeiyi Cai\nMichael Buholzer\/EPA, via Shutterstock\nBrett Carlsen for The New York Times\nJake Michaels for The New York Times\nAdvertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT","attrs_markdown":"[Skip to content](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/09\/21\/movies\/21wild.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/09\/21\/movies\/21wild.html#site-index)\n\nSearch & Section Navigation\n\nSection Navigation\n\nSearch\n\n[Movies](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/movies)\n\n[Log in](https:\/\/myaccount.nytimes.com\/auth\/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2007%252F09%252F21%252Fmovies%252F21wild.html&asset=masthead)\n\nFriday, February 13, 2026\n\n[Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper)\n\n[Movies](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/movies)\\|Following His Trail to Danger and Joy\n\nhttps:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/09\/21\/movies\/21wild.html\n\n- Share full article\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/09\/21\/movies\/21wild.html#after-top)\n\nSupported by\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/09\/21\/movies\/21wild.html#after-sponsor)\n\nMovie Review \\| 'Into the Wild'\n\n# Following His Trail to Danger and Joy\n- Share full article\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2007\/09\/21\/arts\/21wild-600.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nEmile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless in a scene from “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s adaptation of the book by Jon Krakauer.Credit...Chuck Zlotnick\/Paramount Vintage\n\nInto the Wild\n\nNYT Critic’s Pick\n\nDirected by Sean Penn\n\nAdventure, Biography, Drama\n\nR\n\n2h 28m\n\nBy [A.O. Scott](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/a-o--scott)\n\n- Sept. 21, 2007\n\nThere is plenty of sorrow to be found in “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s adaptation of the nonfiction bestseller by Jon Krakauer. The story begins with an unhappy family, proceeds through a series of encounters with the lonely and the lost, and ends in a senseless, premature death. But though the film’s structure may be tragic, its spirit is anything but. It is infused with an expansive, almost giddy sense of possibility, and it communicates a pure, unaffected delight in open spaces, fresh air and bright sunshine.\n\nSome of this exuberance comes from Christopher Johnson McCandless, the young adventurer whose footloose life and gruesome fate were the subject of Mr. Krakauer’s book. As Mr. Penn understands him (and as he is portrayed, with unforced charm and brisk intelligence, by Emile Hirsch), Chris is at once a troubled, impulsive boy and a brave and dedicated spiritual pilgrim. He does not court danger but rather stumbles across it — thrillingly and then fatally — on the road to joy.\n\nIn letters to his friends, parts of which are scrawled across the screen in bright yellow capital letters, he revels in the simple beauty of the natural world. Adopting the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp, rejecting material possessions and human attachments, he proclaims himself an “aesthetic voyager.”\n\nMr. Penn serves as both his biographer and his traveling companion. After graduating from Emory University in 1990, Mr. McCandless set off on a zigzagging two-year journey that took him from South Dakota to Southern California, from the Sea of Cortez to the Alaskan wilderness, where he perished, apparently from starvation, in August 1992. “Into the Wild,” which Mr. Penn wrote and directed, follows faithfully in his footsteps, and it illuminates the young man’s personality by showing us the world as he saw it.\n\nWhat he mostly saw was the glory of the North American landscape west of the Mississippi: the ancient woodlands of the Pacific Northwest, the canyons and deserts farther south, the wheat fields of the northern prairie and Alaska, a place that Mr. McCandless seemed to regard with almost mystical reverence. Mr. Penn, who did some of the camera work, was aided by the director of photography, Eric Gautier, who previously turned his careful, voracious eye on the wilds of South America in Walter Salles’s “Motorcycle Diaries.” That movie, like “Into the Wild,” finds epic resonance in a tale of youthful wandering and proposes that a trek through mountains, rivers and forests can also be a voyage of self-discovery.\n\nMr. Salles’s film, in which Gael García Bernal played Che Guevara, found a political dimension in its hero’s journey. And while Chris’s fierce rejection of his parents’ middle-class, suburban life contains elements of ideological critique, Mr. Penn and Mr. Krakauer persuasively place him in a largely apolitical, homegrown tradition of radical, romantic individualism.\n\nAn enthusiastic reader (with a special affinity for Tolstoy and Jack London), Chris is in many ways the intellectual heir of 19th-century writer-naturalists like John Muir and especially Henry David Thoreau, whose uncompromising idealism — “rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth” — he takes as a watchword. (Had he survived, Mr. McCandless might well have joined the ranks of latter-day nature writers like Edward Abbey and Bill McKibben.) His credo is perhaps most succinctly stated by Thoreau’s mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, who advised that “the ancient precept, ‘Know thyself,’ and the modern precept, ‘Study Nature,’ become at last one maxim.”\n\nOne problem with this strain of American thought is that it sometimes finds expression in self-help nostrums and greeting-card sentiments. “If you want something in life, reach out and grab it,” Chris says to Tracy (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl who develops a crush on him, collapsing Self-Reliance into something like an advertising slogan. But the movie’s theme, thankfully, is not so simple or so easily summed up in words.\n\nMr. Penn, even more than Mr. Krakauer, takes the Emersonian dimension of Chris McCandless’s project seriously, even as he understands the peril implicit in too close an identification with nature. The book took pains to defend its young protagonist against the suspicion that he was suicidal, unbalanced or an incompetent outdoorsman, gathering testimony from friends he had made in his last years as evidence of his kindness, his care and his integrity. The film, at some risk of sentimentalizing its hero, goes further, pushing him to the very brink of sainthood. After Chris offers wise, sympathetic counsel to Rainey (Brian Dierker), a middle-aged hippie he has befriended on the road, the older man looks at him with quiet amazement. “You’re not Jesus, are you?” he asks.\n\n## Editors’ Picks\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/11\/multimedia\/11modernlove-king-of-valentines-1-jgtp\/11modernlove-king-of-valentines-1-jgtp-thumbLarge.jpg)The King and Queen of Valentines](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/11\/podcasts\/valentines-day-surprise-couple.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/09\/multimedia\/09FD-WE-FANCY-promo-hlbj\/09FD-WE-FANCY-promo-hlbj-thumbLarge.jpg)Cooking Fancy Isn’t About Expensive Ingredients. It’s a Mind-Set.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/09\/dining\/cooking-fancy.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/09\/dining\/09fd-wte-imperioli\/09fd-wte-imperioli-thumbLarge.png)Michael Imperioli Will Tell His Great-Grandchildren About Dining With Bourdain](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/10\/dining\/white-lotus-michael-imperioli-restaurants.html)\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/09\/21\/movies\/21wild.html#after-pp_edpick)\n\nWell no, but it’s a comparison that Mr. Penn does not entirely discourage. (Note the final, man of sorrows image of Mr. Hirsch’s face and also an earlier shot of him floating naked in a stream, his arms extended in a familiar cruciform shape.) At the same time, though, “Into the Wild” resists the impulse to interpret Chris’s death as a kind of martyrdom or as the inevitable, logical terminus of his passionate desire for communion with nature.\n\nInstead, with disarming sincerity, it emphasizes his capacity for love, the gift for fellowship that, somewhat paradoxically, accompanied his fierce need for solitude. Though he warns one of his friends against seeking happiness in human relationships — and also rails incoherently against the evils of “society” — Chris is a naturally sociable creature. And “Into the Wild” is populated with marvelous actors — including Mr. Dierker, a river guide and ski-shop owner making his first appearance in a film — who make its human landscape as fascinating and various as its topography.\n\nThe source of Chris’s wanderlust, and of the melancholy that tugs at the film’s happy-go-lucky spirit, is traced to his parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden), whose volatile marriage and regard for appearances begin to seem contemptible to their son. (His feelings for them are explained in voice-over by his younger sister, Carine, who is played by Jena Malone.)\n\nFleeing from his mother and father, Chris finds himself drawn, almost unwittingly, to parental surrogates: a rowdy grain dealer in South Dakota (Vince Vaughn), a retired military man in the California desert (Hal Holbrook) and Rainey’s companion, Jan (Catherine Keener), who seems both carefree and careworn.\n\nChris reminds some of these people of their own lost children, but all of them respond to something about him: an open, guileless quality, at once earnest and playful, that Mr. Hirsch conveys with intuitive grace. “You look like a loved kid,” Jan says, and “Into the Wild” bears that out in nearly every scene.\n\nHe is loved, not least, by Mr. Penn, who has shown himself, in three previous films (“The Indian Runner,” “The Crossing Guard” and “The Pledge”) to be a thoughtful and skilled director. He still is, but this story seems to have liberated him from the somber seriousness that has been his hallmark as a filmmaker until now. “Into the Wild” is a movie about the desire for freedom that feels, in itself, like the fulfillment of that desire.\n\nWhich is not to say that there is anything easy or naïve in what Mr. Penn has done. “Into the Wild” is, on the contrary, alive to the mysteries and difficulties of experience in a way that very few recent American movies have been. There are some awkward moments and infelicitous touches — a few too many Eddie Vedder songs on the soundtrack, for example, when Woody Guthrie, Aaron Copland or dead silence might have been more welcome — but the film’s imperfection, like its grandeur, arises from a passionate, generous impulse that is as hard to resist as the call of the open road.\n\n*“Into the Wild” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has profanity, brief nudity and some violent or otherwise upsetting scenes.*\n\n**INTO THE WILD**\n\n*Opens today in New York and Los Angeles.*\n\nDirected by Sean Penn; written by Mr. Penn, based on the book by Jon Krakauer; director of photography, Eric Gautier; edited by Jay Cassidy; score by Michael Brook with songs and additional music by Eddie Vedder and Kaki King; production designer, Derek R. Hill; produced by Mr. Penn, Art Linson and Bill Pohlad; released by Paramount Vantage. Running time: 140 minutes.\n\nWITH: Emile Hirsch (Christopher McCandless), Marcia Gay Harden (Billie McCandless), William Hurt (Walt McCandless), Jena Malone (Carine), Brian Dierker (Rainey), Catherine Keener (Jan Burres), Vince Vaughn (Wayne Westerberg), Kristen Stewart (Tracy) and Hal Holbrook (Ron Franz).\n\n#### Into the Wild\nNYT Critic’s Pick\n\nDirector\n\nSean Penn\n\nWriters\n\nSean Penn, Jon Krakauer (book)\n\nStars\n\nEmile Hirsch, Vince Vaughn, Catherine Keener, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt\n\nRating\n\nR\n\nRunning Time\n\n2h 28m\n\nGenres\n\nAdventure, Biography, Drama\n\nMovie data powered by IMDb.com\n\nSee more on: [Sean Penn](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/sean-penn), [Jon Krakauer](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/person\/jon-krakauer)\n\n- Share full article\n\n### Related Coverage\n[Mother Nature’s Restless Sons Sept. 16, 2007 ![Mother Nature’s Restless Sons](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2007\/09\/16\/arts\/14mcgr75.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/09\/16\/movies\/16mcgr.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer)\n\n## Related Content\n### [More in Movies](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/movies)\n- [‘Wuthering Heights’ Review: Margot Robbie, Amok on the Moors](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/12\/movies\/wuthering-heights-review-margot-robbie-jacob-elordi.html)\n  \n  ![Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff and Margot Robbie as Catherine in “Wuthering Heights.”](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/11\/multimedia\/wuthering-heights-glhb\/wuthering-heights-glhb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Warner Bros. 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Panned at first, it became a cult classic. ](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/11\/multimedia\/11Cort--fpkm\/11Cort--fpkm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  CBS, via Getty Images\n- [‘Melania’ and the Missing First Lady](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/06\/movies\/melania-documentary-nancy-reagan.html)\n  \n  ![Mrs. Trump in a scene from the documentary “Melania.”](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/06\/multimedia\/06melania-notebook-1-hltv\/06melania-notebook-1-hltv-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Amazon MGM Studios\n- [In His Second Act, James Van Der Beek Starred Online as a Proud Papa](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/11\/arts\/television\/james-van-der-beek-dad-kids.html)\n  \n  ![James Van Der Beek, who died on Wednesday, with two of his six children at a charity event in 2023.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/11\/multimedia\/11cul-vanderbeek-dad-lhzw\/11cul-vanderbeek-dad-lhzw-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Alex Goodlett\/Getty Images\n\n### Editors’ Picks\n- [‘Bridgerton’ Tackles the Orgasm Gap](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/04\/well\/bridgerton-orgasm-pinnacle.html)\n  \n  ![Francesca Bridgerton (Hannah Dodd) and Lord John Stirling (Victor Alli) are navigating a challenging issue with intimacy in the latest season of ‘Bridgerton,’ which was released last week.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/03\/well\/WELL-BRIDGERTON-ORGASM-GAP1\/WELL-BRIDGERTON-ORGASM-GAP1-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Netflix\n- [Why Kids Are Starting to Sound Like Their Grandparents](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/09\/crosswords\/why-kids-are-starting-to-sound-like-their-grandparents.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/09\/crosswords\/09word-revival-art\/09word-revival-art-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Robert Samuel Hanson\n\n### Trending in The Times\n- [How to Sleep With Other People](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/11\/realestate\/how-to-sleep-with-other-people.html)\n  \n  ![Unlock better sleep.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/15\/realestate\/11re-sleeping-with-other-people-ILLO\/11re-sleeping-with-other-people-ILLO-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Nicolas Ortega\n- [Stop Using Liquid Dishwasher Detergent](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/video\/smarter-living\/wirecutter\/100000010699991\/stop-using-liquid-dishwasher-detergent.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/09\/smarter-living\/wirecutter\/THUMB_260123_WC_WILI_DISHDETERGENT_WL_V6\/THUMB_260123_WC_WILI_DISHDETERGENT_WL_V6-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n- [Why Pennsylvania’s Two Most Powerful Democrats Don’t Speak](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/12\/us\/politics\/john-fetterman-josh-shapiro-pennsylvania.html)\n  \n  ![Senator John Fetterman and Gov. Josh Shapiro were both rising Democratic stars when they won their offices in 2022. Since then, their political trajectories have diverged.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/05\/us\/politics\/pol-shapiro-fetterman\/pol-shapiro-fetterman-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Eric Lee for The New York Times, Greg Kahn for The New York Times\n- [They Took a Swing at Dating Again](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/13\/style\/andrea-gallo-ryan-smith-wedding.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/15\/fashion\/00MINI-Smith-Gallo-02\/00MINI-Smith-Gallo-02-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Andrew Graham Todes Photography\n- [Opinion: Donald Trump, Pagan King](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/11\/opinion\/donald-trump-pagan-king.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/13\/opinion\/05woodhouse-image\/05woodhouse-image-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Brandon Celi\n- [Why Mountain Lions in California Are Threatened](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/video\/science\/earth\/100000010689795\/why-mountain-lions-in-california-are-threatened.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/09\/science\/earth\/THUMBNAIL\/THUMBNAIL-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n- [Ilia Malinin’s Jumps Put Him on Top After the Short Program](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2026\/02\/10\/sports\/ilia-malinin-ice-skating-jumps-olympics.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/10\/multimedia\/2026-02-10-figure-skating-mens-short-stack-index\/2026-02-10-figure-skating-mens-short-stack-index-square640-v3.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Weiyi Cai\n- [Switzerland to Vote on Capping Population at 10 Million](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/11\/world\/europe\/switzerland-to-vote-on-capping-population-at-10-million.html)\n  \n  ![A man walking with two children in Zurich. Switzerland will vote in June on a proposal to cap its population at 10 million through 2050.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/11\/multimedia\/11int-switzerland-population-wkbt\/11int-switzerland-population-wkbt-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Michael Buholzer\/EPA, via Shutterstock\n- [Ford Says Electric Vehicle Losses Will Continue for 3 More Years](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/10\/business\/ford-earnings-electric-vehicles.html)\n  \n  ![An F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck, which the company stopped producing last year, after federal tax credits for electric vehicles ended.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/10\/multimedia\/10biz-ford-earnings-tfpm\/10biz-ford-earnings-tfpm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Brett Carlsen for The New York Times\n- [Beethoven’s ‘Egmont,’ by Way of Cate Blanchett and Jeremy O. Harris](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/12\/arts\/music\/cate-blanchet-jeremy-o-harris-gustavo-dudamel-egmont-los-angeles.html)\n  \n  ![From left, Gustavo Dudamel, Cate Blanchett and Jeremy O. 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The story begins with an unhappy family, proceeds through a series of encounters with the lonely and the lost, and ends in a senseless, premature death. But though the film’s structure may be tragic, its spirit is anything but. It is infused with an expansive, almost giddy sense of possibility, and it communicates a pure, unaffected delight in open spaces, fresh air and bright sunshine.\n\nSome of this exuberance comes from Christopher Johnson McCandless, the young adventurer whose footloose life and gruesome fate were the subject of Mr. Krakauer’s book. As Mr. Penn understands him (and as he is portrayed, with unforced charm and brisk intelligence, by Emile Hirsch), Chris is at once a troubled, impulsive boy and a brave and dedicated spiritual pilgrim. He does not court danger but rather stumbles across it — thrillingly and then fatally — on the road to joy.\n\nIn letters to his friends, parts of which are scrawled across the screen in bright yellow capital letters, he revels in the simple beauty of the natural world. Adopting the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp, rejecting material possessions and human attachments, he proclaims himself an “aesthetic voyager.”\n\nMr. Penn serves as both his biographer and his traveling companion. After graduating from Emory University in 1990, Mr. McCandless set off on a zigzagging two-year journey that took him from South Dakota to Southern California, from the Sea of Cortez to the Alaskan wilderness, where he perished, apparently from starvation, in August 1992. “Into the Wild,” which Mr. Penn wrote and directed, follows faithfully in his footsteps, and it illuminates the young man’s personality by showing us the world as he saw it.\n\nWhat he mostly saw was the glory of the North American landscape west of the Mississippi: the ancient woodlands of the Pacific Northwest, the canyons and deserts farther south, the wheat fields of the northern prairie and Alaska, a place that Mr. McCandless seemed to regard with almost mystical reverence. Mr. Penn, who did some of the camera work, was aided by the director of photography, Eric Gautier, who previously turned his careful, voracious eye on the wilds of South America in Walter Salles’s “Motorcycle Diaries.” That movie, like “Into the Wild,” finds epic resonance in a tale of youthful wandering and proposes that a trek through mountains, rivers and forests can also be a voyage of self-discovery.\n\nMr. Salles’s film, in which Gael García Bernal played Che Guevara, found a political dimension in its hero’s journey. And while Chris’s fierce rejection of his parents’ middle-class, suburban life contains elements of ideological critique, Mr. Penn and Mr. Krakauer persuasively place him in a largely apolitical, homegrown tradition of radical, romantic individualism.\n\nAn enthusiastic reader (with a special affinity for Tolstoy and Jack London), Chris is in many ways the intellectual heir of 19th-century writer-naturalists like John Muir and especially Henry David Thoreau, whose uncompromising idealism — “rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth” — he takes as a watchword. (Had he survived, Mr. McCandless might well have joined the ranks of latter-day nature writers like Edward Abbey and Bill McKibben.) His credo is perhaps most succinctly stated by Thoreau’s mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, who advised that “the ancient precept, ‘Know thyself,’ and the modern precept, ‘Study Nature,’ become at last one maxim.”\n\nOne problem with this strain of American thought is that it sometimes finds expression in self-help nostrums and greeting-card sentiments. “If you want something in life, reach out and grab it,” Chris says to Tracy (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl who develops a crush on him, collapsing Self-Reliance into something like an advertising slogan. But the movie’s theme, thankfully, is not so simple or so easily summed up in words.\n\nMr. Penn, even more than Mr. Krakauer, takes the Emersonian dimension of Chris McCandless’s project seriously, even as he understands the peril implicit in too close an identification with nature. The book took pains to defend its young protagonist against the suspicion that he was suicidal, unbalanced or an incompetent outdoorsman, gathering testimony from friends he had made in his last years as evidence of his kindness, his care and his integrity. The film, at some risk of sentimentalizing its hero, goes further, pushing him to the very brink of sainthood. After Chris offers wise, sympathetic counsel to Rainey (Brian Dierker), a middle-aged hippie he has befriended on the road, the older man looks at him with quiet amazement. “You’re not Jesus, are you?” he asks.\n\nWell no, but it’s a comparison that Mr. Penn does not entirely discourage. (Note the final, man of sorrows image of Mr. Hirsch’s face and also an earlier shot of him floating naked in a stream, his arms extended in a familiar cruciform shape.) At the same time, though, “Into the Wild” resists the impulse to interpret Chris’s death as a kind of martyrdom or as the inevitable, logical terminus of his passionate desire for communion with nature.\n\nInstead, with disarming sincerity, it emphasizes his capacity for love, the gift for fellowship that, somewhat paradoxically, accompanied his fierce need for solitude. Though he warns one of his friends against seeking happiness in human relationships — and also rails incoherently against the evils of “society” — Chris is a naturally sociable creature. And “Into the Wild” is populated with marvelous actors — including Mr. Dierker, a river guide and ski-shop owner making his first appearance in a film — who make its human landscape as fascinating and various as its topography.\n\nThe source of Chris’s wanderlust, and of the melancholy that tugs at the film’s happy-go-lucky spirit, is traced to his parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden), whose volatile marriage and regard for appearances begin to seem contemptible to their son. (His feelings for them are explained in voice-over by his younger sister, Carine, who is played by Jena Malone.)\n\nFleeing from his mother and father, Chris finds himself drawn, almost unwittingly, to parental surrogates: a rowdy grain dealer in South Dakota (Vince Vaughn), a retired military man in the California desert (Hal Holbrook) and Rainey’s companion, Jan (Catherine Keener), who seems both carefree and careworn.\n\nChris reminds some of these people of their own lost children, but all of them respond to something about him: an open, guileless quality, at once earnest and playful, that Mr. Hirsch conveys with intuitive grace. “You look like a loved kid,” Jan says, and “Into the Wild” bears that out in nearly every scene.\n\nHe is loved, not least, by Mr. Penn, who has shown himself, in three previous films (“The Indian Runner,” “The Crossing Guard” and “The Pledge”) to be a thoughtful and skilled director. He still is, but this story seems to have liberated him from the somber seriousness that has been his hallmark as a filmmaker until now. “Into the Wild” is a movie about the desire for freedom that feels, in itself, like the fulfillment of that desire.\n\nWhich is not to say that there is anything easy or naïve in what Mr. Penn has done. “Into the Wild” is, on the contrary, alive to the mysteries and difficulties of experience in a way that very few recent American movies have been. There are some awkward moments and infelicitous touches — a few too many Eddie Vedder songs on the soundtrack, for example, when Woody Guthrie, Aaron Copland or dead silence might have been more welcome — but the film’s imperfection, like its grandeur, arises from a passionate, generous impulse that is as hard to resist as the call of the open road.\n\n*“Into the Wild” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has profanity, brief nudity and some violent or otherwise upsetting scenes.*\n\n**INTO THE WILD**\n\n*Opens today in New York and Los Angeles.*\n\nDirected by Sean Penn; written by Mr. Penn, based on the book by Jon Krakauer; director of photography, Eric Gautier; edited by Jay Cassidy; score by Michael Brook with songs and additional music by Eddie Vedder and Kaki King; production designer, Derek R. Hill; produced by Mr. Penn, Art Linson and Bill Pohlad; released by Paramount Vantage. Running time: 140 minutes.\n\nWITH: Emile Hirsch (Christopher McCandless), Marcia Gay Harden (Billie McCandless), William Hurt (Walt McCandless), Jena Malone (Carine), Brian Dierker (Rainey), Catherine Keener (Jan Burres), Vince Vaughn (Wayne Westerberg), Kristen Stewart (Tracy) and Hal Holbrook (Ron Franz).\n\n## Related Content\n[More in Movies](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/movies)\n\n- ![Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff and Margot Robbie as Catherine in “Wuthering Heights.”](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/11\/multimedia\/wuthering-heights-glhb\/wuthering-heights-glhb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Warner Bros. Pictures\n- ![Bud Cort as the teenager Harold Chasen who falls in love with a 79-year-old woman in Hal Ashby’s movie “Harold and Maude,” from 1971. 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Josh Shapiro were both rising Democratic stars when they won their offices in 2022. Since then, their political trajectories have diverged.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/05\/us\/politics\/pol-shapiro-fetterman\/pol-shapiro-fetterman-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Eric Lee for The New York Times, Greg Kahn for The New York Times\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/15\/fashion\/00MINI-Smith-Gallo-02\/00MINI-Smith-Gallo-02-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Andrew Graham Todes Photography\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/13\/opinion\/05woodhouse-image\/05woodhouse-image-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Brandon Celi\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/09\/science\/earth\/THUMBNAIL\/THUMBNAIL-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/10\/multimedia\/2026-02-10-figure-skating-mens-short-stack-index\/2026-02-10-figure-skating-mens-short-stack-index-square640-v3.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Weiyi Cai\n- ![A man walking with two children in Zurich. Switzerland will vote in June on a proposal to cap its population at 10 million through 2050.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/11\/multimedia\/11int-switzerland-population-wkbt\/11int-switzerland-population-wkbt-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Michael Buholzer\/EPA, via Shutterstock\n- ![An F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck, which the company stopped producing last year, after federal tax credits for electric vehicles ended.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/10\/multimedia\/10biz-ford-earnings-tfpm\/10biz-ford-earnings-tfpm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Brett Carlsen for The New York Times\n- ![From left, Gustavo Dudamel, Cate Blanchett and Jeremy O. Harris at Walt Disney Concert Hall.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/14\/multimedia\/12cul-egmont-roundtable-zcwp\/12cul-egmont-roundtable-zcwp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Jake Michaels for The New York Times\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/09\/21\/movies\/21wild.html#after-bottom)","meta_canonical":null}

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Meta Description	There is plenty of sorrow to be found in “Into the Wild.” But though the film’s structure may be tragic, its spirit is anything but.
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Boilerpipe Text	Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Movie Review \| 'Into the Wild' Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless in a scene from “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s adaptation of the book by Jon Krakauer. Credit... Chuck Zlotnick/Paramount Vintage Into the Wild NYT Critic’s Pick Directed by Sean Penn Adventure, Biography, Drama R 2h 28m Sept. 21, 2007 There is plenty of sorrow to be found in “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s adaptation of the nonfiction bestseller by Jon Krakauer. The story begins with an unhappy family, proceeds through a series of encounters with the lonely and the lost, and ends in a senseless, premature death. But though the film’s structure may be tragic, its spirit is anything but. It is infused with an expansive, almost giddy sense of possibility, and it communicates a pure, unaffected delight in open spaces, fresh air and bright sunshine. Some of this exuberance comes from Christopher Johnson McCandless, the young adventurer whose footloose life and gruesome fate were the subject of Mr. Krakauer’s book. As Mr. Penn understands him (and as he is portrayed, with unforced charm and brisk intelligence, by Emile Hirsch), Chris is at once a troubled, impulsive boy and a brave and dedicated spiritual pilgrim. He does not court danger but rather stumbles across it — thrillingly and then fatally — on the road to joy. In letters to his friends, parts of which are scrawled across the screen in bright yellow capital letters, he revels in the simple beauty of the natural world. Adopting the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp, rejecting material possessions and human attachments, he proclaims himself an “aesthetic voyager.” Mr. Penn serves as both his biographer and his traveling companion. After graduating from Emory University in 1990, Mr. McCandless set off on a zigzagging two-year journey that took him from South Dakota to Southern California, from the Sea of Cortez to the Alaskan wilderness, where he perished, apparently from starvation, in August 1992. “Into the Wild,” which Mr. Penn wrote and directed, follows faithfully in his footsteps, and it illuminates the young man’s personality by showing us the world as he saw it. What he mostly saw was the glory of the North American landscape west of the Mississippi: the ancient woodlands of the Pacific Northwest, the canyons and deserts farther south, the wheat fields of the northern prairie and Alaska, a place that Mr. McCandless seemed to regard with almost mystical reverence. Mr. Penn, who did some of the camera work, was aided by the director of photography, Eric Gautier, who previously turned his careful, voracious eye on the wilds of South America in Walter Salles’s “Motorcycle Diaries.” That movie, like “Into the Wild,” finds epic resonance in a tale of youthful wandering and proposes that a trek through mountains, rivers and forests can also be a voyage of self-discovery. Mr. Salles’s film, in which Gael García Bernal played Che Guevara, found a political dimension in its hero’s journey. And while Chris’s fierce rejection of his parents’ middle-class, suburban life contains elements of ideological critique, Mr. Penn and Mr. Krakauer persuasively place him in a largely apolitical, homegrown tradition of radical, romantic individualism. An enthusiastic reader (with a special affinity for Tolstoy and Jack London), Chris is in many ways the intellectual heir of 19th-century writer-naturalists like John Muir and especially Henry David Thoreau, whose uncompromising idealism — “rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth” — he takes as a watchword. (Had he survived, Mr. McCandless might well have joined the ranks of latter-day nature writers like Edward Abbey and Bill McKibben.) His credo is perhaps most succinctly stated by Thoreau’s mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, who advised that “the ancient precept, ‘Know thyself,’ and the modern precept, ‘Study Nature,’ become at last one maxim.” One problem with this strain of American thought is that it sometimes finds expression in self-help nostrums and greeting-card sentiments. “If you want something in life, reach out and grab it,” Chris says to Tracy (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl who develops a crush on him, collapsing Self-Reliance into something like an advertising slogan. But the movie’s theme, thankfully, is not so simple or so easily summed up in words. Mr. Penn, even more than Mr. Krakauer, takes the Emersonian dimension of Chris McCandless’s project seriously, even as he understands the peril implicit in too close an identification with nature. The book took pains to defend its young protagonist against the suspicion that he was suicidal, unbalanced or an incompetent outdoorsman, gathering testimony from friends he had made in his last years as evidence of his kindness, his care and his integrity. The film, at some risk of sentimentalizing its hero, goes further, pushing him to the very brink of sainthood. After Chris offers wise, sympathetic counsel to Rainey (Brian Dierker), a middle-aged hippie he has befriended on the road, the older man looks at him with quiet amazement. “You’re not Jesus, are you?” he asks. Well no, but it’s a comparison that Mr. Penn does not entirely discourage. (Note the final, man of sorrows image of Mr. Hirsch’s face and also an earlier shot of him floating naked in a stream, his arms extended in a familiar cruciform shape.) At the same time, though, “Into the Wild” resists the impulse to interpret Chris’s death as a kind of martyrdom or as the inevitable, logical terminus of his passionate desire for communion with nature. Instead, with disarming sincerity, it emphasizes his capacity for love, the gift for fellowship that, somewhat paradoxically, accompanied his fierce need for solitude. Though he warns one of his friends against seeking happiness in human relationships — and also rails incoherently against the evils of “society” — Chris is a naturally sociable creature. And “Into the Wild” is populated with marvelous actors — including Mr. Dierker, a river guide and ski-shop owner making his first appearance in a film — who make its human landscape as fascinating and various as its topography. The source of Chris’s wanderlust, and of the melancholy that tugs at the film’s happy-go-lucky spirit, is traced to his parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden), whose volatile marriage and regard for appearances begin to seem contemptible to their son. (His feelings for them are explained in voice-over by his younger sister, Carine, who is played by Jena Malone.) Fleeing from his mother and father, Chris finds himself drawn, almost unwittingly, to parental surrogates: a rowdy grain dealer in South Dakota (Vince Vaughn), a retired military man in the California desert (Hal Holbrook) and Rainey’s companion, Jan (Catherine Keener), who seems both carefree and careworn. Chris reminds some of these people of their own lost children, but all of them respond to something about him: an open, guileless quality, at once earnest and playful, that Mr. Hirsch conveys with intuitive grace. “You look like a loved kid,” Jan says, and “Into the Wild” bears that out in nearly every scene. He is loved, not least, by Mr. Penn, who has shown himself, in three previous films (“The Indian Runner,” “The Crossing Guard” and “The Pledge”) to be a thoughtful and skilled director. He still is, but this story seems to have liberated him from the somber seriousness that has been his hallmark as a filmmaker until now. “Into the Wild” is a movie about the desire for freedom that feels, in itself, like the fulfillment of that desire. Which is not to say that there is anything easy or naïve in what Mr. Penn has done. “Into the Wild” is, on the contrary, alive to the mysteries and difficulties of experience in a way that very few recent American movies have been. There are some awkward moments and infelicitous touches — a few too many Eddie Vedder songs on the soundtrack, for example, when Woody Guthrie, Aaron Copland or dead silence might have been more welcome — but the film’s imperfection, like its grandeur, arises from a passionate, generous impulse that is as hard to resist as the call of the open road. “Into the Wild” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has profanity, brief nudity and some violent or otherwise upsetting scenes. INTO THE WILD Opens today in New York and Los Angeles. Directed by Sean Penn; written by Mr. Penn, based on the book by Jon Krakauer; director of photography, Eric Gautier; edited by Jay Cassidy; score by Michael Brook with songs and additional music by Eddie Vedder and Kaki King; production designer, Derek R. Hill; produced by Mr. Penn, Art Linson and Bill Pohlad; released by Paramount Vantage. Running time: 140 minutes. WITH: Emile Hirsch (Christopher McCandless), Marcia Gay Harden (Billie McCandless), William Hurt (Walt McCandless), Jena Malone (Carine), Brian Dierker (Rainey), Catherine Keener (Jan Burres), Vince Vaughn (Wayne Westerberg), Kristen Stewart (Tracy) and Hal Holbrook (Ron Franz). Related Content More in Movies Warner Bros. Pictures CBS, via Getty Images Amazon MGM Studios Alex Goodlett/Getty Images Editors’ Picks Netflix Robert Samuel Hanson Trending in The Times Nicolas Ortega Eric Lee for The New York Times, Greg Kahn for The New York Times Andrew Graham Todes Photography Brandon Celi Weiyi Cai Michael Buholzer/EPA, via Shutterstock Brett Carlsen for The New York Times Jake Michaels for The New York Times Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Markdown	[Skip to content](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/movies/21wild.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/movies/21wild.html#site-index) Search & Section Navigation Section Navigation Search [Movies](https://www.nytimes.com/section/movies) [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2007%252F09%252F21%252Fmovies%252F21wild.html&asset=masthead) Friday, February 13, 2026 [Today’s Paper](https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper) [Movies](https://www.nytimes.com/section/movies)\\|Following His Trail to Danger and Joy https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/movies/21wild.html - Share full article Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/movies/21wild.html#after-top) Supported by [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/movies/21wild.html#after-sponsor) Movie Review \\| 'Into the Wild' # Following His Trail to Danger and Joy - Share full article ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2007/09/21/arts/21wild-600.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless in a scene from “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s adaptation of the book by Jon Krakauer.Credit...Chuck Zlotnick/Paramount Vintage Into the Wild NYT Critic’s Pick Directed by Sean Penn Adventure, Biography, Drama R 2h 28m By [A.O. Scott](https://www.nytimes.com/by/a-o--scott) - Sept. 21, 2007 There is plenty of sorrow to be found in “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s adaptation of the nonfiction bestseller by Jon Krakauer. The story begins with an unhappy family, proceeds through a series of encounters with the lonely and the lost, and ends in a senseless, premature death. But though the film’s structure may be tragic, its spirit is anything but. It is infused with an expansive, almost giddy sense of possibility, and it communicates a pure, unaffected delight in open spaces, fresh air and bright sunshine. Some of this exuberance comes from Christopher Johnson McCandless, the young adventurer whose footloose life and gruesome fate were the subject of Mr. Krakauer’s book. As Mr. Penn understands him (and as he is portrayed, with unforced charm and brisk intelligence, by Emile Hirsch), Chris is at once a troubled, impulsive boy and a brave and dedicated spiritual pilgrim. He does not court danger but rather stumbles across it — thrillingly and then fatally — on the road to joy. In letters to his friends, parts of which are scrawled across the screen in bright yellow capital letters, he revels in the simple beauty of the natural world. Adopting the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp, rejecting material possessions and human attachments, he proclaims himself an “aesthetic voyager.” Mr. Penn serves as both his biographer and his traveling companion. After graduating from Emory University in 1990, Mr. McCandless set off on a zigzagging two-year journey that took him from South Dakota to Southern California, from the Sea of Cortez to the Alaskan wilderness, where he perished, apparently from starvation, in August 1992. “Into the Wild,” which Mr. Penn wrote and directed, follows faithfully in his footsteps, and it illuminates the young man’s personality by showing us the world as he saw it. What he mostly saw was the glory of the North American landscape west of the Mississippi: the ancient woodlands of the Pacific Northwest, the canyons and deserts farther south, the wheat fields of the northern prairie and Alaska, a place that Mr. McCandless seemed to regard with almost mystical reverence. Mr. Penn, who did some of the camera work, was aided by the director of photography, Eric Gautier, who previously turned his careful, voracious eye on the wilds of South America in Walter Salles’s “Motorcycle Diaries.” That movie, like “Into the Wild,” finds epic resonance in a tale of youthful wandering and proposes that a trek through mountains, rivers and forests can also be a voyage of self-discovery. Mr. Salles’s film, in which Gael García Bernal played Che Guevara, found a political dimension in its hero’s journey. And while Chris’s fierce rejection of his parents’ middle-class, suburban life contains elements of ideological critique, Mr. Penn and Mr. Krakauer persuasively place him in a largely apolitical, homegrown tradition of radical, romantic individualism. An enthusiastic reader (with a special affinity for Tolstoy and Jack London), Chris is in many ways the intellectual heir of 19th-century writer-naturalists like John Muir and especially Henry David Thoreau, whose uncompromising idealism — “rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth” — he takes as a watchword. (Had he survived, Mr. McCandless might well have joined the ranks of latter-day nature writers like Edward Abbey and Bill McKibben.) His credo is perhaps most succinctly stated by Thoreau’s mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, who advised that “the ancient precept, ‘Know thyself,’ and the modern precept, ‘Study Nature,’ become at last one maxim.” One problem with this strain of American thought is that it sometimes finds expression in self-help nostrums and greeting-card sentiments. “If you want something in life, reach out and grab it,” Chris says to Tracy (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl who develops a crush on him, collapsing Self-Reliance into something like an advertising slogan. But the movie’s theme, thankfully, is not so simple or so easily summed up in words. Mr. Penn, even more than Mr. Krakauer, takes the Emersonian dimension of Chris McCandless’s project seriously, even as he understands the peril implicit in too close an identification with nature. The book took pains to defend its young protagonist against the suspicion that he was suicidal, unbalanced or an incompetent outdoorsman, gathering testimony from friends he had made in his last years as evidence of his kindness, his care and his integrity. The film, at some risk of sentimentalizing its hero, goes further, pushing him to the very brink of sainthood. After Chris offers wise, sympathetic counsel to Rainey (Brian Dierker), a middle-aged hippie he has befriended on the road, the older man looks at him with quiet amazement. “You’re not Jesus, are you?” he asks. ## Editors’ Picks [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/11/multimedia/11modernlove-king-of-valentines-1-jgtp/11modernlove-king-of-valentines-1-jgtp-thumbLarge.jpg)The King and Queen of Valentines](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/podcasts/valentines-day-surprise-couple.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/09/multimedia/09FD-WE-FANCY-promo-hlbj/09FD-WE-FANCY-promo-hlbj-thumbLarge.jpg)Cooking Fancy Isn’t About Expensive Ingredients. It’s a Mind-Set.](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/dining/cooking-fancy.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/09/dining/09fd-wte-imperioli/09fd-wte-imperioli-thumbLarge.png)Michael Imperioli Will Tell His Great-Grandchildren About Dining With Bourdain](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/dining/white-lotus-michael-imperioli-restaurants.html) Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/movies/21wild.html#after-pp_edpick) Well no, but it’s a comparison that Mr. Penn does not entirely discourage. (Note the final, man of sorrows image of Mr. Hirsch’s face and also an earlier shot of him floating naked in a stream, his arms extended in a familiar cruciform shape.) At the same time, though, “Into the Wild” resists the impulse to interpret Chris’s death as a kind of martyrdom or as the inevitable, logical terminus of his passionate desire for communion with nature. Instead, with disarming sincerity, it emphasizes his capacity for love, the gift for fellowship that, somewhat paradoxically, accompanied his fierce need for solitude. Though he warns one of his friends against seeking happiness in human relationships — and also rails incoherently against the evils of “society” — Chris is a naturally sociable creature. And “Into the Wild” is populated with marvelous actors — including Mr. Dierker, a river guide and ski-shop owner making his first appearance in a film — who make its human landscape as fascinating and various as its topography. The source of Chris’s wanderlust, and of the melancholy that tugs at the film’s happy-go-lucky spirit, is traced to his parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden), whose volatile marriage and regard for appearances begin to seem contemptible to their son. (His feelings for them are explained in voice-over by his younger sister, Carine, who is played by Jena Malone.) Fleeing from his mother and father, Chris finds himself drawn, almost unwittingly, to parental surrogates: a rowdy grain dealer in South Dakota (Vince Vaughn), a retired military man in the California desert (Hal Holbrook) and Rainey’s companion, Jan (Catherine Keener), who seems both carefree and careworn. Chris reminds some of these people of their own lost children, but all of them respond to something about him: an open, guileless quality, at once earnest and playful, that Mr. Hirsch conveys with intuitive grace. “You look like a loved kid,” Jan says, and “Into the Wild” bears that out in nearly every scene. He is loved, not least, by Mr. Penn, who has shown himself, in three previous films (“The Indian Runner,” “The Crossing Guard” and “The Pledge”) to be a thoughtful and skilled director. He still is, but this story seems to have liberated him from the somber seriousness that has been his hallmark as a filmmaker until now. “Into the Wild” is a movie about the desire for freedom that feels, in itself, like the fulfillment of that desire. Which is not to say that there is anything easy or naïve in what Mr. Penn has done. “Into the Wild” is, on the contrary, alive to the mysteries and difficulties of experience in a way that very few recent American movies have been. There are some awkward moments and infelicitous touches — a few too many Eddie Vedder songs on the soundtrack, for example, when Woody Guthrie, Aaron Copland or dead silence might have been more welcome — but the film’s imperfection, like its grandeur, arises from a passionate, generous impulse that is as hard to resist as the call of the open road. “Into the Wild” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has profanity, brief nudity and some violent or otherwise upsetting scenes. INTO THE WILD Opens today in New York and Los Angeles. Directed by Sean Penn; written by Mr. Penn, based on the book by Jon Krakauer; director of photography, Eric Gautier; edited by Jay Cassidy; score by Michael Brook with songs and additional music by Eddie Vedder and Kaki King; production designer, Derek R. Hill; produced by Mr. Penn, Art Linson and Bill Pohlad; released by Paramount Vantage. Running time: 140 minutes. WITH: Emile Hirsch (Christopher McCandless), Marcia Gay Harden (Billie McCandless), William Hurt (Walt McCandless), Jena Malone (Carine), Brian Dierker (Rainey), Catherine Keener (Jan Burres), Vince Vaughn (Wayne Westerberg), Kristen Stewart (Tracy) and Hal Holbrook (Ron Franz). #### Into the Wild NYT Critic’s Pick Director Sean Penn Writers Sean Penn, Jon Krakauer (book) Stars Emile Hirsch, Vince Vaughn, Catherine Keener, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt Rating R Running Time 2h 28m Genres Adventure, Biography, Drama Movie data powered by IMDb.com See more on: [Sean Penn](https://www.nytimes.com/topic/sean-penn), [Jon Krakauer](https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/jon-krakauer) - Share full article ### Related Coverage [Mother Nature’s Restless Sons Sept. 16, 2007 ![Mother Nature’s Restless Sons](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2007/09/16/arts/14mcgr75.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/movies/16mcgr.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer) ## Related Content ### [More in Movies](https://www.nytimes.com/section/movies) - [‘Wuthering Heights’ Review: Margot Robbie, Amok on the Moors](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/movies/wuthering-heights-review-margot-robbie-jacob-elordi.html) ![Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff and Margot Robbie as Catherine in “Wuthering Heights.”](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/11/multimedia/wuthering-heights-glhb/wuthering-heights-glhb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Warner Bros. 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Readable Markdown	Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/movies/21wild.html#after-top) Movie Review \\| 'Into the Wild' ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2007/09/21/arts/21wild-600.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless in a scene from “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s adaptation of the book by Jon Krakauer.Credit...Chuck Zlotnick/Paramount Vintage Into the Wild NYT Critic’s Pick Directed by Sean Penn Adventure, Biography, Drama R 2h 28m - Sept. 21, 2007 There is plenty of sorrow to be found in “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s adaptation of the nonfiction bestseller by Jon Krakauer. The story begins with an unhappy family, proceeds through a series of encounters with the lonely and the lost, and ends in a senseless, premature death. But though the film’s structure may be tragic, its spirit is anything but. It is infused with an expansive, almost giddy sense of possibility, and it communicates a pure, unaffected delight in open spaces, fresh air and bright sunshine. Some of this exuberance comes from Christopher Johnson McCandless, the young adventurer whose footloose life and gruesome fate were the subject of Mr. Krakauer’s book. As Mr. Penn understands him (and as he is portrayed, with unforced charm and brisk intelligence, by Emile Hirsch), Chris is at once a troubled, impulsive boy and a brave and dedicated spiritual pilgrim. He does not court danger but rather stumbles across it — thrillingly and then fatally — on the road to joy. In letters to his friends, parts of which are scrawled across the screen in bright yellow capital letters, he revels in the simple beauty of the natural world. Adopting the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp, rejecting material possessions and human attachments, he proclaims himself an “aesthetic voyager.” Mr. Penn serves as both his biographer and his traveling companion. After graduating from Emory University in 1990, Mr. McCandless set off on a zigzagging two-year journey that took him from South Dakota to Southern California, from the Sea of Cortez to the Alaskan wilderness, where he perished, apparently from starvation, in August 1992. “Into the Wild,” which Mr. Penn wrote and directed, follows faithfully in his footsteps, and it illuminates the young man’s personality by showing us the world as he saw it. What he mostly saw was the glory of the North American landscape west of the Mississippi: the ancient woodlands of the Pacific Northwest, the canyons and deserts farther south, the wheat fields of the northern prairie and Alaska, a place that Mr. McCandless seemed to regard with almost mystical reverence. Mr. Penn, who did some of the camera work, was aided by the director of photography, Eric Gautier, who previously turned his careful, voracious eye on the wilds of South America in Walter Salles’s “Motorcycle Diaries.” That movie, like “Into the Wild,” finds epic resonance in a tale of youthful wandering and proposes that a trek through mountains, rivers and forests can also be a voyage of self-discovery. Mr. Salles’s film, in which Gael García Bernal played Che Guevara, found a political dimension in its hero’s journey. And while Chris’s fierce rejection of his parents’ middle-class, suburban life contains elements of ideological critique, Mr. Penn and Mr. Krakauer persuasively place him in a largely apolitical, homegrown tradition of radical, romantic individualism. An enthusiastic reader (with a special affinity for Tolstoy and Jack London), Chris is in many ways the intellectual heir of 19th-century writer-naturalists like John Muir and especially Henry David Thoreau, whose uncompromising idealism — “rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth” — he takes as a watchword. (Had he survived, Mr. McCandless might well have joined the ranks of latter-day nature writers like Edward Abbey and Bill McKibben.) His credo is perhaps most succinctly stated by Thoreau’s mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, who advised that “the ancient precept, ‘Know thyself,’ and the modern precept, ‘Study Nature,’ become at last one maxim.” One problem with this strain of American thought is that it sometimes finds expression in self-help nostrums and greeting-card sentiments. “If you want something in life, reach out and grab it,” Chris says to Tracy (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl who develops a crush on him, collapsing Self-Reliance into something like an advertising slogan. But the movie’s theme, thankfully, is not so simple or so easily summed up in words. Mr. Penn, even more than Mr. Krakauer, takes the Emersonian dimension of Chris McCandless’s project seriously, even as he understands the peril implicit in too close an identification with nature. The book took pains to defend its young protagonist against the suspicion that he was suicidal, unbalanced or an incompetent outdoorsman, gathering testimony from friends he had made in his last years as evidence of his kindness, his care and his integrity. The film, at some risk of sentimentalizing its hero, goes further, pushing him to the very brink of sainthood. After Chris offers wise, sympathetic counsel to Rainey (Brian Dierker), a middle-aged hippie he has befriended on the road, the older man looks at him with quiet amazement. “You’re not Jesus, are you?” he asks. Well no, but it’s a comparison that Mr. Penn does not entirely discourage. (Note the final, man of sorrows image of Mr. Hirsch’s face and also an earlier shot of him floating naked in a stream, his arms extended in a familiar cruciform shape.) At the same time, though, “Into the Wild” resists the impulse to interpret Chris’s death as a kind of martyrdom or as the inevitable, logical terminus of his passionate desire for communion with nature. Instead, with disarming sincerity, it emphasizes his capacity for love, the gift for fellowship that, somewhat paradoxically, accompanied his fierce need for solitude. Though he warns one of his friends against seeking happiness in human relationships — and also rails incoherently against the evils of “society” — Chris is a naturally sociable creature. And “Into the Wild” is populated with marvelous actors — including Mr. Dierker, a river guide and ski-shop owner making his first appearance in a film — who make its human landscape as fascinating and various as its topography. The source of Chris’s wanderlust, and of the melancholy that tugs at the film’s happy-go-lucky spirit, is traced to his parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden), whose volatile marriage and regard for appearances begin to seem contemptible to their son. (His feelings for them are explained in voice-over by his younger sister, Carine, who is played by Jena Malone.) Fleeing from his mother and father, Chris finds himself drawn, almost unwittingly, to parental surrogates: a rowdy grain dealer in South Dakota (Vince Vaughn), a retired military man in the California desert (Hal Holbrook) and Rainey’s companion, Jan (Catherine Keener), who seems both carefree and careworn. Chris reminds some of these people of their own lost children, but all of them respond to something about him: an open, guileless quality, at once earnest and playful, that Mr. Hirsch conveys with intuitive grace. “You look like a loved kid,” Jan says, and “Into the Wild” bears that out in nearly every scene. He is loved, not least, by Mr. Penn, who has shown himself, in three previous films (“The Indian Runner,” “The Crossing Guard” and “The Pledge”) to be a thoughtful and skilled director. He still is, but this story seems to have liberated him from the somber seriousness that has been his hallmark as a filmmaker until now. “Into the Wild” is a movie about the desire for freedom that feels, in itself, like the fulfillment of that desire. Which is not to say that there is anything easy or naïve in what Mr. Penn has done. “Into the Wild” is, on the contrary, alive to the mysteries and difficulties of experience in a way that very few recent American movies have been. There are some awkward moments and infelicitous touches — a few too many Eddie Vedder songs on the soundtrack, for example, when Woody Guthrie, Aaron Copland or dead silence might have been more welcome — but the film’s imperfection, like its grandeur, arises from a passionate, generous impulse that is as hard to resist as the call of the open road. “Into the Wild” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has profanity, brief nudity and some violent or otherwise upsetting scenes. INTO THE WILD Opens today in New York and Los Angeles. Directed by Sean Penn; written by Mr. Penn, based on the book by Jon Krakauer; director of photography, Eric Gautier; edited by Jay Cassidy; score by Michael Brook with songs and additional music by Eddie Vedder and Kaki King; production designer, Derek R. Hill; produced by Mr. Penn, Art Linson and Bill Pohlad; released by Paramount Vantage. Running time: 140 minutes. 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