Reviews

Films

Into the Wild

Directed by Sean Penn, starring Emile Hirsch, Vince Vaughn, Catherine Keener and Hal Holbrook.

Sean Penn is a younger, cooler version of Robert Redford. Penn's a more passionate performer and less concerned with his own handsomeness, but their films as directors share a similar liberal politics and love of the American landscape. Into the Wild is Penn's fourth feature as director and his most lyrical work, telling the true story of Chris McCandless, a 22-year-old college graduate who, rather than return to his conservative parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden) for the holidays and qualify for Harvard Law School, sent his savings to Oxfam and took the roads less traveled to live in the Alaskan wilderness.

Based on an American bestseller by Jon Krakauer, the film opens with a quote from Byron and invokes Thoreau, Tolstoy and Jack London. Penn seems intent on showing literary pedigree here and, as ever, risks accusations of pretension. While Penn's admiration for the story is never less than heartfelt, it's hard not to make judgments about McCandless, played with the lustrous hair and smug grin of the free-loading traveler by actor Emile Hirsch. If you saw him coming towards you on a Thai beach, you'd bury your head in a Lonely Planet and avoid eye contact.

Many characters he meets do actually take to him - Vince Vaughn's wheat farmer, a couple of Danish hikers, Catherine Keener's traveler and, significantly in this Huckleberryish picaresque, an ex-soldier played by veteran actor Hal Holbrook who, for most Americans, is the living embodiment of Mark Twain through his famous one-man shows.

There are soaring moments in Into the Wild, conjured up by the excellent French cameraman Eric Gautier, who performed similar duties on The Motorcycle Diaries and who here captures the American outdoors, allying the images to the film's bluesy soundtrack, by Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder. While the viewer may sympathize with McCandless's saintly rejection of materialism and his pursuit of eternal truths in a mapped-out world, there's little irony in the film, and the deluded Chris never actually helps anyone else, preferring to dispense received wisdom, not actual kindness.

Silk

Directed by Francois Girard, starring Michael Pitt, Sei Ashina and Keira Knightley.

More snowy traveling and yearning comes in Silk, a plodding adaptation of the European bestseller by Italian writer Alessandro Baricco. In a disastrous piece of casting, the American indie actor Michael Pitt plays young French silkworm merchant Herve Joncour who, despite being married to Keira Knightley, departs 19th-century France on a long journey for Japan. His mission is to find the purest worm eggs and smuggle them home but he becomes obsessed with the concubine of a local emperor.

There are lush images in Francois Girard's film and softcore nudity from Knightley and her Japanese counterpart Sei Ashina, but too much voiceover from Pitt and a dull score from Ryuichi Sakamoto. It's a film that never really starts, yet one you fear might never end.

The Guardian

(China Daily 11/14/2007 page20)