| Overall Grade: |
C+ |
|
| Story: |
C- |
|
|
| Acting: |
B |
|
|
| Direction: |
C- |
|
|
| Visuals: |
B+ |
|
|
Romancing the Narcissist
by J Cline (movies profile)
Jul 15, 2008
119
of
198 people found this review helpful
I've enjoyed every one of Jon Krakaeur's books, cover to cover, and this was no exception. The author fairly and objectively gave an accounting of a life, one Christopher McCandless.
Too bad one cannot say the same about Sean Penn's overlong, overwrought paean to, basically, a spoiled brat. Penn shamelessly worships the wildness inside this manchild McCandless, who rejected his culture and his family without a second glance behind him. And then goes on the road and continues to abandon even more people in a self-indulgent quest to find himself.
Reviews I've read seem to focus on the "beautiful journey" this youth undertook, just as the filmmaker intends. We are not shown the wreckage McCandless leaves, the exit wounds as he comes and goes through the lives of people who care for him. We are not told how stupidly McCandless undertook his journey, the risks he flaunted, the Darwinian justness of his solitary, pointless end in a junked-out bus in the middle of absolutely nowhere. A beautiful nowhere, yes, and very quiet for reading Russian novelists, but so what?
A more perceptive, honest view would have spent less time idealizing the idealist himself, and more on the consequences of his selfishness and folly -- for others, not just the boy himself.
Better read the book before seeing this, or you'll risk becoming another sucker for Penn's transparent bid to turn McCandless into McChrist. |
My Public Profile 
