We've all felt the urge to get away from it all, but few of us would take it to the extremes that Chris McCandless did.
In the summer of 1990, shortly after graduating from college, he gave his savings to Oxfam, cut up his credit cards and hit the road, all without telling any family or friends where he was going. His destination was Alaska's untamed wilderness, away from all human contact, alone. "Into The Wild" is his story.
Based on the nonfiction book by John Krakauer that documented McCandless' journey, director Sean Penn fashions a quixotic, poetic road movie that plays like beatnik Jack Kerouac meets landscape-lover Terrence Malick. There's the notion of bumming across the continent as a form of self-exploration from "The Dharma Bums" and "On the Road," and the beauty and stillness of nature in the face of man's wayward passions from "Badlands" and "The New World."