Entertainment

DEAD MAN CAMPING

IN 1990, a spoiled brat named Christopher McCandless decided shortly after his gradu ation from Emory University to spite his parents by se cretly giving away his $24,000 law school fund to charity.

McCandless changed his name to Alexander Supertramp and spent the next two years vagabonding across North America to “find himself” before he ended up starving to death in the Alaskan wilderness near Mount McKinley.

This saga was the subject of “Into the Wild,” a short but fascinating book by Jon Krakauer that, 11 years later, has resulted in a gorgeously photographed and less intermittently fascinating 21/2-hour film by Sean Penn.

As a director, Penn showed great discipline with his three earlier films, especially “The Pledge.” But he’s all over the map with this one, trying to mix angst-filled drama, self-aggrandizing diary entries and pretentious title cards (“Chapter 3: Manhood”) with a crowd-pleasing travelogue meant to evoke films of the early 1970s.

The film opens promisingly, with the arrival of McCandless in Alaska, where he takes shelter in an abandoned bus that is miles from the nearest road.

Penn cuts away from McCandless’ steadily deteriorating situation over the next four months with a series of flashbacks, some of which depict McCandless’ fraught relationship his parents (Marcia Gay Harden and a fine, understated William Hurt), with whom he was furious for withholding family secrets.

After his graduation, McCandless selfishly punishes them by cutting off all contact. He abandons his car, sneaks onto freight trains, illegally kayaks from the Grand Canyon into Mexico and works at menial jobs before finally hitchhiking to Alaska.

Though Penn’s screenplay follows Krakauer’s book more or less faithfully, he adds a sentimental dramatic through line.

People McCandless meets along the way provide him with a surrogate family that allows him to appreciate his real family – albeit too late. In a sign found by moose hunters six weeks after McCandless’ death, he had reassumed his real name.

McCandless – who comes off as more arrogant on the printed page – is made more somewhat palatable by the casting of a charismatic young actor, Emile Hirsch, who lost 40 pounds for the movie’s frightening final scenes.

Among those he encounters are an aging hippie (Catherine Keener) whose own son has run off; a 14-year-old singer (Kristen Stewart) who develops a crush on him; a shady farmer (an amusing Vince Vaughn); and, most memorably, an elderly military retiree (an Oscar-worthy Hal Holbrook) who is still mourning the long-ago death of his own family.

“Into the Wild” tries to paint McCandless’ own demise as something of a triumph. Penn conveniently left out the information that McCandless might have been saved simply by carrying a reliable map. He incorrectly thought he was stranded by a rising river.

INTO THE WILD

***

Paging Jack Kerouac.

Running time: 147 minutes. Rated R (profanity, nudity). At the Lincoln Square and the Sunshine.