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I was disappointed by Penn's film adaptation of Into the Wild. On the positive side, I found Catherine Keener's performance as Jan Burres completely convincing. I enjoyed the Vedder soundtrack, and I thought certain cinematic elements were beautiful (though not always serving to the storyline) such as the night shots in L.A. However, there was a lot a didn't care for. The voice over narration by Carine McCandless (Jena Malone) didn't work for me because the story was not hers to tell, and the narration together with the rapid cutting within scenes and the frequent temporal shifts left me unable to identify with either Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch) or the viewpoints of the characters that Chris met along his way as I was able to do with, for example, the supporting characters in Agnès Varda's Vagabond (1985). Being unable to identify with any of the characters, I was left in the position of an outside observer and here Penn failed to make much of this position either. For example, Penn did not use the camera to show us anything that Chris failed to figure out. Krakauer's book makes clearer that the magic bus was not as isolated as Chris believed it to be, and that the seasonal river that cut off Chris's planned departure route could have been crossed upstream. Penn could have unobtrusively shared this information with the viewer, but chose to withhold it for the purpose, I suspect, of romanticizing Chris's adventure.

I'm reminded of why biopics generally fail when they attempt to present some objective truth about their subjects based on the subjective impressions of people that knew them: the inner lives of others, even that one person we are closer to than anyone else, remain mysteries to us. Control's Ian Curtis (Sam Riley) is composed of the recollections of his widow, Deborah Curtis, who shares co-writing credit and served as the film's executive producer. Like Hari in Solyaris who is incomplete because she's only a manifestation of Kris Kelvin's impressions of her, there appears to be nothing more to Ian than what Deborah believes to be the truth about him.

While Ian remains incomplete, Annik Honoré (Alexandra Maria Lara), the third party in this love triangle, is reduced to a cipher. We know nothing about her, and she appears to know nothing about Ian. Months into their relationship she implores him to open up by telling her his favorite film and color. That this conversation is the most intimate that they have beyond a clichéd marrying-young-is-a-mistake confession within hours of meeting, demonstrates how completely the deck is stacked against empathy for Annik and by consequence against understanding Ian's interest in Annik. The conclusion Control would have us draw is that Ian's tryst with Annik was the product of little more than base sexual desire muddled with repulsion at the banality of life with Housefrau Debbie Samantha Morton) and baby. This does a disservice to Ian, Annik and, ultimately, Deborah.