With Franz, he learns the value of wisdom, which is also the name of the titled on-screen final chapter in the film, “Getting of Wisdom”. We see Christopher encounter very specific people in his journey, each who are designed to represent pillars of social stability, from honest hard work to personal responsibility to romantic partnership and more. Holbrook earned an Oscar nom for his moving portrayal of Franz, an emotional and deeply centered character that provides McCandless with his final hurdle in abandoning civilization. He then walks out into the early haze of a new day and on the snows of the unforgiving wild. Christopher thanks Franz but says they should discuss it when he returns, the implication clear that this is a thing that will never be. With great vulnerability and pride welling behind his eyes, he then offers Christopher something truly astounding – his name, asking for permission to adopt McCandless so he can be the family he no longer has. Into The Wild, 2007 © Paramount Vantageįranz pauses a moment and then tells the boy of how he is the last of his family line, he an only child, and his now gone. He’s put together a care box of helpful gear that might help Christopher on the next leg of his journey, and they drive mostly in silence out of the sands and into the morning, where at last, they must go their separate ways. Christopher plans to leave in the night, to avoid hurting Franz, but the old man hears him stirring and offers the boy a ride the hundred miles away out of the desert to catch a train or car or something elsewhere. “I’m gonna miss you when you’re gone,” he tells the boy.Īnd so we come to their departure. In their time together though, Franz becomes frustrated with why the boy wants so desperately to go to Alaska, asking him what he is running from, to which Christopher claims that it is Franz who is actually running, even though he is stuck in one place, hiding in his little home away from the real world (this is followed by a remarkable scene where Holbrook scales a rather steep and rocky incline to prove he can still have new experiences). The two become close, the mentor/parental role Franz holds over the boy one Christopher feels an especially strong bond with. Over the next few months, Christopher spends more and more time with Franz, learning how to work leather, making a belt that documents his travels west. Since then, he’s lived alone and now busies himself with leathering, a trade that earns him some decent income, but more so, passion. It ruined him for a long time, he says, but then he decided to live his life in honor of them, cleaning himself up and devoting himself to being a good person. Hal Holbrook–Into The Wild, 2007 © Paramount Vantageįranz offers the boy a warm meal, bringing him into his home, where he tells him of his life years before in the Army while stationed in Okinawa, where, in the late 1950s, a drunk driver killed his wife and son in a car accident back in the states. He is clearly moved by the boy’s situation, especially when Christopher claims he now has no family. Franz sees how the boy is living, residing in a small camping tent in the desert, surviving day-to-day. He is ever determined to reach his destiny.Įventually, he arrives in California where he then meets Ron Franz ( Hal Holbrook), an elder man, retired and living alone. These people are impactful, but lack any influence. Dierker) on the road to a working man in South Dakota ( Vince Vaughn), to an underage girl named Tracy ( Kristen Stewart), who feels great attraction to the wandering man. Despite the hardships, he feels anew, bound for something deeply profound.Ĭhanging his name to Alexander Supertramp, he continues on, encountering kindness in strangers, from hippies ( Catherine Keener and Brian H. He’s not told his family of his intentions, refusing to keep in touch, surviving on his own from the courtesy of others and the odd jobs he can muster along the way. THAT MOMENT: After cutting up his credit cards and social security cards, rejecting the Harvard life his parents have planned for him, Christopher packs only the essentials and drives off in his battered Datsun B210, heading west where he eventually must abandon even that, hitch-hiking further on. Emile Hirsch–Into The Wild, 2007 © Paramount Vantage In service to the story, many of the characters are purposefully aligned to fit a very broad set of personalities.
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