Just Films & That is a podcast that celebrates underrated and underseen films. In this episode, we take a look at Into The Wild, which was chosen by guest Tom Davies when he joined us on the podcast. He thinks this one might be a bit underseen. You can listen to the full episode now, and all episodes of Just Films & That, wherever you get your podcasts.
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00:00 There are people in this world who go looking for adventure.
00:07 So Into the Wild from 2007, and this film was chosen by one of our brilliant guests,
00:14 a guy called Tom, from a podcast called The Proper Mental Podcast which focuses mainly
00:18 on mental health.
00:19 And we asked him to come on towards the end of January because it's a tough month and
00:22 pick a film that he thought was worth a look but also had a sort of mental health related
00:28 twist.
00:29 The film is about a real guy called Christopher McCandless who finds himself frustrated with
00:32 life for various reasons and decides to go on a journey to live off of the grid as much
00:37 as he can.
00:38 So Alice, how did it do critically and what did you like about the film?
00:42 So on IMDb at the time of recording it gets 8.1 and then over on Rotten Tomatoes the critics
00:48 give it 83% and then the audience give it 89%.
00:53 And to be honest I completely agree with those very high scores.
00:57 I hadn't seen this one before, I don't think I'd even heard of it, but I really, really
01:01 liked it and I thought there was so much in there to like.
01:04 I think if we start with the aesthetic of it, so we go from these huge, dramatic, sprawling
01:09 landscapes to sometimes these very intimate and tender scenes between a couple of our
01:14 characters and the juxtaposition between these two images I always found very striking.
01:19 I also thought there were some incredibly strong performances here across the board.
01:23 So we've got Emile Hirsch who's playing our protagonist and there is so much riding on
01:27 his shoulders.
01:28 There's so much of this film is brought to life because of his performance.
01:33 And just finally, I love the concept of this.
01:35 I thought it was an incredible story.
01:36 It was really well written, really well executed and the ending was so incredibly dramatic
01:42 and I just did not see it coming.
01:44 So a bit of a twist in there as well.
01:45 Emile Hirsch I think is good in it but I think it really thrives when he's speaking to other
01:49 characters rather than on his own because it's all about enriching his emotional and
01:53 intellectual palate and I think that's probably down to my own personal taste but that is
01:58 one thing I liked about it.
01:59 So was there anything you didn't like about the film or anything you'd change?
02:02 Lucy So the only thing for me here is the same
02:05 complaint that I have about many films that are adapted from a book and that is some of
02:09 the exposition dumping and some of the bits of dialogue that are really shoehorned in
02:14 there to get the message across.
02:16 So sometimes I thought maybe it could have been handled a bit differently, maybe used
02:19 more sophisticated methods to get the feelings of the characters across.
02:23 Emile Hirsch The main thing for me is, and I know we've
02:25 laughed about this on the Pocketsplot, I think it's a little bit too long.
02:28 It's nearly two and a half hours and there's a little bit too much of him I think on his
02:32 own that's drawn out and I know that might be making a point around isolation or what
02:36 he did on his journey and stuff like that but for me, as I said in the likes, it's the
02:39 other side of that coin.
02:40 The film really thrives when he's talking to other people.
02:44 Do we think it's underrated?
02:45 Do we think it's underseen?
02:46 Is it both?
02:47 For me it's probably appropriately rated.
02:50 Those are the sort of scores I would be giving it.
02:52 In terms of underseen, I do think it is.
02:54 This isn't one that was on my radar at all.
02:56 It's not one I've ever heard anyone really talk about in my circle.
03:00 So I do think there's a definite case in there for it being underseen.
03:03 If you want something in life.