'Into the Wild'

“Into the Wild,” Jon Krakauer’s beautiful bummer of a non-fiction book about would-be aesthete Christopher McCandless — who abandoned material comforts in favor of a life close to nature, which led to a lonely Alaskan death — doesn’t seem like the most obvious source of inspiration for a feature film.

And indeed, writer/director Sean Penn turns “Into The Wild” (Paramount, 2007, R) into a neo-picaresque tale told in flashback, with its aloof and hyper-engaged protagonist encountering a rogue’s gallery of sometimes colorful, sometimes touching characters en route to his tragic doom. Sadly, little of the acting or story holds a candle to the stunning landscapes, though while “Into the Wild” (the movie) is ultimately a lesser work than the book, it still sticks with you. Credit goes not just to star Emile Hirsch (wasting away to nothing in the name of art) but to director Penn, who seems to be channeling Gus Van Sant at his most lyrical.