Plenty for locals to poke at amid poetry of 'Wild' outdoors

Here are reasons to stifle our snorts and to watch "Into the Wild" with whatever passes for an open mind nowadays.

• As fictionalized history, it's a pretty good drama. McCandless is presented as a man to whom fortune has given much, doomed by hubris. In his collapse, how-ever, he attains the consolation of wisdom achieved through suffering.

• It's an elegant, even sophisticated, presentation. In the beginning, as McCandless rails against society and the hypocrisy of "parents, politicians and pricks," one suspects we're in for a smothering of Hollywood political correctness -- nature is good, people are bad. Yet his final realization that, to be real, happiness must be shared with other human beings, is nicely prepared by a series of interactions with varied characters. They subtly tease out McCandless' human nerve endings so that, at the end, he is believably capable of feeling sympathy for people outside himself. He might even be ready to love, almost. It's good story-telling, enhanced by the parallel story of his ambitious, dysfunctional parents, who also learn compassion through suffering.

• The acting is superb. One feels that all of the cast brought a high level of conviction to their roles, even the tiny ones. Hal Holbrook may have the role of his career as a widowed veteran who befriends McCandless. Newcomer Brian Dierker, apparently discovered in the ranks of techs and coordinators, handles the persona of an old hippy like a seasoned pro.

• The cinematography is gorgeous. The Alaska scenes were actually shot here, meaning that details such as the angle of the sun, the way snow recedes and thrashing through brush have accuracy that is missing from films supposedly set in Alaska but filmed in Canada or New Zealand.

For much of the film, lead actor Emile Hirsch works with a limited, almost autistic palette of emotions, and the camera spends more time than needed focusing on his facial nuances without adding anything important. He captures some of McCandless' energetic oddness but little of the youthful megalomania seen in photos of the misadventurer; that softening was probably required to make the character attractive.

Throughout the film, the word "Alaska" gets flipped around all by itself as a stand-alone sentence, with the inflection carrying worlds of meaning. "Truth" gets similar treatment, for similar reasons: Both are treated as arguable states of mind, not concrete realities. It implies that Alaska is merely a metaphor written in dirt, rocks, trees and water. Oh, and wild animals. In that sense, the movie shortchanges us.

But Alaskans are not the story or even in it, with one brief exception. The real story is the McCandless Myth, a tragic archetype that ferociously clings to his version of truth at the expense of love. It arouses empathy in those who, without naming it, suspect that they share the "arrogance (that) made him oblivious to the pain he caused" attributed to McCandless' father and evident in the son.

There's still plenty to nit-pick -- no mosquitoes in the summer? -- and locals will have hoot doing so. And the movie runs too long, as might be expected in a remake of the Parsifal or Oedipus saga. The freewheelingness of McCandless' pre-Alaska adventures call to mind "On the Road" or "Easy Rider," though without the humor of the former or the exhilaration of the latter. Unlike those classics, "Into the Wild" has an actual plot. Still, it could lose 30 minutes and still feel as if Thomas Mann had written "To Build a Fire."

?• Mike Dunham has reviewed the arts for the Daily News for 15 years. He can be reached at adn.com/contact/mdunham or 257-4332.