McCandless is - was - an upper-middle class Emory graduate who decided to veer off the established path. He knows him as Alex, though the full alias is Alexander Supertramp. The young vagabond stranger is Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), but Franz doesn’t know that. Because Hal Holbrook’s face is achingly beautiful, never more so than in “Into the Wild” when his Ron Franz is asking - near begging - a young vagabond stranger to be his grandson. Clicking their heels together and whispering “there’s no place like home” won’t stop the reality of their situation from settling in.Someone once told me about a local Barnes & Noble employee who went around the store asking people to choose: “beautiful” or “achingly beautiful”? My unromantic adverb alarm went off and I picked beautiful. They are forced to confront not only their dreams, but their nightmares as well. The fiery couple witness a startling event that leaves Lula with a bad omen, and they start to realize that the world they are trying to escape is more sinister than they could have imagined, and their dream world starts to crumble. As reality does inevitably catch up to them, those red montages fade away, and the colors around them become more muted. Their initial enjoyment of each other before reality catches up to them is visualized through a red color palette to complement their intense passion. Sailor wants to escape from society so that no one can ever threaten to keep Lula from him again. Lula wants to escape into her sexual fantasies after being the object of someone else’s. They want to continue their fantasy of living in a world where it is just the two of them and no one else. Lula is trying to escape the confines of her mother’s overbearing and overwhelming need to protect her, and Sailor is trying to escape his parole and avoid going back to prison where he would be without Lula. Although, it is not the only reason they have to escape.

Sailor and Lula hit the road to California to escape the various people Lula’s mom has hired to kill Sailor, that is true. Parallels to “The Wizard of Oz” and twisted reality line “Wild at Heart’s” run-time.

Film reviews wild at heart