Horace Greeley's immortal invocation was taken to heart by Chris McCandless, with one significant course modification: instead of West, this young man would go Northwest -- about as far as any human could get.

McCandless' journey started as an act of rebellion, but it evolved from escaping the parental grip into something very different as he got further and deeper "Into the Wild."

Sean Penn's epic filming of that journey is a deeply moving rendering of mountaineer Jon Krakauer's wilderness book on which it is based -- and to the spirit of Jack London.

It is an achingly true story: In the summer after he graduates from college, Chris (Emile Hirsch) not only rejects his parents' offering of a new car but, unbeknownst to them, withdraws all $24,292 from his savings account and donates it to Oxfam. Informing no one of his intentions, he takes off in his old clunker, packing little more than his beloved Tolstoy and Pasternak paperbacks.

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'Into the Wild'

• Starring: Emile Hirsch, Vince Vaughn, William Hurt, Marcia Gay Harden.
• Rating: R for language and some nudity.
• Web site: IntoTheWild.com

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He's a wandering Gentile with a very specific idea whither he's wandering -- Alaska -- in search of a Spartan life of total self-reliance, soon ditching the car and hitching, working odd jobs, bedding down where he can and encountering a wondrous array of unconventional people. One of them is a charismatic wheat farmer-wheeler-dealer in Carthage, S.D. (pop. 187), superbly played by Vince Vaughn in the smallest but most endearing role of his career.

Two other standouts are aging hippies (Brian Dierker and Catherine Keener) who take Chris under their wing for a while. The surprise is Dierker: He was the film's marine coordinator for location scouting, but Penn gambled on him for a first-ever acting role here, with wonderfully effective results.

"Into the Wild" was shot in Chris' footsteps, from those gorgeous South Dakota wheat fields to the Colorado River rapids of the Grand Canyon, on to the Alaskan woods. Eric Gautier's cinematography is everything it could possibly be: breathtaking, whether idyllic or terrifying.

But the film's most memorable moments take place in the abandoned City of Fairbanks transit bus that had been towed into the woods decades earlier. It is there, in his gritty "magic bus," that Chris makes his home in the wilderness and struggles valiantly to survive.

By then, in fact, he's no longer Chris. He has undergone genuine transformation and re-Chris-ened himself Alexander Supertramp, capable of anything in his "climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution."

Hirsch ("Alpha Dog"), in teen werewolf makeup, turns in a performance of marvelous depth and intelligence. Whether talking to an apple ("You're sooo good! You're the apple of my eye!") or emaciated (having shed 41 pounds from an already thin frame) toward the end, you can believe him.

Penn, who also wrote the screenplay, has done an elegant if overwrought job in his best directorial effort-- never mind that it's an indulgent 140 minutes and that the Eddie Vedder songs are gratuitous. The parental anguish of William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden is palpably powerful, and Hal Holbrook's soulful second-act role is a heartbreaker.

Chris McCandless and this film remind me of of Linas Phillips' fine "Walking to Werner" road trip. It's about the redemptive madness of The Quest itself.

Hero or lost soul? Foolish risk-taker or tragic figure? He was arrogant as well as human, a flawed and angry romantic. Penn over-identifies with him, insisting on Chris' epochal purity. But in the end, we come away with our own impressions and make our own decision about this wrenching, demanding, introspectively original film.